Upon hearing that my husband was laid off a few weeks ago, both of us found ourselves surprised by our own relief.  Obviously for many families losing a job can be tremendously stressful—especially with young children involved.  In fact, if my husband would have been laid off a few months later we would have been in serious trouble.  By that point I would have signed a half time teaching contract for next year which wouldn’t have been enough income to support our family.  Thank goodness I still have the option to teach full time next year and we have enough of an emergency fund to ease us through the summer. 

We know there will be financial sacrifices with my husband staying home to care for our kids, but for the last three years we have embraced the adventurous life of voluntary simplicity.  In the past, we didn’t need to shop at thrift stores, give home haircuts, or make our own cleaning supplies, but we enjoyed the challenge and delighted in the fact that we were helping the planet and beefing up our savings account. Every month we dutifully deposited money in our emergency fund, thinking we wouldn’t need it anytime soon. 

The down side of all of that working and saving was that we always felt harried.  We spent weekends catching up on family time and chores. When our son would get ill, we had to cobble together daycare coverage using our sick leave with occasional help from friends and family.  There wasn’t any flexibility in our schedules and we felt overwhelmed by the pace of our life—especially since our second child is due in just a few weeks. 

Now that my husband is an official “domestic engineer,” I don’t have to rush home from work to cook a meal while trying to spend quality time with my son.  Instead when I arrive on our doorstep, dinner is in the oven and my family is completely relaxed.  I’m also amazed by how much the bond between my son and my husband has grown over just a few weeks.  Here they are enjoying swimming lessons together–something that never would have fit into our work schedules before.

Over the summer we’ll have to be careful with our budget, but next school year (which starts in September) we’ll actually be better off financially with me working full time and my husband staying home.  When we sat down and crunched numbers it occurred to us that the savings in taxes and childcare are impressive.  What a thrill to be able to have more family time and save money too!  

So, my official Thrifty Green Thursday tip is to set up your emergency savings fund!  Even if you can only sock small amounts of money away each month, it’s worth it to know that you’ll have a bit of padding in these rough financial times.  It’s amazing how powerful that saving momentum can be once you start trimming here and there and seeing your balance inching up.   Since we believe going green truly involves simplifying, buying less, and buying used, you really can go green and set some green aside in case of a rainy day.  

We would love to have you join us with your tips on saving money and the planet.  Just be sure to add a link on your post that directs readers back to this post.  That way they’ll have the chance to explore everyone’s tips.  For directions on where to begin, just click here.  Thanks for joining us this week for Thrifty Green Thursday!