New Here.... Need Advice

[savingdogs]

Lots of great ideas here that I would have put up, Pat and Chickens and the rest of you have covered some of the big bases.

Hubby and I had to endure a huge drop in pay this year and these are a few ways we did it:

STOP all optional spending. Things like getting your haircut, eating meals out, convenience foods, home decorator or recreational projects, entertaining, clothes shopping, ANYTHING except shopping for something you absolutely cannot do without. When at the grocery store, buy in bulk and buy whole foods. For instance, unless it is a huge sale on drumsticks, buy a whole chicken.

We have not felt that we have saved money yet raising our own meat, but we do more than break even raising layer chickens and selling eggs, but we sell them to people we already see so there are no transportation costs.

I found a thread on here somewhere (maybe someone else will recall) where they talked about having a big cooking day and making lots and lots of meals at once and freezing them into individual meals. I embraced this idea but I don't do a big cooking day. I do it by making a double batch of EVERYTHING possible and freezing all the leftovers into single portions in containers from the dollar store, each and every time I cook. Some nights we eat one of these big dinners, other nights we all choose a frozen one. These are much more wholesome than "convenience" foods as well as much cheaper and it wasn't really any more work for me, well, maybe just a little. I don't work but sometimes I am ill and can't cook, so this works excellent for us, but would also work for someone busy on certain days of the week. Hubby also takes these for lunch.

We cut out all entertainment expenses except internet. We don't rent movies, they HULU them.

We embraced some cheaper foods.

We stopped using so many paper towels.

We use the line to dry the clothes when we can.

Baking soda is cheap and has lots of cleaning uses.

We sold off non-productive livestock and rehomed some pets.

We worked out arrangements with people we owed to take small payments.

We reduced the amount being paid for car/life insurance by having a discussion with our current agent and updating things and pressuring him.

We became adamant about shutting off lights and appliances not in use.

Our son brings his lunch instead of buys. Hubby no longer buys lunch out except once a week at a VERY cheap restaurant.

Make gifts for others instead of buying something if birthdays and such come up.

Find things to do at home instead of going places. Going places always ends up costing money.

I recieved a Kindle as a gift and spend no money on reading material as I only download free books. Another way would be to only read books from the public library. Reading is a very cheap form of entertainment.

I hope my ideas helped! I'll add some more when they come to me.

 

[calendula]

Getting your hair cut is a good one to bring up. I recently started cutting my own hair, along w/ my 2 sons. I think we are saving around $300 a year by doing that. I bought my own hair clippers for $30 to use on the boys. Cutting hair is much easier than I thought, though I wont cut my hubby's. I'm too worried I'd make him look like a wierdo (though I'm sure I'd do ok if I actually tried).

 

[savingdogs]

I bought haircutting scissors. My hair is curly anyways so no one can even tell. My younger son has been getting his haircut with the neighbor kids, the mom hauls out the clippers and just cuts all of their hair off, including my sons! I should take her some eggs or something I guess. But my son's long hair bothered HER enough to cut it for him. Hubby does go to a real cheap barber instead of the high priced salon he used to go to, but it is one of those super-super cheap places.

My older son started paying for his own haircuts when we stopped having the family outing to the hairclippers.

We also did something that was really hard for us. We stopped pleasing our kids. We could no longer afford all the niceties they needed. You would be surprised at the response. They are more respectful and they do not ASK all the time and they appreciate when they get things much more than before (even my grown children). I no longer cook an extra vegetable if it isn't their favorite. We no longer have bought birthday gifts. We also skipped back-to-school shopping except for a couple of extreme essentials.

It is amazing how much stuff is not really necessary. But cutting back on spending on the kids caused them to be more resourceful. It wasn't something we expected to happen. Hubby and I also became more resourceful. We managed to fence our garden using recycled junk. Back in the old days when we had money, we would have gone to a Home supply store and bought posts and fencing and spent a few hundred on planting veggies even before we turned over the first pile of dirt. This year our approach was the opposite, we started plants from SEEDS (sent to us by friends) and made the fence entirely from junk.

Some of this has really been humbling (like no longer taking my mom to breakfast AND giving her a gift on Mother's Day, instead, making a meal for her and having a family get together with no gift exchanging). But it has also been freeing in a way. Make it clear to everyone your finances are a different situation now so you can get rid of old obligations that are no longer relevant. For instance, gifts for mom, she hates "stuff". But we determined that spending the day with her was what she really wanted, so we gave her lots of our time instead of anything we bought.

 

[Living the Simple Life]

We are a family of 5 who have lived on one income for the last nine years. I work and my husband is a stay-at-home dad. I make okay money for our area but not great. During the last four years we also paid off over $30k in debt. We learned to live frugally! Frugal is a mindset. It really takes looking at everything you do in a day and asking yourself "is this necessary, do I need that, how can I be satisfied with something I already have/or is cheaper?" We now have a better quality of life than many we know who make much more money than us but are slaves to their wants (often believed to be needs) and debt. Here are a few money-saving strategies that we implemented.

1. You don't need to eat meat everyday. Replace meat with whole grains two to three times per week.

2. Breakfast for supper. Pancakes, eggs and toast, hot cereal are cheap, quick to fix and filling

3. Rice is cheap and can stretch other foods. Add cooked rice to hamburger patties, meatballs, soup, scrambled eggs. You name it. It takes on the flavor of what you are cooking and can sure stretch a pound of burger!

4. Cut down on junk food and milk/juice consumption. Milk or juice for meals only and water the rest of the time. Also, skip the sodapop, your health and wallet will thank you. For a great pop alternative, buy a couple big bottles of seltzer water and add a splash of juice. You still get the same "fizz satisfaction" without the calories, sugar, etc.

5. Make a big batch of biscuits or cornbread (or both, you are already heating up the oven!) Have them with a meal and the leftovers make great snacks or breakfast warmed in the micro or toaster with a little honey.

6. Cut out the cold cereal unless it is on sale and you have a great coupon. Replace this with oatmeal, cream of wheat, cornmeal mush/polenta. Cooked cereals are much healthier and cheaper. You can also make a big batch and just reheat a serving at a time.

7. Cut your laundry expenses by only washing clothes that are actually dirty. If you put a clean outfit on your clean body and only wear it for a few hours doing non-strenuous activity, how dirty is the outfit really, especially if you are wearing a camisole/tank top, etc. Laundry is also hard on clothing and cuts down their lifespan.

8. Pack your lunches for school and work. Leftovers can be easily reheated and that $4-5 per day savings really adds up quick.

9. When you have the oven on, maximize its use. Make cookies for lunches, bake some banana bread for breakfast and snacks, whip together a batch of muffins. The major expense is heating the oven to begin with, maintaining the heat is much less costly.

10. Set aside a day to do some major cooking. Prepare multiple batches of foods and put in the freezer for later. If I am making lasagne, I will make 4 at the same time. It doesn't take any longer to brown the meat, cook the noodles, etc. I put them together in an assembly line and when done put them in the freezer. When I do this, I line the pan with plastic wrap before I put the ingredients in. Once they are frozen, I can pop them out of my glass baking dish, put in a freezer bag and back to the freezer. When I want to bake it, I unwrap the plastic wrap, pop it back into the baking dish and throw it in the oven. I can put it in the oven frozen solid and set the oven to come on at the predetermined time and dinner is basically done when we get home.

Often we get sucked into the trap of convenience foods because we don't have anything prepared. A little time once a month will make a huge difference in the long run.

I also agree about the turkeys, we buy 6 - 8 when they are on sale for 39 - 49 cents per pound. That is some inexpensive eating!

 

[moneysavingmomma]

All of you have wondeful ideas. I am deff. going to start doubling something and freezing or using Sat. to cook several meals and freeze. As far as hair cuts go me and my dd have very curly hair so I am affraid to cut it myself. We only get our hair trimmed every 5-6 months and go to someones home so it is only $15 for both of us $10 for me & $5 for her. I cut DH hair since he shaves it anyways. As far as breakfast goes I do usually cook breakfast every morning since I work at night and am home very early in the morning, but do use canned biscuits. Think I am going to try to bake my own this week after I use the cans I already have. I think I will go to our Car Insurance company next week and see about getting cheaper rates. Thanks a ton! I LOVE IT HERE!

 

[tortoise]

Ok this is my first time to post here but have looked through several post before joining. I am in desperate need to cut back on my families spending so we can start saving some money and build a emergency fund. I am starting a envelope system to budget out our cash on a weekly bases (thanks to reading a previous post here). We don't use banks ( I just don't trust them) and deal in cash only. Here is my main problems, we are a family of 3 living on one income. I use coupons and save a lot on grocerys that way. I need ideas to help me spend our money wisely and start making more things at home and buy things cheaper than we are now. Homemade soaps, cleaners, ect. would be nice.I also need a way to eat a little cheaper. Right now I spend about $75 a week on groceries and come out with little to nothing. I want to change our eating habits as well since now we eat a lot of prepackaged goods full of MSG among other things. The main problem here is I don't have a whole lot of time to cook, our other problem is we live in a city and don't have a lot of room for a garden and we can't have farm animals at all. We rent our house from my aunt so we don't pay much in rent (sorta family discount type thing). I have tried replacing bulbs ect. to cut utility cost but it doesn't seem to be helping much. I just don't know where to start. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!!!!

Calm down. You sound a lot like me - a long list of "I can'ts." Limitations can be a good thing, ground rules to work within.

We're a family of 3 and we spend 1/2 that on groceries. It takes a little time to save big on groceries, but you should see a HUGE difference in a couple of months. I rarely buy anything that isn't a "loss leader." You only need to get 6 months' worth to give you time to wait until the next big sale.

*I buy butter ONLY at $1.66/lb or less. I have about 10# in the freezer at any given time so I can wait for the next price. I don't care if it is on sale for $2/lb, I won't touch it until the price is equal to or lower the price I paid for my freezer stash.

*I buy meat ONLY at 50% off or better. Again, I buy in advance. I buy the $7.99 bags of chicken breast at $3.99, stock up 5 or more bags in the freezer.

*Another sale I took advantage of was the $1.99 boxes of pasta for $0.50. I think I bought 20. Enough to last a year.

Also be aware of lower prices. It might cost more to buy brand-name with a coupon than to buy a store brand. There are some products that I can find equivalent at Aldi - oil, flour, sugar, rice, etc - for less than the grocery store loss leaders.

I cut our grocery spending in half, actually more than half.

 

[tortoise]

Grocery spending is a SMALL amount of total spending for most families. Cutting groceries doesn't always pay off. Here are some ideas:

I paid off my car so we could cancel comprehensive insurance. Old car anyway...

We cut back our cable/internet. If not for football season and internet, we would be done with it. Internet is essential for my health - long story.

We use my OLD 30+ mpg car instead of the SUV to save on gas. We ration driving. 30 miles per week for shopping. 180 miles per month for me to go to my hometown, shopping, see friends. We carpool to work (only 2 miles away).

We have not gotten married because we would pay significantly more in health care. We are saving towards a country home/small farm. We plan to marry after that.

Make friends and network. I didn't buy garden seeds because of gifts and barters off this board. I put in a strawberry bed for a couple dollars because my future-sister-in-law tipped us off on a $0.10/each greenhouse clearance. I got more strawberries free from a neighbor. A neighbor brings over weeds and kitchen scraps for my rabbits. I just met the produce stand lady today and I plan to ask her for seconds. The neighbor across the street brought us a free rain barrel.

Living IN the city gives you lots of opportunities. More people, more business, more free stuff.

 

[moneysavingmomma]

Well I signed up for freecycle here and my dh thinks that we still have time to start a small garden in our back yard. I don't really have a green thumb (more of a black/gray color) since every plant I have had has died but I am willing to give it a try. I am going to keep my eyes open on freecycle for stuff to fence it in since my dog thinks everything is for him to dig up (the reason we have no trees now). I am also going tomorrow to hunt for the stuff to make laundry detergent. Going to try wal-mart although I hate that place not sure where else to look. Also I am the one who works and dh is a stay at home dad so I am going to put him to work a little bit. He is also going to start a add on craigslist for auto repair at our home since that is what he did before our daughter was born. Maybe bring in a little extra cash. I am going to start next week with the whole cooking from scratch thing so wish me luck. My MIL is giving me a bread machine that she has never used but had for 10 yrs. so that should be interesting since I have never baked bread in my life. My cooking skills will deff. need improvement since I have gotten all to comfortable with just dumping and adding water/milk. Wish me luck.

 

[Wifezilla]

Living the simple life, while all those carbs can save you money in the short run, they ended up giving me high blood pressure and pre diabetes.

Beans are lower in carbohydrates and higher in nutrition. Properly prepared they are healthy and they are very cheap.

Leafy greens are also very nutrient dense and easy to grow.

 

[moneysavingmomma]

I may have to look into ways to fix beans to taste like something else since I hate them plain.