Budget Tips

Here’s a fantastic article on budget tips across the board: food, utilities, insurance, clothes, services, cleaning supplies, gas, subscriptions, medicine, and toys. So many ways to save you money on every day expenses!

Food:

1. Stop wasting food. Don’t forget your food on the stove and burn it. Don’t forget your food in the fridge and let it grow mold. Make what is needed for your family and be willing to eat the leftovers. American’s waste 40-50% of their food, so the top tip for saving money on food is to waste less!
2. Buy ingredients, not finished product. So buy oats instead of granola, flour instead of bread, cornmeal instead of tortillas. At least move up the ladder closer to getting ingredients. For example, buy plain yogurt instead of flavored yogurt. Then buy milk instead of plain yogurt.
3. Don’t buy fresh herbs in packaging. Buy a whole herb plant and grow it in your kitchen window. Or buy dried herbs.
4. Follow Amy Cross for how to store produce to last for weeks! This will help you follow tip #1. She has an awesome blog, YT channel, and book!
5. Before running to the store, go another day or two or three. Use up something you have that needs to be eaten. If you have apples looking mushy, make apple pancakes. Few corn tortillas and a few stale tortilla chips? Make it into a Mexican casserole. Mix meats and beans together and make it into a meatloaf, sloppy joe, soup, pasta, or Mexican dish. So many possibilities for odds and ends!
6. Implement reverse meal planning. Instead of looking in a cook book or on Pinterest for something tasty then going to the store for all the ingredients, look in your pantry and fridge for ingredients then come up with a recipe you can make with them.
7. Shop grocery ads. Take 5 minutes a week to check online ads, add coupons to your digital store card/app, and plan to stock up on those sale items. You don’t have to cook with them this week, just stock up. Know the sales. Summer is great for meats, fall is often caselot sales (cases of canned fruits and veggies), etc.
8. Allow yourself to buy fun items only when they are 50% off. Things like ice cream or Oreos. Buy them when they are BOGO free or half price.
9. Stop buying non-nutritious food: soda, coffee, chips, baked goods, sweet cereals, etc. Again, go back to #2 and buy ingredients instead of packaged finished products.
10. Eat out only on special occasions. The average American eats out five times a week. If that’s you, think of all the money you could save by cutting it back to once a week and then cutting it back to just a few special occasions a year. It will not only save you money, but it will also be healthier to eat at home. And it makes the outing memorable. My children have only eaten out a few time their whole lives and they remember each one of those times.

Utilities:

1. Set the heater at 60-62 at night and as low as you can during the day, like 65-67. Turn the heat on only if you’re already wearing socks/slippers and a sweater and still cold.
2. Keep the water heater on 110.
3. Use cold water to wash clothes.
4. Take short showers.
5. Take cold showers in the summer. At least turn it to cold as soon as you get out so that you stay cold for awhile and don’t need to turn the a/c on.
6. In the winter, exercise before showering so that you don’t take as long of hot showers.
7. Turn off the heat and a/c when you’re gone (or set at like 50 in the winter and 85 in the summer.)
8. Find at least 4 months of the year you don’t use the heat or the a/c. For most places this could be 2 months in the spring and 2 months in the fall.
9. Make a goal to not turn the heat on until November 1 or a date that is good for your region. Same with a/c. Don’t turn it on until June 1 or a date good for your area. For me it’s November 1 (or later) for the heat and July 1 for us to put our window unit it. I take it out August 15 so we’re only using it for the 6 hottest weeks of the summer.
10. Fill your propane tank at the cheapest part of the year. Sometimes it’s winter when gas is cheap, but often it is summer when nobody else is filling theirs. Call your company and ask!

Insurance:

1. Drive safe! Not causing any accidents definitely saves you money.
2. If you do get in an accident, don’t file a claim unless you have to. Otherwise your insurance will increase. If you hit someone offer to pay for the damages with cash.
3. Only get basic coverage if you get in an accident every 10 years or less. That’s the time frame that you’ll break even. For example, if you pay $700 a year for basic but $2100 a year for comprehensive, you are spending an extra $1400 a year. If you put that money in savings instead then after 10 years you’ll have $14,000. That’s enough to cover the cost of your vehicle. Should you get in an accident only every 20 years then you’ll have saved $28,000 (or spent it on comprehensive and didn’t need it.) Most people trade in their vehicle before totaling it. Meaning, they are more likely to sell or get rid of their vehicle than to crash it and need the insurance on it. If you have a fancy car or get in a lot of wrecks, then comprehensive is a wise choice for you.
4. For house insurance, also don’t file a claim unless it’s major damage from a natural disaster or similar.

Clothes:

1. Shop yard sales and conisgnment sales, especially for kid clothes.
2. Swap clothes with a friend. Once my friend and I had babies at the same time. She lent me her girl clothes and I lent her my boy clothes since we both already had those but needed the opposite gender.
3. Put feelers out for hand-me-downs. Let people know you’d love hand me downs and you’ll soon have a closet full! People love to get rid of their clothes to a sweet family who appreciates them.
4. Search Facebook free yard sale groups who are giving away their kid’s clothes. Again, people love to give their kids’ clothes away to a nice family rather than donate to a thrift store.
5. Do without. Kids have too many clothes these days. Keep it simple with just a few pairs of pants and several shirts to go with them. Don’t feel pressured to overbuy and stuff a whole closet full of clothes for your little ones. It will be a lot easier for the caregiver to find the clothes and dress the baby. And it will be easier on toddlers, preschoolers, and older kids to dress themselves, put their clothes away, and keep their closet or dressers clean with less clothes.
6. Don’t buy one time outfits. Don’t buy a fancy Christmas dress for just one Christmas picture or Sunday service. Find a simple red shirt that can be worn all winter but dressed up at Christmas time with a bow tie (boy), ribbon, flower (girl), etc. The shirt can especially double as a Valentine shirt when paired with a black skirt or the like.

Services:

1. Do as much stuff as you can: wash your own car, pressure wash your house, cut your own grass, cut your own hair or your kids’/spouse’s.
2. Swap services with a neighbor. They fix your plumbing and you babysit for a date night for them. Swap music lessons for art lessons.

Cleaning Supplies:

1. Buy or make one all purpose spray. Keeping only one keeps your cabinets tidy. Less spills and waste. Less time finding the one you want.
2. Use one simple laundry detergent.
3. Use old shirts cut into rags for cleaning instead of paper towels.
4. Use baking soda and other cheap, non harmful cleaning products that can also be used for other things like baking.

Gas:

1. Combine errands into just one trip a week, preferably a Tuesday or Wednesday morning when traffic is the lightest and will save you the most time.
2. Cut out a couple of activities your kids don’t care too much about.
3. Find a couple of days where you stay home the entire day.
4. Take road trips in the winter when gas is cheaper.

Subscriptions:

1. Cancel all video/streaming subscriptions. Rent movies from the library, plan ahead and make a fun movie night for your family once a week. In all the time you save from watching TV/ videos you can cook a healthy dinner, clean your house, work in your yard, go for a walk, play catch with your kids, or just hang out outside. All of these things will make you more profitable at work and more productive and energetic in general. They also fight against depression and promote good health which will save you in doctor and medicine bills.
2. Cancel any other subscriptions you don’t absolutely need.

Medicine:

1. Find an alternative to your medication in the form of healthy food. I read a book once that talked about food swaps instead of medicine. One example I remember was a diabetic eating healthy food and being able to stop their insulin. When they were on insulin, that raised their blood pressure so then they also had to take high blood pressure medication. That medication made them also need to be on blood thinners. Or something like that. It was a whole series of medicines because one made side effects that required another medicine. By eating nutrient rich, high fiber foods they were able to get off their insulin completely, which allowed them to quit all the rest of their medications too. Read books about the power of healthy food and talk to your doctor about stopping some medications. (Remember that doctors often get paid by the amount of prescriptions they write. So they aren’t always taught what foods can help your condition. But it doesn’t hurt to ask.)

Toys:

1. Only buy your kids and grandkids toys at Christmas and their birthdays.
2. When you do buy toys, get classic ones that will last a long time and have good resale value. Classic toys are Legos, blocks, dolls, Matchbox cars, etc.
3. Buy toys that both boys and girls can love, and inspire creativity and imagination. Things like dress up clothes, doctor supplies, circus supplies (juggling balls), magic tricks, kitchen set, etc.
4. Consider art supplies and other toys that are for the child’s hobby such as piano music, ballet shoes, soccer ball, dress up, doctor clothes, etc.
5. Find toys at yard sales, consignment stores, and thrift stores.