I play the role of husband and father, and I represent a growing family of five (5), with three young boys. Mrs. InACents and my goal with our children is to help them grow into strong, independent persons with a knowledge of how other people live, and an acceptance of all cultures, regardless of their backgrounds or life preferences. We also believe in a strong family bond, and surround them with a loving environment, where hopefully they are not ashamed to be hugged by their mom or dad in the future.
As our family expands, it becomes more and more important to save money where possible to plan for each of our future. As a result, we are constantly on the lookout for new ways to save money. We are also passionate about traveling! So we marry the two concepts together on InACents.
The idea of InACents is to be as financially transparent as possible and within reason in an effort to be honest with ourselves about debt and savings, as well as make discussion about money less taboo. As we save money on all aspects of life, we also like to enjoy our time away from home with our kids.
Our family looks to make smart financial decisions, teach those lessons to our kids, and save money in our everyday lives so that we can get out and experience new places, meet new people, and try new cuisines. My wife and I have no desire to travel without our kids, so we work within our means to make it happen. Life is no longer about making only my wife or I happy, but about nurturing our children into productive and responsible contributors to society.
Typically we take one or two larger (1 week or longer) trips per year. However, since the birth of our first child in 2009, we have learned to take advantage of lots of shorter weekend getaways. Now that our second son was born in 2011, and third in 2013, it has become even more important to get out and about as much as possible to keep their little minds active and stretch the dollar further.
Our family has learned to use reward programs to our benefit, which helps save our family lots of money on travel expenses. We spend time learning about various ways to maximize our returns, partner with companies, and use reward programs to our benefit to go about seeing places we may not have otherwise been able to afford, and it is not as cumbersome as it may sound. You can do it too!
We are in no way frequent flyers by any means. We are not privileged with large bank accounts. We have learned from our experiences and use that knowledge to guide our future. I am in no way your average deal hound or extreme mileage junky. I carefully screen each deal to see if it’s worthy enough for my time and effort. I am not going to tell you to go out and purchase tens of thousands of miles when I would not do the same thing for our family. There are lots of extreme travelers, for example, that do not mind dropping $1,000+ to buy miles, just so they can fly first class around the world.
While I see the advantages to doing so, I need to screen offers that suit our family. Then maybe your family will be rewarded by doing the same. I come from the viewpoint of trying to get my young and growing family to experience travel with optimized spending and savings.
I spend countless hours each week pouring through all kinds of offers on credit cards, financial institutions, coupons, deal sites, airline travel and miles, etc. and once I find one worthy of my dollar (or free in some cases), I gladly share them.
In our effort to experience new places, meet new people, and teach our children about different experiences, we share these tips and stories. Some of our articles will be related to only travel or financial related items. However, the savings that we incur throughout the year allows us to continue our travels. “In a cents,” we hope you can take some of our articles and put them to use to experience the world through travel while making sound financial decisions.