Economy Hit Us Hard

we canceled our cable this year to cut costs. it doesn't solve all our money problems, but it helps. i miss tv, but we have found many ways to watch things for free. we check out movies and books on tape/cd from the library. there are many tv shows to watch for free on websites such as veoh and hulu. and as i've talked with neighbors and friends about it, i've found that many families are going without cable and are willing to lend from their vhs and dvd collections. all of these take more effort than sitting down with a remote, but it is working out. good luck!

Maybe your husband could get a part-time second job to augment the slowness. But, selling your house might be a temporary solution. I know the market isn't great, but you might not lose too much on it. When all else fails, prayer really helps with making the right decision. Hold on and take care.

I am a Personal Wellness Coach with the company Herbalife. I love what I do. Even with this economy, my business with Herbalife is strong. Herbalife has not had to cut an checks even now or anytime in the past 28 years whenever there's been a recession. Being in the Health and Wellness industry, this is one area where the demand is strong. Most people save costs on food when we personalize their nutrition program. I get to work and manage my own time around my 2 kids and average about $30 an hour helping people with their health.
We have a great community of people to work with here in Utah. It's inspiring to help people improve their health. I have learned so much and it has helped me with my energy to keep up with my kids. It's a feeling of vitality. I dropped 5% in body fat percentage and I have more endurance, focus, and strength when I workout or dance or teach cardiokickboxing.
I have a friend also in Herbalife who is a mom of five here in Utah. She in 8 years built her income to $8000 a month. Even with that kind of income, recent circumstances had forced her to make a decision of wether to sell her home or not and move back in with her parents. Instead she kept going strong with her business of Herbalife. She, was able to build her income and keep their home.
If you are interested in taking a look, I am looking for more people to train and work with. I believe we can make it through and rise out of circumstances like these! My phone number is 888-236-4453 or email is ____@____.com.
-O.

Hi S.. My husband is also self-employed and we are doing what we can to make things work as well. There's a website that is great for saving on groceries, www.pinchingyourpennies.com, that has been helpful for many people I know. It takes a little while to get used to using it, but it shows you all the different stores around and who has what on sale. I know that Jet Blue hires (only in Utah) employees that work from home, but you have to be able to have a few hours of complete silence everyday to take phone calls to assist people. I believe they provide you with all of the materials you need to do the job (separate phone line, computer, etc.) From what I understand, it's pretty easy. For a long time I worked on the weekends while my husband worked during the week. It was tough, but it helped. Either way it will take some sacrifices on both of your parts, but in the long run if you are motivated to make it work, it will:) You could maybe also nanny and bring your kids. I wish you the best of luck!

We are in the same boat! My husband is self-employed in the flooring industry and there is zero work! He's been out looking for jobs, I started a business which is new and not bringing in much at all, and family is hiring us to clean their houses and do handyman work just so we can get groceries. I ad match at WalMart and just buy what I can that is on sale. I clip coupons too, so sometimes I get stuff free at the grocery store with an ad match and a coupon. Lately, I have been working our food storage into our meals to make them stretch. I have three kids and with two in school, I knew a traditional job would not cover those day care and transportation expenses. I think it would take a long time if you tried to sell your house; or you would just have to go through one of those companies that buys it from you and then they try to sell it. Either way, you probably won't get what it is worth. (For us we also have an equity loan we haven't paid off, so we might not get enough to cover what we owe!) Pretty soon I'm going to have to look into some help, but as you may know, that is really hard for the self-employed; seems no one thinks we deserve anything. CHIP for example looks at our income before taxes and expenses, which is more than half of what we make! Nice that people with money get a bailout from the government, but we still have to struggle! Good luck!

I think you are like most of us out here. I am scared to death at what is happening to our economy and would be devastated by the loss of any more income. It was only August that I lost $750/month and that has been tough to deal with.

I would not jump to trying to sell your home as you will find that the market is so poor that even if you could sell it right now, you'd probably be taking a loss on it. I have been in that situation once and regret our decision to this day and it was 18 years ago. We broke even on the sale of our home, walked away with nothing in our pockets and ended up paying more in rent than we did a house payment. Now the house payment I have for a very comparable home is almost 3 times as much as that first house payment was. It kills me.

I think the best thing for you to do is to try to bring in some income yourself. If you could tolerate doing childcare for even a couple of children on a full time basis you can make about $250/week. It feels good to know you are helping and the kids usually enjoy having built in playmates so to speak. Then if your husband's business picks back up you can either continue and just have expendable income or you could stop doing it and go back to being a SAHM.

If daycare isn't your thing then maybe you could find some other type of work that could be done from home. Just be careful of all the scams out there.

Good luck to you.

I am so sorry- I feel for you. I just got a website recently from a friend called grocerysmarts.com- it is incredible. You have to have this passport code to get it but everything on the site is free- the passport code is g84cmo. They put all the adds for every store in utah that has weekly adds & then have links or tell you which newspaper to get the coupons from. I was so not a coupon person but they have made this so simple. They have people who come & teach people how to use the site (she teaches for free also) if you want to send me a message I will send you her name & #.
Good luck- I hope you enjoy it as much as i do

I work for a wellness company just out of my home - they are fabulous! It is awesome to work with my kids (3.5 & 18 mo) at home. Send me a message when I can meet with you and show you what I found, to see if it makes sense for you and your family. I live in Herriman and could meet Friday or Saturday if that works for you.
Look forward to hearing from you!!
V.

Hi S.
I too totally understand your situation. My husband is in the construction field and yes it has hit slowly but enough to effect. I was blessed over 10 years ago I found a work from home opprotunity and I have never had to put my kids into day care and at that time I had 3 kids now I have 5 and I am able to work right around them and supplement our income as I do that and right now as the economy is droppng my biz is climbing ever so fast because people are so tired of the rat race. So here is a link you can look at www.wealthtrack4u.com I look forward to talking to you soon

A Little about me
I am a SAHM and a WFHM of 5 kids ranging from 5-16 been married 19 1/2 years. And I love what I do working from home