As gas prices go up and electricity gets more expensive, I am wondering…how do all of you keep your budget within your means?? As I prepare to become a stay at home mom/part-time professional, what are some things that I could do to save money. Right now we have a budget, I cook as much as possible, and we’ve trimmed some money off our grocery bill. Any other suggestions?
Ideas for Saving Money and Staying within our Budget
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We called it “tightening the belt”. It was a complete lifestyle switch for us. Things we did and still do (we have three kids 8,3 and 4 mos)…
1. No vehicle with a payment over $200/month.
2. We kept the cable/satellite but NO movie channels.
3. Bought a deep freezer and buy everything in bulk.
4. Dinner out…we purchased an entertainment book and it really helped.
5. My wife started mystery shopping, which allowed us to go out to eat at a discounted rate and sometimes even got paid.
6. Coupons and rebates!
We are living more comfortably now, but we really haven’t changed our lifestyle back to the way it was before. We have managed to pre-pay for two years of college for all three kids and pack some money away too.
We will have one car payment left ($336)/month, will probably get rid of cable TV (I can see most of it on the internet anyway), we have a deep freeze, and I have just started doing coupons. What mystery shopping company did she get in with? Does she like it? I had not thought about doing it just for the eating out. Tell me more about it.
I’ll check it out for you. My job to to write down names and times while pretending to use my backberry (company phone). Actually I am just emailing the info to her at home so she she can enter it on-line when we get back.
jenn, you tell us your secrets…well i will be buggin you about this more later, so you don’t have to do it now! ha! i am terrible. i have nothing for you. my downfall is food. eating out AND grocery shopping. i just pretty much suck. for now it doesn’t matter but it will ….soon! so i am trying to get things down now in anticipation.
Morethananelectrician: Thanks! I will look for that info. I noticed from your wallet entry that you must have a Kroger grocery store nearby? (Kroger Plus Card in wallet). Anyway, I wish we had something like that. We used to have Albertsons, but they left town. Now we have Walmart or United or Lowes. I may start shopping for some of my pantry items at Lowes if I can get better prices than Walmart. No places that accept double coupons or anything like that. CVS has become my best friend lately. Do you pay mortgage? Ours is kind of high, so we have to put that into our budget as well–but then, no matter where we lived (as long as it was a nice neighborhood) we would probably spend just as much. We don’t have Movie channels on our cable. We do have a credit card, my student loan, all our insurance and such. It is interesting how it is all budgeted. I go to Sam’s for bulk things, but that is our only option. No costco or anything. If you think of anything else, let me know!
Kristy-I don’t mind showing you my budget anytime. The grocery shopping and eating out are our downfalls too. Question: I am noticing a theme–you are trying to “get things down in anticipation” and one of your favorite websites to go on your blog is about menstual cycles. Are you and Bri thinking about procreating again?
We have a mortgage of average size…we bought the house before we had kids. We moved out of the previous house, but didn’t sell it. We have rented it out for the last 10 years, we make a a few hundred a month profit. That was the best decision we made…ever!
Kroger is expensive. Wal-Mart has the best prices, but milk is almost $2 cheaper at the bulk stores. We really don’t use Kroger so much, they changed the coupon policy and don’t double over 50 cents anymore…I think!
Thanks. Love the picture of your son washing dishes on your blog! Your children are beautiful! Thanks for stopping by my blog. I dont really have any tips for you…Im just starting to try and live frugally. We have a big mortgage payment. a large car payment plus a motorcycle payment every month. So things around here need to becaome tighter…Thanks for the tips
Thanks for the complement on the kids. They are quite wonderful, although I am sure they will challenge me more eventually. Keep your eyes out for any big frugal tips and pass them along. I am definitely interested.
morethananelectrician: hi! i was curious about your home rental. do you have a company that manages the rental for y’all? i am wondering b/c we will be preparing to sell our home this year and in the event that we can’t sell, we may have to fall back on renting. but we will be moving to another area, so we would have to have someone else manage the property.
jo-ha! you are quite the detective aren’t you? no, not anytime soon. probably once we get settled for residency (similar to y’alls timetable).