You may be wondering how we came up with Parsnips and Parsimony.  Well, let me just say that it was a mini-community effort.  I was trying to capture what I write about on this blog but nothing was coming to me or my friends. I tried words like, frugal, thrifty, homesteading, debt-free, SAHM, and gardening to just name a few.  Nothing was coming to me.  So I asked my family, extended family and neighbors for their input.  They in turn asked their friends what they thought.

Parsnips are one of the most humble, inexpensive, root crops in the garden.  It seemed to fit exactly what our lives are.

Parsimony means the quality of being careful with money or resources.

Those two words seemed to capture exactly what I blog about.  The name had a certain ring to it that just stuck.

That is how “Parsnips and Parsimony” was born!

About Me

In 2000, my soon-to-be husband moved from Michigan to New York to open up his own music store, The Brass and Woodwind Shop. A year later, we were married.  The shop was still in it’s beginning stages and was bringing in very little money.  Thankful for my husband’s wise use of money before we were married, he was able to pay cash for our home so our only expenses were heat, food, phone and insurance.  I was immediately thrown into a situation of learning how to stretch a dollar.  My parents had always been good with their money and had taught me some of their ways.

That first year of marriage was filled with many challenges including an 4 day NICU stay for my newborn daughter.  I did a lot of reading up on saving money, cutting coupons and learning how to cook inexpensively.  I also started a garden in my back yard. And I do say so myself, it was almost a complete failure that first year!

Over the past years, the shop has had good years and bad years.  Even though we have moved to a home with a little bit more room for our growing family, we were able to only borrow $30K for our home and was able to pay it off it 2.5 years. We are currently debt free. Even though we don’t make that much more than we did when we were first married, we have been able to save and share with others.

My husband and I have become very involved with growing and preserving our own homegrown food.  We have approx. 1000 square feet of gardens as well as grapes vines, cherry, peach and pear trees.  Last year, we added 8 chickens to our yard.

We started this blog as a way to share with others how we live and are able to live on very little money.  We hope that this is a help to you and encourage you!

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