“When you have an emergency fund, you tend to stop having emergencies,” says Dave Ramsey, as part of his Financial Peace University (FPU) course. He’s probably right.

Emergencies happen all the time: roofs leak, cars break down, the A/C breaks when it’s 95 degrees outside. Unplanned expenses can throw a family in crisis and add unnecessary stress. It’s exactly the reason that families need to get their finances in order. Now.

My husband and I are taking Ramsey’s FPU course this fall in order to better understand each other and how we deal with finances. We’ve been through a financial planning course before, and really benefited from it, so we’re hopeful this new course will deepen our understanding and desire to be debt free for life. Who doesn’t want that?

Ramsey tells people to start with getting $1,000 in the bank for emergencies. Once you have that, you can move toward other steps that will eventually, over time, get you to be at peace with your finances. He teaches that you need to “learn to manage your money instead of it managing you.” Amen.

I received an advanced copy of the new book from “The Coupon Mom” back in December. It’s taken me this long to digest the book and write this post because there is so much great information in it. I was excited when I had the opportunity to read the book because I’ve seen Stephanie Nelson on television and she makes it look easy.

In her new book, “The Coupon Mom’s Guide To Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half,” Nelson shares her secrets on getting the most for your dollar. She starts by talking about what type of shopper you are: busy, rookie or varsity and has advice throughout the book based on each shopping type.

What I like about the book is that Nelson is not only a mother and savvy shopper, but she’s well spoken and clearly uses her business background to help shoppers learn techniques that can help save their families a lot of money. Here’s some of what I’m taking away from the book:

• Even though I’m a busy working mother, I can save money with coupons. Nelson’s personal strategy is not to spend hours every week cutting coupons; instead, she saves the circulars each week and puts a date on the front. No clipping coupons yet. When she’s ready to shop, she consults her Web site’s Grocery Deals database to find the best deals for the week. The database will tell her which circular to find the coupons and then she simply clips the coupons she’s using for that shopping trip.
• Knowledge is power, or in Nelson’s case, store and pricing knowledge is money. She says to learn what is on sale, when at your local grocery and drug stores (as well as other stores) so that you know when to buy what. An example she gives is that her local grocery store puts chicken on sale once a month. She knows when this happens and buys four weeks worth of chicken when it’s on sale.
• Combine store coupons with manufacturer coupons to receive maximum benefits. Before reading this book I didn’t even realize there was a difference between a manufacturer coupon and store coupon, let alone that you can use them both on an item and save big! I think this is the secret to how Nelson can go into a store and get $100 worth of groceries for pennies (see video below).
• Sign up for and use couponmom.com. Nelson’s Web site is a goldmine. This is where the time saving techniques really come into play. Every week her site is updated with local discounts. The magic is that you can find discounts in  your local area simply by clicking a few pages of her site and you be rewarded with a grid that tells you what items are on sale, which coupons to use, where to find the coupons and it will show you a final price you’ll pay for that item. It also shows you when you can get things for free using sales and coupons. You don’t have to do the legwork, just use the database to find the deals.

The book also has chapters on wholesale clubs, the breakout of drugstores and their rewards programs, how to use couponmom.com and chapters about how to save buying meat, vegetables, dairy and sweets. She even throws in some recipes that she uses with her family. This book is like an encyclopedia for saving money. Well worth the read because even if you implement only one of her strategies, you’ll surely save money.

If you don’t believe it or haven’t seen Nelson in action, watch this short clip where she gets $100 worth of groceries for 25 cents!

Photo credit: Stephanie Nelson

Related:

• CouponMom.com
• Stephanie Nelson’s Coupon Mom show airs on You Tube every Thursday. “In her new series, Nelson teaches real families how to save BIG by sharing her infamous tips and tricks on how to get the biggest bang for your buck without sacrificing quality.”
• “The Coupon Mom’s Guide To Cutting Your Grocery Bills In Half” Amazon link and reviews
• Time.com’s Q&A with Stephanie Nelson, “Coupon Mom: How To Cut Grocery Bills In Half“

Sunday’s “Parade” magazine featured a great article about families learning to live with what they have, not what they want or think they need. The article profiles several families who’ve had to learn the hard way how to cut back. To make decisions to live differently after job loss or a business failed.

Wants and needs have always been very different things. Wants being things we desire like more money, fancier cars, larger homes, luxurious vacations, and more. Needs are just what we require to live: food, shelter, enough to pay our bills. The need category can tend to get long when we over indulge and think we must have items in order to get by.

We tend to think we need things. We collect things. We buy more things. Things, things, things. Nikki Willhite of allthingsfrugal.com states it this way:

It is said that we spend the first half of our life accumulating possessions, and the second half giving them away. This is true for most people.”

Willhite, ends her article, “Wants Versus Needs,” eloquently:

Learn to live with less. Learn to shun envy. Appreciate what you have. If you have less, you will appreciate what you have more.

The “Parade” article ends differently, but with an equally telling message about desiring too much:

Is there a lesson to be learned from 2009? “We now know what every 85-year-old knows,” says Ted Klontz, a financial-behavior consultant. “Chasing after money is meaningless.”

Photo credit: dinny.

Related:

• Read the full article from Parade.com
• Read Willhite’s article, “Wants Versus Needs.”
• Helpful tip sheet for kids on getting them to understand and differentiate a want vs. a need, especially when spending their own money. From PBSkids.org.
• Balancing Motherhood’s Finance archives.

When my son was born several people gave me bags and boxes full of little boy clothes their children had outgrown. I was ecstatic. I didn’t have to buy him clothing for most of his first year.

I saved much of his clothes in old diaper boxes and kept filling them up, saving them for baby number two. Then, three years later, came the ultrasound that proved we we’d be needing pink items.

What to do with all those clothes?

I contemplated keeping them once again, in case we have a third baby but opted to get rid of them. By the time we might have another child my son will be 5 or 6 years old and I’d need a second house to keep all the clothing he’s outgrowing. It’s just not practical. But, neither is buying all new clothes for each kid . We donated the clothes to another family who had a newborn baby boy and she has already started passing them along as well now that her son has outgrown some of the clothes.

So, the girl news started spreading and we started getting offers of donations from friends’ children who’d outgrown their baby clothes. “Bring ‘em over,” I replied to each offer. The boxes came and I haven’t had to buy much for my daughter.

Apparently, this is a new trend.

I rarely buy new clothes for my kids. The rate at which they outgrow their clothes is so fast, they don’t have time to ruin the ones they have — giving other families the chance to use the leftovers.

Consignment is hot

Resale seems to be a growing trend as well and not just on sites like eBay and Craigslist. In Orlando, we have a shop, Once Upon a Child, that pays cash for kid’s clothes that are in good shape. So, you sell some clothes and you buy some clothes. I’ve purchased several gorgeous dresses here for as little as $3.50. They would retail for at least $20. I have a hard time paying $20 for an item of clothing that is only going to last three months. Once, I sold some clothes and bought a few “new” outfits and walked out with more money than when I went in. It actually felt like they were paying me to take the clothes.

“The New York Times” wrote a great article about this trend — and it’s not just for people who need to save money. Everyone is realizing that there are great quality products and clothes out there that are hardly used. Why buy new when you can have “nearly new” for a lot less cash.

Instead of boxing up all my daughters clothes as she steadily outgrows them, I’m going to try resale and earn a few bucks, or just use the money to trade up in size so that I can outfit her for longer without having to always buy new.

Related

• Read “The New York Time’s” story, “For Firstborns, Secondhand Fits the Bill.”
• “How to Find and Sell Used Children’s Clothes on eBay.”

Suze’s done it again — giving away her newest financial book for free. Spell it with me, F-R-E-E! I think this is amazing. Absolutely amazing. When so many are having a hard with with money and finances, Suze and her publisher are giving away something for free. And, it’s something to help all of us in 2009.

The free book offer is only for one week (expires Jan. 15, 2009) and is for her just released book “Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan.”

Suze was on Oprah last night, I haven’t watched the segment yet, but plan to this weekend. As many of you know I think that Suze gives Americans the smackdown that we need in order to live financially honest lives. Sometimes her advice may seem harsh, but it’s the kind of talk we need to get our finances in shape.

• Download the book now.