Kristen

Hello! I’m pleased to be a contributing member to Self Reliance Works. While I’m not a hand-core live-off-the-land person like Mark Zeiger, I do derive a fair amount of pleasure from being independent and doing things myself.

I’ve been married to my husband for 12 years, and we have four children, whom I homeschool (I’m a homeschool graduate myself, actually). I stay home with my kids, but I also work from home for myself in a variety of ways.

I teach piano, I have a small photography business, and I play the piano on a freelance basis (I play for church, weddings, and funerals, and I also accompany vocalists and instrumentalists). In addition, I write The Frugal Girl, which is a blog about saving money.

Though my life is full and busy, it’s also fairly flexible and relaxed. Since I work for myself, I set my own hours. Since I homeschool, I get to choose when we do school and what we study. Since I live frugally, I only have to work part-time, and that gives me time to devote to baking, painting furniture, photography, blogging, biking with my kids, and a variety of frugal activities. I love being in charge of how I spend my time!

My main contributions to Self Reliance Works will be in the areas of homeschooling (I have experience both as a homeschooled kid and a homeschooling mom) and frugality. One of the ways I save money is by cooking and baking a lot of our food from scratch or near scratch, so I’ll be writing on that topic as well. I’m also interested in treading lightly on the planet and happily, things like Freecycling, line-drying, cooking from scratch, gardening, and composting meet both my frugal goals and my green goals.

My husband and I live debt-free aside from our mortgage (which we hope to pay off early) and we consume and spend far less than the average American. Despite this, I think our lives are full and happy, and I hope that my posts inspire you to make the most of your money so that you don’t have to be a slave to debt.