Frugal to FIRE with Four kids

Using my creative frugal skills at work. I am implementing a ribbon reward system for my students, similar to the karate belt colours. Couldn't ask the school to spend any more money after buying the ribbons themselves, so found an old photocopy box lid, punched holes in it, threaded the ribbons onto a spare xylophone mallet to keep it in place so I can keep my ribbons organised and easy to give out quickly.

What is your best recycling moment?
I think this is mine and I planned it and collected for many years before we had the money to renovate and put a butlers pantry in, but I am proud of my thinking to use weight loss shake containers and printing out my own labels onto clear adhesive paper.

When we moved house, I wanted to change my style, I was a bit over the dark furniture with no real style in our first house, but I didn't want to buy all new furniture and waste these good solid pieces. So, I painted them and they fit perfectly with our new house, all for $20 in paint.
Who else has done a frugal furniture make over (I also did bathroom vanity, bookshelves, the coffee table in the second photo I got off the side of the road, and lots of other things with the same paint)

My bargain hunting has rubbed off on my oldest. He found this guitar in an op shop for $39, brand new condition, worth over $200 new and fits his purpose perfectly as we didn't have a semi acoustic guitar in the house and he needed something for his school jazz band group and now I don't have to buy it he paid for it with his own money.

People wonder why we have so much invested in a caravan on our path to FIRE. It just doesn’t seem frugal to many, but let me explain.
We have an annual holiday where we meet up with my childhood friend, it was costing us $1500 (would be way more now) for a two bedroom unit over the road from the caravan park. The caravan park however costs us about $500 for the same week (and you can’t beat this beachfront location) That saving of $1000 pays for our insurance and rego.
This is our fourth upgrade in 7 years, we didn’t jump to this set up until we know we could justify its use for the cost. Each time we sold the previous van we made a profit of $2k as we bought smart second hand and sold it well with attention to details on the listing and presentation of the van (it goes a long way)
We have done many two-three week driving holidays, especially good during covid when you couldn’t fly or leave the state! With lots of free camping and taking our groceries with us, we would spend the same for 3 weeks on holiday that other people would spend on one week paying for accomodation. The cost of accomodation and flights for a family of six are crazy, with this van we avoid it all!
never have to book accomodation, can go or not go at a drop of a hat and stay in places where there is no accommodation.
When we sell it, I expect once again to make a tidy profit or downsize to something just for the two of us. Secretly aiming for a boatahome or caravoat though, hubby needs convincing lol.
So for now, let’s just consider it as money sitting in the bank and one day we will cash in. In the meantime it pays for itself by saving us on holidays we would be taking anyway.

These were my november income figures for my little extras that are not main income (work)
The total for all over 2022 came to over $5k from flybuys, cashbacks, credit card gift cards, credit and bank account sign up bonuses, surveys and the like. If interested in trying any of those, the links are all down a bit further on this page.

So who or what is Frugal to FIRE with four kids? Well let's start with the term FIRE, it means that we plan to be Financially Independent and Retire Early, and doing that with four kids.
No we don't have massive incomes, I am just a teacher and only work part time and my husband works in telecommunications for a small company that he has been with for over 20 years.
How we intend on retiring early is by making smart and frugal choices. We bought our first house based just on one wage, it was in awful shape, almost not liveable and we renovated it almost 100% ourselves to save money. We have always had second hand cars and much of the time serviced and repaired them ourselves, we have never been overseas and our holidays are in our caravan (do you know how expensive flights and accomodation is for 6 people!!!!) but in our caravan we can stay for free in the many free camps around Australia and take our food with us.
This is just the beginning of our journey towards FIRE, stay tuned for more or feel free to ask anything specific and I will write about it and hopefully sharing my journey can help you navigate yours.

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