My husband & I are pretty frugal people. We have some nice things we splurge on, but in general we are cheap....especially Philip. I have to convince him to buy new clothes most of the time. He would probably spend $10 on wedding gifts if I let him. Being on Young Life staff we don't exactly have a lot of disposable income.
Now that Baby Jude is in the picture, we are trying to cut as many corners as possible so that I can maximize my time at home and minimize how much I have to work outside of the house.
Here are my top ten money saving tips so far...
{1} Use coupons...I'll give you more details on how this is going so far, but prior to this year I probably used coupons about never. Now that I have started to pay attention to coupons I realize how many things you can get coupons for & the savings add up!
{2} Share a meal if you eat out...I feel like the waiter is silently judging us whenever we do this, but really most entrees are enough for two people. Maybe we'll get an extra side salad or an appetizer. One time we ate at PF Changs for $20 for the two of us. It makes so we can eat out more frequently (which I love) and at yummier places.
{3} Cut the Iphone...tear. This was not a hard decision at the time, but now after a year of a Blackberry I really miss the iphone. It was fun. Now everyone takes all these cool pictures..blah blah blah. But here's the thing...I didn't want to be a person that was in love with my phone anyway & we save I think $30 a month by not doing the iphone.
{4} Lower your cable service. Philip dropped down our cable bill about $10 a month last summer by dropping our service to a lower programming. And we don't do netflix or DVR. I sometimes wish we had DVR, but I just discovered the ondemand channel last spring and most shows I want to see are on there anyway.
{5} Buy frozen veggies. Really there is not a difference I know about between frozen and fresh vegetables besides the price. They do not add anything to the frozen vegetables normally and that way they do not go bad.
{6} Cloth diapers. I cannot give you numbers of savings, but I cannot imagine how this will not be a huge money saver for us! Diapers are so expensive and we go through so many a day. We did Fuzzibunz, but I'll give more details on it soon.
{7} Energy efficient appliances & low flow toilets. We have gradually switched our appliances and toilets to be more energy efficient. This also goes hand-in-hand with the diaper savings because we have to use the toilet and washing machine a lot more now with the cloth diapers.
....I'll stop there. There are probably more. What money saving things do you do?
I love this post! We pinch pennies to pay the bills so that I can stay home. It's sooo worth it! We do many of the same things (coupons, cloth diapers, no fancy phones, no cable) and i love it. You realize just how much extra "stuff" you don't need. I think being a member of a wholesale club really helps too. In addition, making a monthly budget helps purpose your money so there's no worry about "too much month at the end of the money."
ReplyDeleteMy husband is ultra cheap. We need to meet. :)
Hey Katie,
ReplyDeleteFellow staff here - my parents you may know Pat and Peggy West. I read your blog while not keeping up with mine hah. Anyways - speaking of saving $$ on TV service. (Not sure which company you have)but recently called in to cut cost and was honest about not being able to afford TV right now - and they gave us a $5 credit for 6 months. We have DISH Network and they wanted to keep us enough to give us that. Doesn't hurt to try. Pretty sweet!
Just thought I'd share..Enjoy your cute boy :o)
Brooks Davidson