Hello!  Welcome to Claiming Simplicity and if this is your first time listening, I am Monica H. Baker and I am so glad you are here!  I am very passionate about helping you find more simplicity and meaning in your life to truely live the most enjoyment every single day!!!!!!  
 
This was a super duper exciting week on our little farm as we added a newborn nigerian dwarf goat to our household!!!!  She was born a week ago and is it is like having a new born baby around again with bottle feeding every 4 hours! We had to really decide if we wanted to add another kid to the herd since I have some things for the business  in Utah next month and Colorado in October, but she will be old enough and thankfully we have some wonderful people that enjoy helping out!!!   She is so so loved and is our snuggliest goat yet adn her name is Mildred, but we call her Millie, so now we have Fern, Mable and Millie.  Im not a fan of having animals in the house, but we did have a box of hay for our newborn her first few days of life since she was only a few pounds and so tiny and I didn’t want her to be scared in the goat shed. I sure wish I would have known about goats years ago because they are my favorite animals I have ever had -plus, there is such a learning curve to goats that we want to learn as much as we can this next year and a half before we start milking them so we can make yogurt, sour cream, ice cream and cheese with all our own milk.  Life is all about the journey and I hope you are enjoying it as much as we are!
 
This week I want to give you 3 simple ways to save money if you are an impulse shopper so you can stop purchasing items you don’t need!  Have you ever purchased something and then a few days later wished you wouldn’t have?  I have done this a few times and when I look back, I had to really examine why I purchased this item.  As you know, I am not someone that has to have expensive things or brand names items or even care what brands are popular because I am just simply way too practical, but there was a short time in my life where I thought if I bought stuff to make me look good, it would make me feel better, but that is the absolute furthest from the truth!  Thankfully it didn’t last, we had newer vehicles with loans on them, a very fancy home that we built with all the bells and whistles we could afford and we were living paycheck to paycheck. I absolutely hated not having a saving and I hated having debt hanging over our heads and we were not able to travel and enjoy experiences with our family because we had too much debt!  And then my husband lost his job and it was very stressful.  He took another job sometimes working in other states, but we knew we didn’t want to live a life like that.  It was one of the hardest times in our life, but one of the best things that  could have happened to us and I thank God for that experience because we learned so much about what we valued and what we didn’t.  Once we put God first and knew our priorities, there was no need to impress anyone else.  You don’t need brand name clothes or anything expensive-that does not impress God.  We give all the glory to God in whatever we do as we live
for eternity now and know that everything we have is God’s, not ours.  Keep and open hand friend as it is not ours to clench.  As you keep your hands open to giving and receiving, God will give you more than you could ever imagine.  Make sure to give him the glory-there is not anything we can do on our own.  I seriously could not have even imagined this life we have even 10 years ago-listen to God’s Will and He will Provide-trust Him with everything!
 
Ok, so the first thing to do to save money is take your credit card number off of any online shopping apps.  It makes it way too easy for you to just put in your cart and pay automatically.  That extra step of having to go and get your card number could save you alot of money!  Also, if you do shop online, make sure that if you do put an item in your cart