Mainly housing, food, clothing, fuel, education, health ins, stuff like that.
Our house isn’t much bigger than the average. We make do. Bunk beds are the rule around here.
Food and clothing are the big costs. We shop at the big discount stores, Salvation Army, the Dollar Store, and the local stores that specialize in insurance salvage.
We buy industrial sized containers of food from places like Sam’s, grow a lot of our own, get milk at a local farm, and buy sides of beef from another local farmer.
The Apostolic Lutherans have a saying, “Each child comes with his own bread.”
And certainly, the Lord has been gracious and merciful to us and has provided abundantly for us.
But we are also investing in the future.
When the stock market crashed after 9-11, the guys at work were lamenting the collapse we were all experiencing with our 401K holdings. One of them asked me what I was going to do about retirement. I told him that with all our children, that wasn’t going to be a very big concern for us.