Not Just a Mom: Our Best Money Saving Tips

This month our Not Just a Mom group is looking at some money saving tips. I'll be the first one to admit I might not be the person to ask!  I used to be really, really good at saving money and scouting out deals because I had to. We've always managed to make living on one income work but there were years when I had to really stretch our budge to make it work.  

Thankfully we are now much more financial stable... but that has led to definite overspending now.

However, here are some things I definitely remember doing when we were pinching pennies-- honestly they all pretty much boil to down 2 things: know the difference between want and need, and always pay cash.  

I was ruthless about our budget when things were tight and we would never or hardly ever eat out, get take out on a whim (often eating pasta and sauce as a last minute quick meal), of do much of anything that required money without asking how we were going to pay for it. If we didn't have an answer I didn't let us do it.  I'm not going to lie; it wasn't easy, it wasn't always fun, it definitely caused an argument or two along the way, but in the end it was totally worth it. 

Other than our mortgage we never "just made the payments" ; often deciding to go without until we could afford that new appliance or that "new to us" car, etc. (But planning enough in advance that we were rarely left in the lurch). 

1.Since groceries have always been one of our largest bills I'll start there.

• Plan a menu around sale items
• Stretch the meat portion of a meal into 2 whenever possible.  If I was serving a roasted chicken you can bet chicken soup was also on the menu. 
• Learn when foods go on (major) sale and stock up.  When whole turkeys were only 59 cents a pound at Thanksgiving I often bought 2-- one for Thanksgiving and one for another meal (which really a whole turkey for us could easily stretch to 3 meals with leftovers!).
• Soups, stews, and casseroles are very budget friendly.
• Since meat was always the most expensive part of our bill I would plan a meatless meal once a week. A healthy choice for our bodies and our wallet!
• Don't shop for convenience-- prepackaged foods cost more money and are often easy enough to prepare yourself if you set aside a day (once or twice a month) for prep work.
• I used to really limit or not even buy snacks.  You'd be surprised how many times my boys wanted a snack because they were "starving" but if I offered something healthy like an apple suddenly they weren't hungry anymore.  This is that mindless snacking we all could learn to do without.
• I used to make a list and ONLY bring cash-- that way I could not add those eye catching extras we didn't really need.

One of the boys' favorite meatless meals

2. After food I often prioritized vacations since I love to travel:

• Travel in the off season
• Look for rentals that have kitchens so you don't need to eat out
• Look for coupons and freebie deals for family fun (often local libraries have wonderful and free programs)
• Be as flexible as you can. We once got 1/2 priced flights by flying a week earlier! 
• We would save up money all year long for our vacation and I was ruthless about sticking to our budget; even going to far as to deliver a stack of cash to our travel agent one year for a big Disney vacation we'd been squirreling money away for for years. 
• Some years we just didn't take a vacation at all. 

3. Household/ leisure activities with the kids:

• We would buy memberships once a year to a zoo or museum-- most of them had reciprocal memberships to others in the area and we made sure to visit often and visit anything else that we could while it was free. 
• We asked for experience/ membership/ gift certificates from family members at holiday or birthday times. 
• While we have and use credit cards I always treated them like debit cards and paid them off each month; sometimes calling to check weekly to make sure the balances weren't getting too high (and if they did I locked them up in our safe so we wouldn't use them again until the bill was paid). 
• We never paid "extra" fees-- not on our credit cards, not on our insurance, etc.; even if it meant paying in full in one chunk in the long run if it saved us money we always tried to find a way to make it work.   
• We used coupons for everything we could find and learned how to do a lot of things ourselves; sweat equity often takes longer but is much cheaper. 
• As soon as we built our house and had a mortgage to pay I always tried to pay an extra 10% each month on the principle to pay it down as soon as possible; knowing that the extra penny pitching in the early years would lead us to pay off that mortgage sooner and have more money in hand at the end. 

We visited so many local museums and zoos so often we knew employees by name and anticipated changing exhibits with much enthusiasm! 

Our aquarium membership had a deal with the local science museum

We made sure to visit the science museum whenever an "aquarium members visit free day" popped up!

exploring nature is always free (or just requires a small parking fee) so we did A LOT of that

Homeschool days or group events often offer real cheap admission to places we might never have gone otherwise. 

I hope you'll join us next month when we look at our favorite comfort foods. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Linking up with: Fine/Whatever,