We live amazingly well on a tight budget. Years of poverty early in our marriage coupled with our hatred of waste has made us self-proclaimed experts on cheap living. It is our fiscal ability which has made supporting our large family possible. I'm often asked how we do it. I'm not sure it's all that unusual, but here's how we do it:
1. I budget monthly down to the penny. I know where the Computer Guy's paycheck is going before it even hits the bank.
2. We operate on the envelope system. Everything which is not paid electronically through our checking account is paid in cash. I sort the cash into appropriately labeled envelopes every payday. (Examples of envelopes: eating out, children's activities, allowances, grocery store splurges, etc.) When the envelope for a particular category is empty, we have no more money for that item. Then we have to either borrow from another envelope (after much debate) or do without.
3. Pay cash for everything. Our motto is "If you can't pay cash, you can't afford it." Credit cards? What's that? Check cards can get you into big trouble if you aren't scrupulous about writing everything down. Use cash. It feels more like spending real money.
4. Allow yourself one splurge in your budget. We budget for the splurges. If you don't give yourself that one thing you won't stick to the plan.
5. Know the butcher in your grocery store. Be on a first name basis with him. Shop at the same time on the same day of the week. If he knows you're coming and what you like he'll hold it back for you. I never pay full price for meat because of this. The stuff that usually gets ground into hamburger gets set aside every other Friday morning until I can pick and choose at 9AM. Meat is the biggest chunk of our food budget. Never pay full price.
6. Diapers go on sale all the time. (It's every 3rd week at CVS.) Learn the schedules. Clip coupons or print them off and wait. CVS and Walgreens will let you stack coupons on top of each other. (I just bought packages of Huggies for $2.50 each.) Never pay full price.
7. School books for homeschooling. half.com or Amazon or one of the other used book sites. ( My daughter's Spanish book for this year is listed at $111.53 new. I paid $.50) Never pay full price until you have researched it. College books can be rented now. Save the money for cute shoes!
8. No cable for us! We turned off the cable which was running us $60 a month and turned on NetFlix for $8.99. We stream everything to our TV through the Wii. We don't miss the cable. We saved $51 a month.
9. I signed us up with a minute monitor on our cell phones. When we've used 75% of the minutes it texts us a warning. We get another if we hit 100% I signed my phone and #1's up for 250 text messages each per month. We get warnings about that too. We cut back on our minutes and never go over. It cut our bill in half. The monitor is free from our provider. Why wouldn't you use it?
10. Everything but meat and toiletries comes from Aldi. 2 weeks worth of food for the 8 of us averages $180. We were spending $300 at the regular grocery store for the same stuff.
11. There are lots of fun activities that the kids could do. They get one at a time. This saves my schedule and my bottom line.
12. Coupons, coupons, coupons! Sign up for free sites on line and for Frugal Girls on Facebook. Match the coupons to the ads. You have to be organized and it takes some time to get used to buying things in ridiculous quantities, but the first time you get $200 in groceries for less than $20 it will all be worth it. Treat this like a part time job. Never pay full price for anything! (Are you noticing a theme here?)
13. Hang your clothes to dry. Our rule is "If the Air Conditioner is running, the dryer isn't" It's 105* today. The clothes dried in 10 minutes. I throw them in the dryer on Air Fluff to break up the stiffness. It takes 5 minutes. Our electric bill went down $100 last month.
14. Set the thermostats on 80* in this heat. We have acclimated and are fine. A/C is expensive. Use it as little as possible.
15. Wash out the inside of your A/C units at the end of the sping. Ours get full of cottonwood fluff. It makes them infinitely more efficient.
16. Shower timers.
17. No gym except in the winter. The weather is gorgeous outside, so why would you go workout inside? The outdoors is free. Use it.
18. Dollar movies. Once a month we load up the kids and go to the movies. Tuesdays at our local dollar movie theater are $.50 admission days.
19. Make a list of all the free admission days at local museums and attractions. For example, the natural history museum in OKC is free on the 1st Monday of every month. Every other day it is $6 a person. There are 8 of us. Free is better.
20. I buy the boys' jeans at Goodwill. They are hard on jeans. Goodwill puts denim on sale on Sundays. When the jeans cost $1 a pair, I don't care if they get ripped.
That's what I've got for now. If I think of more, I'll do another post. So what do you do to save money?
12 comments:
Liked this post! Great ideas. Here are a couple other things we do:
Cloth diapers. We use disposables at night, and try to use cloth the rest of the time. It's REALLY not as bad as people think, and it saves tons of money! We are just starting our family, so we hopefully have lots of diaper changes ahead of us. The cloth diapers we have now we got for free, but when we need new ones, I'm certain it will be a good investment.
Also, coupon blogs are SO helpful! We live in the South and shop at Kroger and Meijer often - couponkatarina.com is good for those stores. (Since I started using coupons, I find I can get most groceries cheaper at these places than even Aldi. I still go to Aldi, but only about every other month now. Coupons!) For CVS/Walgreens/Rite Aid, I got to Hip2Save.com. She lays out all the deals for you and makes it SO easy! Also, I buy two papers a week because having that many coupons is worth it. Some people buy as many as six or even ten!
We have no cable or Netflix, but have found SO many good movies for free at the library. You might be surprised - check it out! I'm sure it depends on how good/big one's local library is.
I am in awe and in need of an overhaul. I would never have thought CVS for diapes. I buy Sam's club for all toiletries, and occaisionally at Target. Target for most groceries and occaisionally Hyvee. Aldi is close. It sounds like I should check it out. Among so many other things...who knew? Thanks for the tips, mom!
Thank you for this! Please post more! I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm a recovering spender and need help. I am wondering about how to get rid of the "deprivation attitude." Do you thrill from the bargain? Do you offer up your sacrifice? I love a bargain as much as the next gal, and my husband hugged me when he saw how well I am doing...but...sometimes I feel like I'm on a diet and can't eat/spend anything and it bums me out. I think if I could get my attitude straightened out (no entitlements) I could do even better.
We only use the cold on the washing machine.
We keep the windows covered in plastic in the winter.
We go to Aldi and look at the savings at Bi-Lo. We can get the meal deal and end up saving more than we spend there.
Thrift stores for all clothes. We found one near us that has clothes for 50 cents or a dollar. Much cheaper than Goodwill. Ours doesn't have a good selection of the kids sizes now that they are bigger.
I need to check and see if we have an Aldi's around us. This is a great list!
P.S. Can you share how much cash you put in each category? I really want to implemet this, but would like a general idea of what to spend per month...
We noticed our car insurance provider charges $15 in fees if you pay quarterly, so we decided we'd pay the lump sum annually. We set the money aside a bit each month in our savings (and earn interest on it). The first time we did this, we were pleasantly surprised when our insurance company sent us a refund check for around $50, just for paying all at once! So we actually save around $65 a year doing this (plus the interest we earn by saving the money in our own account). It might be worth checking with your insurance provider.
Also, anytime I buy online, I search for coupon codes (retailmenot.com and similar sites) to save a little extra. Even the most obscure sites often have one somewhere.
We use Pay as you go Cell phones, text more than talk and when texting try to fill up the text field with as much information as possible. for us this is about 1/2 the cost of a monthly plan. we also have a landline with just local service (it saved not having a long-distance plan, caller ID etc) and use a calling card for long distance. another one for us is to pay for internet a year in advance, this saved 2 months cost as a special the provider had.
This is a fantastic post! Thank you for sharing your techniques! I need to implement some of these in our home for sure. I'm especially awed by the grocery bill-what sorts of meals do you plan?
Thank you!!!
Aldi isn't everywhere. Actually most people do not have access to one. You are lucky R as the first one in TX just opened in Dallas. HEB is having fits.
Just rented Katie's chem text for $85. Much better than buying it for $192. It is a brand new text there are no used copies out there yet.
Freecycle.org and craigslist. There is nothing wrong with reusing something that still has tons of life in it and on CL you'll pick it up for pennies on the dollar if you know what you're looking for Freecycle is 100% free all the time. I love it and it's a fabulous way to clean out the garage too. The 5 month old has nothing (other than a very few gifts given to him) that didn't belong to someone else first. He's a baby and doesn't care.
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