Traveling on a dime

What do you do when you're a big family with a limited income but you want to do some fun family things?  How about a paper route?  Our paper route is a family affair.  Each week we deliver 1400 Arlington Times newspapers.  The papers are free to households in the delivery area so we drive down the road delivering to everyone that has not expressly asked not to receive it.  Each paper we deliver brings us 10 cents.  We're traveling on a dime!

On Tuesdays, I drive down to Marysville and run errands before picking up the papers.  When I get home, we go into production mode.  We've got to be fast because I get back around 4:15 and we have papers to stuff and dinner to eat before leaving for the church at 6:15.  Everyone has a part. 

Elizabeth rubber bands 75 papers which are delivered to the businesses on Olympic Avenue (the main street in Arlington).  Anastaya and Isaac both bag 200 papers.  Jacob, Dode and I each do 300.  We're pretty quick and get the papers all ready for delivery in about 45 minutes.  Miriam and William help by picking up papers on the ground that miss the bucket. 

While the kids are at youth night, Dode and I deliver to one of the areas on our route.  We're usually just squeaking by with getting done in the hour and a half of the activity and any setback, like a potty stop for William, makes it hard to finish.  We don't have a working radio in the car so it gives us some good talking time, our weekly date night.  Then, when Jacob and Dode get up for seminary on Wednesday morning, Anastaya and I get up and start delivering again.  Up and down the dark streets of Arlington we go, tossing out papers and hand delivering to the apartments.  When seminary is over, we pick up Jacob and a two other teenagers who come over to our house for a few hours before school starts for them and head to Olympic.  With a child on each side of the street, they walk down Olympic delivering to the businesses.  Once we're done, I drop Anastaya off at middle school and bring the rest of the carload home.  When it's time for Jacob to go to school at 9, I load up Isaac and William and we finish whatever Anastaya and I have left.  I spend about 2 hours delivering on Wednesday morning. 

We put all the newspaper money in a separate account at a different bank than our checking account.  Each child gets paid $10 a month for their efforts (I know I'm cheap) with the remainder going to savings.  We've got some fun travels planned for our money, a trip to Navuoo, Disneyland, our recent trip to Great Wolf Lodge.  We've also used the money to send Jacob to Florida with his school for a week.

So, that's traveling on a dime the Dode Dickson family way!