I have no idea what I am doing.

I full on have not one clue. Winging it. All…the…way.

I never thought I was going to be a stepmom, much less one who had to be extraordinarily careful about every single thing I do, because of a high conflict relationship between my fiancée and his ex.

I can’t involve myself too much when it comes to concerns about my stepdaughter and her well being, because then I get told to f**k off, she is not mine and it is not my choice. But if I am too laid back, then I lose the respect I have worked my ass off to earn.

So I made a choice one day to stop asking permission and do what needed to be done for my house to function with this beautiful child and her daddy in it.

We finally have reached a point of 60/40 (more like mom has 58 and we have 42) custody arrangements and it’s great. But there needed to be rules and consequences and when I started the system, I felt like the evil stepmother.

My stepdaughter has chores, even if she is only here three days a week. She earns her allowance for those chores, which is $13 per week (her age, plus $5) and has the opportunity to choose extra chores from the board to earn additional money.

Keep in mind that she had zero concept of how things cost when I first came into her life, so I got creative. I printed play money that looks like Canadian money, including coins; laminated them all, cut them out and when she gets her allowance for the week, it goes into the bank account I have made.for her, and she gets an envelope with the play money.

When she chooses to spend money, she has to give me the cash amount in play money and she gets change back and then she has to log what she spent and what her remaining balance is in the popit notebook I got for her. This is how I have showed her the value of money and taught her to budget and bargain shop.

System 1 was and is complete and effective.

She also has a system for behaviour because for a long time, we have had issues with her and her attitude, or being rude, etc. So we sat down with her and let her choose things that she needed to work on, and added our input.

Then, I made punch cards with those behaviours on them, and when she is here, before she is set to go back to mom’s house, we sit down and go through them and talk about what we did well vs. What needed work. She gets checkmarks, and when she completes the card, I have a mystery box made up(right now, its full of fidgets) and she can choose one thing from there. Then we move on to the next thing.

To some, I am sure this seems like a lot for a kid to handle, but it has worked wonders. I still, however, have no idea what I am doing though…lol

Until next time!

Hey!

So, to get right into it, I created this page because I know there are a lot of people who haglve similar struggles to my own when it comes to frugal living, being a stepparent, being successful at balancing work and home life, and so many other things.

I am the stepmother of a beautiful and still very difficult 8 year old girl. My fiancée is a wonderful and yet very difficult man. I own and operate several different businesses from home, and work to maintain our rental unit and save money wherever possible.

With the pandemic, I have also taken to doing additional homeschooling because I know a lot of things have fallen behind. I also attend college full time right now, training to be a PSW.

Anyways! This blog has been created to help with ideas, frugal living, stepmomming, and so much more. You can always join our Facebook groups as well!