Budget / Saving Money
Luckie519
member
DH and I sat down at the beginning of January and got together a budget. We also went to the bank last month to see what we needed to work on in the ways of our credit, so we could start the process of buying a home.
DH's credit is awesome and mine needs a little work, but it has come a long way in the past few years. Also a lot of my negative credit is from 8-10 years ago, when I was first starting out on my own. Most of the stuff in the past 5 years or so has been paid on time and I have not defaulted (thank God).
So, my "resolutions" were to put away at least $100 a month into my savings and also not put anything on my credit cards, unless it's an absolute emergency. I know it's only been a month, but last month, I kept my resolution. I also spent a measley $8 on myself. Not that I have been crazy with spending in the past, but generally, if I wanted something, I bought it. I was really good about actually thinking to myself if I wanted something "Do I need this? Can I live without it?"
We also have been able to cut one day a week ($100 / month) out of our daycare bill, which will also go into our savings. I have also gotten back into couponing big time again to help with our grocery bill. Right now, I would say for our family of 3, we spend about $75 a week.
Do you have any tips or suggestions on how to save money? Is there anything you do to help with expenses or your monthly budget? Any tips/advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
Re: Budget / Saving Money
Mommy by the Sea
Oh, everyone has such good suggestions!
We do "meatless spaghetti night" every week. Spaghetti is CHEAP if you don't put any sort of meat in it. Or any kind of pasta without meat, really. Also, making your own spaghetti sauce instead of buying jarred sauce is cheaper. It doesn't save a lot, but it does help with the groceries. And yeah, it gets a little old sometimes...I try to make a go-to list of filling, cheap meals and we usually have those. I only make "special" expensive meals occasionally.
I also coupon, like you mentioned. We've taken a hit with diapers and formula, so I love finding coupons for those. A lot of people buy store-brand, but I've found with coupons name-brands can be just as cheap as, or cheaper than, store brands. With groceries, I try to stock up when things are on sale and/or I have coupons. I try to never pay full price for anything (except essentials like milk, eggs.) Even bread I buy and freeze. And actually you can freeze milk, too! I've been meaning to look into that. I also buy a lot of store-brand groceries, unless name brands are cheaper with coupons.
We make DD's baby food, for the most part. I keep some of the store-bought on hand because they're nice when we're out and about, or to keep in the diaper bag for emergencies, but it's cheaper to make food than to buy it, even if I buy organic produce.
Other than groceries, we called our cell provider last month and downgraded our plan by about $30 a month. Another big thing is sticking to my list when I go shopping, and not buying things I don't need! This is especially true for Target...
I get suckered into all kinds of things.
We make our own birthday/wedding/anniversary/etc. cards, or if I'm sort on time, buy the $0.99 ones. Those babies are expensive!
I buy most of DD's toys/books/clothes/etc at garage sales or secondhand stores. For Christmas and birthday's I keep a list of things that I need, rather than just things I want (i.e., cookware, new jacket, etc.) for when people ask for gift ideas, which cuts down on what we spend.
Also, I know you said you don't use credit cards, but I use my Target card ALL THE TIME. About 75% of the things we purchase come from Target: food, clothes, toiletries, home goods, etc. With the Target card, I save 5% on EVERY purchase. This month alone I saved almost $20 just by using my Target card. I always pay off my balance every month, so it doesn't cost me anything to use it.
I truly believe it's all the little things that add up! Last year I kept track of how much I saved in coupons and with my Target card. It was over $700. Most of my coupons are for $0.50 - $1.00!
We just called our home owners insurance company and came up with a lot of savings. I know you don't have a home yet, but the same applies to renters and car insurance!
Target Card is a good suggestion, you can get the Debit version and it won't count as a credit card and will not give you a bill every month.
Look into Mint.com to keep track of exactly what you're spending an where (Free)
Look very hard at your credit report and see if there is anything you might want to dispute. It takes VERY little work to dispute something and the benefit is great. Google it for more info.
January 1 we went to a strictly cash only budget to see where all our money was going. We put four jars out and labeled them "Household", "groceries", "daycare", and "gas". Bills still get paid online through our checking account but that is the ONLY money that stays in the checking account. We put two weeks of daycare away in the jar, and our whole month of grocery, household, and gas into the jars, and use that. We save receipts in case we have to dip into the reserves so that at the end of each month we can see just how much we spent on each category and adjust necessary.
So far its worked for us and we seem to have about $800 extra each month that is just going to savings.
I know others say get rid of cable, but we opted to keep ours because we don't have an "entertainment" budget and don't really do "dinner/movies" our dates consist of watching a movie at home alone, or going to a bookstore, or mall walking so we kept cable as our "entertainment".
We also dumped our gas guzzling SUV...it was painful letting it go but it was eating tremendously into that $800 monthly savings.
We are frugal in our day to day lives, so I'll point out what we do:
We haven't had cable for years - just bought a nice antenna that picks up quite a few local stations.
We don't eat out hardly ever. I sometimes go get lunch on Fridays just to get out of the house (work from home), but otherwise we reserve eating out for when we travel. Healthier this way too.
The activities we tend to do are free - we go hiking and neighborhood walks.
we have basic cell phone plans, and recently got the over the internet phone so we might cut down and just do pay per use cell phones after our contract expires. Over the internet phone is great - you pay an upfront cost of like $200 for the equipment, and then pay only taxes per month after. I think we pay less than $4/mo.
Some of these steps I started taking as a grad student when we really didn't have money and were anti-debt. Even now that we can afford them we see no reason to change.
These are great ideas! A friend was just telling me about freezing milk, so I went to a microdairy where the milk is only $1.39/half gallon (hormone free milk) and stocked up. I also coupon and have a really old, cheap cell phone and plan. I take public transportation to work instead of driving, switched from my expensive gym that I wasn't going to b/c it took too long to get there to a cheap Retro Fitness that's 2 min from home.
I wish I could get DH into saving money. He hates to talk about it and figures if we don't spend a lot on eating out and stuff like that we're doing fine. I love to see where we could spend less and make changes. He pays no attention to anything finance-related. For 2 months he forgot to pay his Amex bill. He used a big chunk of his bonus to get an iPad, has an expensive cell phone plan. Makes me so, so crazy. It's hard to stay motivated with cutting back myself when he just doesn't care. He doesn't look at bank statements so when I tell him at the end of the month we can't spend anything or the daycare check'll bounce, he's annoyed and surprised. You're lucky your DHs are on board with saving $.
This is an important point. If you want to up your credit score, you should be using a credit card and paying it off in full every month. If you are worried about overspending, maybe pick one set item to use it for -- like route your cell phone auto-payment through the credit card, but still use cash for your discretionary spending.
More importantly, if your credit score has improved, you should call your current card companies and ask them to increase your available balance. This ups the ratio and improves your score quickly.
Congratulations on all of your progress! That's an impressive grocery bill.
What might work with a DH like this - put aside a certain amount of 'fun money' per month per person. DH and I get $x/mo that goes into separate ING accounts. This money can be used however we want. If I wanted an iPad I would need to save up and use the money from this account. All of my clothes comes from this account, and every time I go to lunch without DH it comes from this account. It's great, b/c that means all of our extra personal spending doesn't affect our overall budget and it controls how much we spend on this fun stuff.
This is long, sorry, but we recently (since December) cut out $2000 from our monthly spending (calculated over average 2011 spending from Dec 2010-Nov 2011). I was able to set up a budget based on our actual 2011 spending for 2012. So far, it's worked very well-- just seeing in black and white what we spent not over a week or a month but an entire year has helped us realize ways we can easily cut back without hurting our quality of life.
1. Echoing PP-- We only use our credit card for purchases. We have a rewards card, and are able to accumulate a ton of points, which we then redeem for gift cards we can use to get presents for people (we did this at Christmas) or things we need for the house (literally, we bought a couch for free, and a ton of baby stuff...all with free pottery barn gift cards we got from our CC company).
2. Do you menu plan? We started that in December and it has helped a lot with waste. I used to shop sales and just buy what looked good, or make menus in my head at the store. What I do now is sit down with the sales ad and a list of what's in my freezer (we bought an extra freezer so I can buy meats on sale; we eat a lot of meat and only eat organic and grass-fed, so it would be ridiculously expensive if we didn't have a place to store good sales scores!). I then plan menus for the next 2 weeks. I try really, really hard to not go to the grocery store more than 2X month, though we do sometimes run out of milk or fruit in the week in between and have to make a mini-trip. I make our grocery list based on the menu. That has saved a ton (literally $350/month) on groceries, and we don't throw things away since if we buy it, we're cooking it. I don't do coupons for actual groceries since things I buy (fresh fruit & veg, meats, etc) rarely have coupons, but I do use them for paper products and household products. My grocery store does e-coupons, too, so it's easy.
3. We eat dinner at home every day. We save dining out for vacations. On very rare occasions (2 times in January) we go out to eat or order in. DH takes his lunch to work (I WAH) every day. I also get up when DH needs to be up for work (I technically don't need to be up that early). During that time, I pack his lunch and make him a quick breakfast and coffee to go. Maybe it's babying him a bit much, but since I've started doing that, he's stopped grabbing coffee on the way to work, which adds up quickly. While coffees come out of our individual "fun" money, this little thing has helped us stay more on track.
4. Lastly, for money spent on ourselves-- we agreed we get $100 a month to spend as we please-- that can be for coffees, lunch with friends, manicures and pedicures, drinks with friends, etc. We get cash out for that at the beginning of the month and that's it. We don't hit the ATM again (last year, we added up how much we spent on random stuff we can't account for since it was cash...and we literally took out an AVERAGE of $700 a month in cash and have no clue where that money went).
We seriously haven't noticed a decline in our lifestyle-- we didn't cut things that people generally cut (we still have our same cable service with movie channels, we have our cleaning service, we haven't gotten rid of a car, etc etc) and were able to find money just by tracking it.
I was a bit overwhelmed by the previous posters...so I'll just say what we do:
-we plan meals a week at a time, so we don't do last minute trips to the store. I saved a lot of money just this week on groceries because of the planning I did. Plus I take leftovers for lunch (I NEVER go to lunch).
-I make my own coffee and breakfast. I only go to Starbucks if I have a gift card given to me by a student.
-we DO use our credit cards, but then we pay them off every month. DH & I have excellent credit scores because of such behavior.
-we do not have smartphones or fancy cell phone plans. We have phones that were technically free. I have a teacher discount (15% off my part) and our joint plan costs us less than $70 total/month. We don't text.
-we canceled dish cable, and got a bundle for TV with our telephone and internet. It saved us almost $100/month.
-We stock up on things when they are on sale (food, cleaning products, etc.).
We just did this. We spent $50 on a flat antenna and now get 12 local channel for FREE! We have netflix & a Wii so we spend like $12.00 a month to get 1 movie in the mail and streaming movies & tv shows through the Wii. So far I can say I don't miss it.
Some of the bigger money savings for us was switching car insurance (went down from $1,200 for 6 months to $800 for the same coverage), and buying in bulk. Using a manufacturers coupon on top of a store coupon will also help A LOT. We purchase a lot from BJ's and when meat goes on sale at our local store (like by one get one free) we buy 15-20 pounds of it. We are also a large family and have a deep freezer in our basement (best $400 I spent). Our grocery bill for 8 people is about $600 per month, and we aren't living off bread and mac and cheese.
We have also cut back on eating out (unless we have a coupon, or it's "kids eat free night") and believe it or not unplugging your appliances can save on your electricity, things like your mixer and toaster pull 30% of their power even when they are not in use.
I agree with the poster who uses her Target card. We have a CC that gives us cash back when we buy gas, so we put the months worth of gas on there, get the cash back, and then pay the balance... it's like free money!
I have a friend who pays her daycare bill on her Amex (for cash rewards) and then pays the balance at the end of the month, she racks up a lot of cash back from that.
We also called our CC companies and negotiated a lower APR in exchange for a higher minimum payment, so more of our payment goes to our principal.
wow this is a great post. Lets tell each other all the deals out there so that we all can benefit from it or exchange coupons if one doesn't need them. I totally like your strategy bundymommy. that's awesome. You're doing a grt job! Today i went to babysRus and did a whole lot of shopping and ended up paying just 26.99$ when i purchased 107$ worth of goods. I was so happy of my achievement. I have some coupons which i don't use I can trade them in for others if there are people out there who are interested in this let me know my email is
lucyfrank15@yahoo.com
All the best of luck to everyone.
We also got rid of cable TV, but kept cable Internet. With Netflix and Hulu, I don't really miss cable. That saved us $100 a month from what we had pre-baby. We have pretty basic cell phone plans. We do text, but don't have smartphones.
We also shop at garage sales and secondhand stores for the vast majority of DS' clothes and toys. That way, we can afford a nice outfit or toy when we really want to. We also shop at clearance sales for the following season/year. I also have found basic black work pants for me for $4 or less at secondhand stores. I rarely go to the mall or other tempting places to spend money.
We take lunch to work every day and drive the fuel-efficient car instead of the SUV whenever possible (but we can't get rid of it entirely because we need 4-wheel drive in the winters here).
Next, we're going to look into lowering our car insurance rates. And I need to start planning meals and buying more food in bulk. Just haven't gotten my act together enough on that front yet.
Everyone's suggestions are awesome! One idea about cable - we are trying to cut back but could not cancel it. We have a basement apartment in our house and the cable is included in the tenant's rent and on the same bill as the rest of the house. We did call a competitor to our cable company and we're switching next month. It will save us almost $40 per month on the bill (phone, internet and cable) and they have a $300 Visa gift card reward right now for signing a two year contract. That will help a lot!
I'm plannning to shop around our home and car insurance too. My dad is eligible for USAA and if he opens a checking account then I can get insurance through them. My neighbors swear it's way cheaper than other companies.
like you, i have resolved to be more budget-conscious this year. Although i have always been conscious about spending, i adapted more budget saving practices to help us grow our savings, and these include:
a. Meal planning and weekly inventory of food and pantry items -- so that we dont buy more than what we need, and items do not expire on us.
b. bulk shopping of dry goods at the commissary (items are tax-free)
c. endeavor to stick to the grocery list each time.
d. avoid eating out, if ever, just once a month, on redeeming GCs
e. Take advantage of points from Credit Cards, and pay off all outstanding balances each month.
f. DH and I bring lunch to work. We also have coffee sachets handy so that we do not succumb to getting starbucks everytime we need a caffeine fix. We bring our own water bottle to save on money and help the environment as well.
g. We track our spending monthly by allocating funds for every purpose. Yes quite tedious, but very helpful.
HTH
When we went to the bank to see where we were with starting the process of getting a house, the consultant told us it's best to keep our credit card balances at half the credit limit or less. For example, if it's a $1000 credit limit, not to have a balance more than $500. That's where I am aiming with not using the credit card. Once I get my balances back down, I will use them again.