Saving money, how?

cardiganmom

I don't mean putting money away in the bank, more like saving money or cutting back on things. DH and I are dealing with some money issues due to him getting his hours cut. He's looking for a new job or at least a 2nd job but in the mean time, we need to pay our bills and find ways to save money. How does your family save money?

daronsmommy

We don't have cable, have the slowest and cheapest Internet, downgraded from smartphones to regular phones and canceled data plans. I make our laundry detergent. We don't eat out and if we do we have coupons and order water to drink. Also, we got money for Christmas and are going to go to a meat locker and get meat. Much cheaper to do it that way.

bellre

Ditto to meganole. Very strict budget. We don't go out for coffee, we bring our lunches to work, wait for movies to come out on DVD or go to RedBox instead of going to see movies, etc etc

nycgirl88

We don't eat out anymore and notice a huge difference.

This isn't really saving money but I have been making extra cash by selling things around our house (books, wedding decorations I still had and clothes.) It is nice to clear out some things too since baby stuff is taking over our house!!  

CLLDLL

We pack leftovers in our lunch boxes instead of eating out.

I go through the weekly grocery ads and then do price matches at my local store for all the products I plan on buying anyway.  We also have a pretty strict grocery budget and plan my meals based on what's on sale.

We try to plan our shopping/errand trips to certain parts of the city all on one day so we save gas money. Instead of making multiple trips.

I breastfeed instead of using formula.

We cloth diaper.

I watch sales & buy grocery items that can be frozen, like meat, in bulk when they are on sale.

We only eat out once a week, and usually that's some place we have a coupon or gift card for.

 

 

fatpenguin4304

I coupon and plan out our grocery trip. We try to stick to a budget and cut down on eating out. Also if you do have a smartphone there are lots of apps you can use to make money for for free... I just got a smartphone ( the plan was actually cheaper than my other phone, go figure) and in a week I made $80 and a target gc and it took about an hour total. I use Ibotta, Easy shift, shopkick and gigwalk - all these are free to download and use. (and you legitimately get paid, you just need a paypal account which is free.) 

kplaxco85

Fatpenguin! I love these apps! Thank you!

PixelPosy

Groceries are our down fall. If we were better at meal planning and price shopping, we'd save a bundle. 

fatpenguin4304

kplaxco85:

Fatpenguin! I love these apps! Thank you!

You are SO welcome! I was like how did I not know this before?! And being a SAHM a lot of these are super easy to do while grocery shopping or w/e  

IAM3Bs

fatpenguin4304:

I coupon and plan out our grocery trip. We try to stick to a budget and cut down on eating out. Also if you do have a smartphone there are lots of apps you can use to make money for for free... I just got a smartphone the plan was actually cheaper than my other phone, go figure and in a week I made 80 and a target gc and it took about an hour total. I use Ibotta, Easy shift, shopkick and gigwalk all these are free to download and use. and you legitimately get paid, you just need a paypal account which is free.nbsp;

What are these apps?

fatpenguin4304

shopkick- earn points by walking into the store and you can get gcs with your point. You don't have to buy anything but you can earn more points by scanning items or buying them. 

Ibotta- has a list of grocery store items and when you buy them you get anywhere from .50 to 1.75 for that item you scan the item and your receipt. Items are useful things though like right now mine shows huggies diapers and wipes, toothpaste, cheezeits, shampoo, water, coke products, ect. they are name brand products so I usually have a coupon for that item too. and I dont buy items I dont need or use.

Easyshift and Gigwalk - basically like mystery shopping but WAY easier. last week on easyshift i went into the grocery store found the oral care section took a few pictures and answered some questions about the display took about 2 minutes and they paid $7 per survey like this. I've seen some that pay up to $10 on easy shift. Gigwalk right now is filled with stuff for the search engine Bing and they pay you to take photos of reasturants, bus stops, gas stations, stores, ect I've seen some that pay up to $75  

MississippiCatfish

I agree with many of the PPs ideas. We also make our own laundry detergent. Tried cloth diapering, but it didn't work on LOs sensitive skin. Our biggest money saver is shopping at ALDI. The prices are often lower than coupons at other stores. Today, I got avocados for .39 and my husbands favorite salad dressing for 1.39! I bought ten of each. I also follow pocketyourdollars.com, which is a blog local to my town that gives great heads up on deals. Also, Rainbow grocery stores will double manufacturer coupons on Wednesdays if you have one nearby.

ETA: I spend less than 200 per month on groceries for my husband and I, and we're big eaters with my pregnant or breastfeeding lately and he's a distance runner!

Mrs_Lady

it sounds lik you have already reduced down/scaled back- can you get a better rate on your car insurance?

At this point perhaps you can sell stuff you have, make crafts (assuming you are crafty) until you are back where you like financially. GL

LBoogeyBride

For us, the savings comes from our biggest expenses:

• We rent, which gives us the flexibility to move should our rent go up or our finances change.  We live in a 900 sq. foot townhome.  As a rule of thumb, we try to make sure that anywhere we live that our rent is less than 25-30% of our take home pay.
• We only drive one car and purposely live within a mile of DH's work so that he can walk.
• We write down everything that we buy in an Excel spreadsheet.  When you see where your money goes, you stop spending on needless things.
• We cloth diaper, breastfeed, and receive hand me downs for our LO.  I haven't bought my kid a single piece of clothing and don't plan to as long as his cousins are outgrowing their clothing. 
• We don't have cable.  We stream all of our shows through the internet.  We get all of our movies from the library.
• We share our smartphone plan with my parents.  4 of us having a plan together is cheaper than two families having separate plans.

Look at what your biggest expenses are costing you and try to lower those first.  Good luck!

ellcore

I'm el cheapo so when we bought our house I created a spreadsheet with the amount of money going out each paycheck and then sat down with all the financials and figured out if things could be moved around. Dh gets paid 1st and 15th od every month. For example, my student loan isn't due until the 15th but we were paying it on the 1st paycheck. Moving the smallest things around as it fits was my biggest help. Next was shopping locally. Their prices were much lower in our area. Could be something you could look into. The final thing I did was create a budget. However much was left after the paycheck and bills taken out was what we had for the first year. So that went towards necessary things such as gas and groceries.

Good luck!

rakle99

I shop at farmers markets and use coupons at the grocery store. I only buy what's on sale. We changed our cell phone plan and we are about to cut our landline and cable, and get amazon prime instead. I shop for clothes at goodwill. We have a credit card where we get money back. We pay the card off every month so we don't accrue interest. DH takes our car to the Costco by his work when our cars need gas (you don't need a membership to get gas here, and it's about 10 cents cheaper). When there's a good sale and we have the room, I buy in bulk. 

cardiganmom

Wow thank you everyone so much! We already do some of the things mentioned, pack lunch, no eating out, buy bulk, etc. but I will definitely be trying your other suggestions, especially yours fatpenguin, I already downloaded the apps!

Ziegeficker

We have a lot of little things we could eliminate from our budget if need be -- Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, cable television, wine club membership, etc.  These would be the first to go in a financial crunch. 

I found that meal-planning really helps with keeping your grocery list in line.  Without it, I tend to putz around the aisles and pick up stuff that looks good, and then I still have to go back later to get odds and ends for meals.  I'm not great with coupons, but I try to shop sales and add coupons to my Safeway card.  When something is on a great sale, I buy a bunch and then freeze what I won't use right away -- our deep-freeze was one of the best purchases we ever made.

Having a baby, honestly, has been the biggest (temporary) money-saver so far, which is hilarious to me.  Despite the added expense on diapers (and I use Amazon Mom, so I'm even saving there), being home on maternity leave meant that I never used my car (only filled up my tank twice in eleven weeks), never went out to eat, and didn't spend any money on alcohol or going out to bars.  It also helped that friends brought us meals for weeks (so I saved on groceries) and that I had accumulated enough baby wipes, toys, clothes from my baby shower to survive an apocalypse.