I'm Brenda Rivera Stearns and I'm a mom to six children.
Balancing and budgeting for a family of eight is definitely an adventure,
but here's how we make it work.
Being born and raised in Mexico and growing up with a single parent who
raised four girls, it really impacted the way that I viewed finances.
We were very minimalist.
We had everything that we needed, nothing more.
And I think that has helped me a lot.
As a parent, we live very minimalist.
I moved to the United States when I was 12.
Becoming a young adult,
I've always worked really hard.
At one time, I had two full-time jobs, but I had absolutely no savings.
I didn't really have any debt because I didn't even know about credit cards.
It wasn't until after I got married and started having a family that I
really was like, okay, how is this mindset of money going to really
affect my children in the future?
When I was 21, I met my now husband.
We got married and about a month and a half later, I got pregnant.
And then a year later we had our second daughter.
Everything happened really, really fast.
My husband was working two jobs at a time and he was a full-time student.
I was a stay at home mom.
We could barely make ends meet.
I feel like my mindset towards money had to basically grow up.
We knew that we wanted to have a large family, but we need to make
sure that we can provide for them.
It was hard to sit down and look at the numbers, but I think it's
important to go through that step.
We wrote, here's our income.
70% of that is going to be used towards expenses.
10% of our income always goes to tithing.
Then another 10% towards paying out debt.
And then another 10% to our savings account.
We said no to a lot of things.
For example, we didn't have smart phones.
We did not have internet.
We didn't really go on dates.
It was very challenging, but we wanted to be able to be financially
secure to say, you know what?
Yeah, let's have more children.
Now that we're a family of eight, our budget looks a little bit different.
Currently, we have four savings accounts.
Our emergency funds, we try to have at least three months worth of income.
Our home projects savings, and then we have a children's savings account
and just our regular life savings.
We live very minimalist.
We don't have cable.
Our children don't have any electronic devices.
Most of our money goes on food.
We don't really do a lot of eating out.
The way that we shop is we notice that one of our favorite organic brands is on sale.
We buy all of it and then we're able to come home and put it in our deep freezer.
And that saves us a lot of money.
We don't spend money on childcare, which is huge.
February 2013, we bought our first home, which is where we live now.
We've been in the same location, which I think has played a big part
on how much we spend because we are able to invest in our home and in
the property that we own instead of renting and paying someone else.
I started creating content around 2017.
It didn't become an income until last year.
Whenever we want to travel or do something fun we're able to use that account instead
of using our regular monthly budget.
I don't want my kids to remember, "Oh yeah, my mom was always
focused about savings that we didn't really have any memories."
One of our main important things about planning for our children's
futures is we definitely do not want to pass down any debt.
And we were able to do that.
We started living debt-free as of last year.
I'm very, very thankful for the sacrifices that we made and we're
able to now have the lifestyle that we want to provide to our children.
The fact that we are able to have a savings and have money set aside for our
children, it makes me feel fulfilled.
If college is something that they want for their life, we want to be
able to support them, but also teach them to work hard for what you want.
I think my biggest advice is that children don't need the fanciest latest gear.
What they need is a loving, present parent.
And when you are able to give them that, I feel like everything else
just kind of falls into place.