I believe that in being the keeper of our homes, saving money is one way we can bless our husbands. And with my hubbalicious’s job coming to an impending end I thought I’d review some of the ways I like to save a little moolah.
It’s easy to forget these things when all is well and you are living in the land of plenty but when times get a little tougher they’re what keeps us afloat. (That and trusting in the Lord of course.)
Here they are in no particular order.
- I line dry our clothes. (Weather permitting) I’ve said it quite a few times how much money this has saved us.
- Planning and making meals at home. Eating out with the whole family is expensive so we usually save it for special occasions.
- Working out at home. Gyms can be expensive in membership, time and gas.
- I use Vitacost to buy most of my dry goods, shampoos, soaps etc. I save tons of money. I explain it more in this post.
- When we have to run the air I keep it turned up to between 80-81. Any lower and it will run forever to try to keep up with this Florida heat.
- We grow a lot of our own veggies. Even if you don’t have a big yard, you can do a small plot and plant a few of your favorites or you can put them in pots. Tomatoes do great in pots as do peppers.
- Staying home. I’m a homebody and actually enjoy being home all day. Yup, even with the kids. If I’m not in the stores I can’t spend money or waste gas.
- Make a list. If you do need to go to the store of some necessity, make and take a list and stick to it.
- Budget. We have used the Envelope Method since the beginning of our marriage and it helped get us through a job loss 6 years ago. I HIGHLY recommend system.
- And last but not least, buy second hand if you can. That goes for clothes, furniture, books etc. Some of my favorite places are Craigslist, Amazon (free kindle books) thrift stores etc.
What do you do to save money?
Feel free to
.
OXOX,
Those are all great tips!
ReplyDeleteWe clip coupons and our meals are prepared based on what is on sale, in season, and on hand in the pantry and freezer.
We rotate our pantry goods on a regular basis and make sure that we eat things before they expire. Same thing goes for the refrigerator.
We cut up meat at home and use a vacuum sealer for freezing portions needed for recipes.
We ask for senior discounts everywhere we go, LOL! And you can get cash discounts at a lot of places just by merely asking for it.
We're notorious savers and don't buys anything unless we have the money saved first. Budgeted savings come out of our retirement checks first.
One of my all time favorite tips is to use good, old-fashioned bartering.
We're like you when it comes to shopping and eating out. Restaurant food rarely tastes as good as what we can eat at home! And now that we're not working, we can get by with very few clothes. (And nothing goes to the dry cleaners, LOL.)
I could go on and on!
These are great! Thanks for the tips! I try so hard to do the envelope system, but random debits always sneak in and sabotage me each week. :P
ReplyDeleteI do most of these things, too. Well, except the whole "keeping the A/C to 80-81" thing! We, of course, can have ours set to 60 and it still never needs to run full-time for more than a few days in a row! We do, however, generally turn the A/C off for night and have a fan sucking cooler night air through select windows. The A/C generally doesn't come on till about noon.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a clothes line either, which I would really love, but in our case, it would mean putting a pole somewhere in the yard and there just isn't a good place for one anywhere. The best place would end up being directly across the driveway from the house, which, of course, isn't the best for DRIVING. :P
We don't have anything like VitaCost up here in Canada either, that I know of. Boy, that would be sweet. Less time in the grocery store AND saving money??! BONUS.
Oh, AND along the same line as the A/C thing, we heat our house with a little woodstove in the basement during our insanely long, cold Canadian Prairie winters. That has saved us THOUSANDS of dollars over the years!!! (especially since our old house is quite drafty and we just can't afford to replace our windows and doors)
ReplyDeleteHi Kim! Stopping by from the UBP13. I'm super excited to follow more of your blog {I just hopped over to your FB page so I can stay connected}.
ReplyDeleteI'm a crazy couponer and have seen how much it cuts our grocery bill. So I suggest using coupons if you aren't and playing the drug store game for personal and cleaning items. Also, you don't usually think of this, but Staples always has great deals on TP.