The Lincoln Savings Plan

At the beginning of the year I started the Lincoln savings plan.  All you have to do is save any five dollar bills that you get.   I got an envelope and wrote Lincoln Savings Plan on it. Any time I got change from something that was a $5 bill I tucked it in to my envelope.  When the envelope got full, I wrote how much was in it, sealed it up and hid it in my underwear drawer.   Then I got out a new envelope and kept going.   I started the plan to save up money to take Ivy to Disneyland for Christmas.  Well, then we had a private adoption opportunity that we were so happy about.  So we decided to go to Disneyland for Ivy's birthday in July instead because we would have a 4 month old baby at Christmas.  It became kind of a last hurrah.  A trip together with just the three of us before our family changed.  

Yeah that adoption part didn't work out but what did work out was we had an awesome time in California, the highlight of our year really.   And bonus, July is our busiest month at Greenies so we just went ahead and payed for the trip instead of using all the five dollar bills I'd been saving.  

Since then I have just kept adding to my stash of cash and yesterday when we FINALLY finished up our profile for LDS family services {the adoption agency we are working with} I pulled out my envelopes from the underwear drawer and guess what!  I have more than enough for our deposit towards adoption.  In 10 months I was able to save over $1000. Now that is a fat stack of Lincolns.  The rest I kept in the envelope to keep going on my saving for the rest of our adoption expenses.  

I kind of got the idea from Ivy's piggy bank actually.   We had been sticking any change and any $1 bills in to that ballerina pig for a couple years.  It got full at the beginning of the year and took it to the bank for safe keeping.  That fat little piggy had almost $400 dollars in her belly!  I figured if saving $1 bills could add up like that then $5 would add up a bit faster.  Guess I was right eh?  

Guess you better get an envelope and start saving!