Thursday, January 31, 2013

Books I Love: Money Secrets of the Amish

Money Secrets of the Amish: Finding True Abundance in Simplicity, Sharing, and Saving

I "read" (listened to the audiobook actually) of this book in the summer. I love budgeting and family financial management, but I am always intrigued by the simple life of the Amish. When I saw the title of this book (I don't even remember where I heard of it) I knew it was a book for me.

The audiobook is read by the author (my favorite kind of audiobook) and let me tell you, Lorilee Craker is funny. Really, I was frequently laughing in my car while listening to this book.

The number one lesson I learned is the catch phrase of the book, which is "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." There is a section of the book dedicated to this phrase, but she brings it up many time through out. This one phrase really got me thinking about what things in my life am I not using up or wearing out.

One of the smaller ways I've started using things up is with my makeup/beauty products. The liquid foundation I wear has a pump dispenser. My foundation got so low that the tube part that brings the foundation up to pump it out (am I making sense? I don't know if these things even have technical names, I've never written about them before.) Anyway, it got too low to properly use the pump. Normally, I'd consider it empty and get a new bottle of foundation, but then the words use it up went through my mind and I realized there is still a whole heck of a lot of foundation in that bottle. I ended up unscrewing the cap and using the little tube thing (whatever it's called) to scoop out the rest of the foundation. Guess what, I got another month of use out of the foundation bottle. Seriously, I was pretty shocked myself. (Note: I don't use that much foundation each day.) I've also started cutting my hand lotion bottles open and using up the rest of it lotion inside. I had no idea how much lotion was left behind after it's not easy to squeeze out anymore, crazy.

I hope to make blog posts about how I am applying "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without"  to my life on a regular basis. I'm sure there will be many more situations arising in the future where it would be useful.

Overall, I love this book. It is full of practical tips for saving money and it was so entertaining that I didn't want to get out of my car when I got to my destination. I highly recommend it.


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