About Us

Welcome!  We are the Crum’s of ….and this is our story!

I am Nadia, currently a  23 year old stay at home mom to my beautiful 2 yr old daughter Allysa and bouncing baby boy, Aeden Patrick, now 3 months old. I am a coupon-clipping, money-saving frugalista learning each and every day how to stretch our dollars just a little bit further. We like to think we are a pretty hip, frugal young family who makes the most out of each day…and each dollar…we are blessed with! But we haven’t always been this way…

Born and raised in Northern California to a hardworking two-parent household, my parents raised my sisters and I knowing the value of a dollar but more so, the value of hard work and tough love.  When I graduated High School I decided to get as far away from the little cow town of Valley Springs as possible, and San Diego State University is where I ended up.

My first year in college I met my best friend and the love of my life, Adam.  He was stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, and handsome and dashing young Marine.  Several months after we met he recieved orders back to Iraq for a second tour in the sandbox.  We made it through his 9 months of deployment, not without deep heartache and many tears.  When he returned safely in April of 2006, we decided to move back to the country for some quite time and to settle down.  A few months later we recieved an interesting surprise–I was pregnant!!

We were married in the cutest little country Firehouse with our family and friends helping pull together everything–from the decorations to the priest to the potluck-style dinner.  And we wouldn’t have had it any other way.  In many ways, our marriage was indicative of how our life has been so far–real, but beautiful, and a little rough around the edges.

Through a few different jobs and a few more trials, we survived our first year of marriage and our first year as new parents, banding together to realize just how important team work is in a marriage, new or old.  In April of 2008,  Adam and I moved to Reno, NV for his job.  He was tremendously happy at his company, but we were really struggling financially and knew that we needed to start making some changes in the way we were living.  We began at first to cut back in ways that most Americans do–not eating out, trying to lower our $500 a month energy and heating bill, and avoiding extra spending.  But all of these things are rather hard to do with a toddler and a second baby on the way.  And when he was laid off in April of 2009 due to economic hardships in the company, things became as desperate as ever.

It wasn’t until we agreed as a family to start getting serious about cutting back our expenses that we really started noticing the changes in our behavior.  We moved into a more affordable dwelling- from a 4 bedroom house to a 2 bedroom apartment across town–not glamourous by any means, but learning a lesson in downsizing and “home is where you make it” at the same time.  By working together we were really able to start living WELL within our means…in this case, our “means” being unemployment until Adam can find another job.  Small changes began to mean big savings…suddenly $4.50 on Sundays for 3 newspapers meant a grocery bill of $25 for a week’s worth of food, household items, and diapers, instead of $125 bill for food which would easily go spoiled or unused.  Eating out meant finding a coupon or special deal where the whole family could eat for a fraction of the cost of a normal meal; often for free or comparable to preparing the same meal at home.  We were taking steps to keep our housing and utility costs low, from simply turning out the lights and relying on God’s beautiful sunshine to fill our home,  and avoiding excess charges on things like cable and telephone by calling and reducing our programming to absolute essentials (you’d be surprised who will lower your costs if you simply ask…).  But most importantly, we had adopted a mindset that we WERE going to survive through these hard economic times, and we were going to do it on our own.  Although my loving and supportive parents would have welcomed us back into their home in a heartbeat, we felt that this was something we needed to do…to learn to stand on our own two feet as adults.  And the support we have received from family and friends in our frugal endeavors has been amazing… we could not and cannot continue to do it without your hope and encouragement.  So many families are struggling, many worse off than we, and we truly hope that through our blog we can inspire and help many of them to see that it IS possible to make it, to even THRIVE, in an economy such as this if you are willing to seek help and adopt the right mindset and tools.

SO….Now that you know a little background on who we are….where are we headed?   Adam just celebrated his 26th birthday and he continues to earnestly seek a job in his desired field of Information Technology while pursuing his degree in the same field full time at a local University doing night classes. As a family, with the leadership of my amazing husband, Adam has decided to re-enlist into the US Army for a 3 year contract. His goal was to enlist as an Information Technology specialist, but when that MOS (Military Occupational Speciality) was unavailable, he took the job of Fire Artillery Support.  Meaning there’s a pretty choice chance he’ll be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan some time next year.  But on a positive note, he doesn’t ship out for schooling until February, plenty of time for the family before he leaves.

Nadia is *finally* less than a year and a half away from completing her teaching certification program and Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Arts and should be able to start teaching part time next fall (2010).  Allysa is continuing to grow beautifully under God’s guidance,petite as ever while Aeden is already weighing in at 14 pounds.  100% Breastmilk.  We are continually looking for ways to cut back our expenses and stretch our dollars, and learning more and more each day about what it means to be truly frugal and to live on less.  We hope that you will join us on our journey and look forward to growing right along with you!