There is an old saying that I ignored in my younger days that I truly wish I wouldn't have. It is "A penny saved is a penny earned" How very true that statement is. If I would have followed that advice all of my life, I can only imagine how much more money I would have today. All of my girls learned this at a much younger date than I did, and whenever any of us find a good deal or way of doing something that is much less expensive, phone calls will go out to each household to share the "wealth".
My daughter Stacie is a perfect example of someone who follows this advice and the benefits it brings. Her husband Tyler is a High School teacher and coach and she is a stay at home Mom. It may seem like a stay at home Mom isn't earning any money, but Stacie thinks about every penny they spend and looks for ways to either get by without something, or finds the best buy when they do need it. They were in a bible study about finances with other couples their age several years ago. They were the only ones who not only had zero credit card debt but also had a sizeable savings account. Don't think that they are living on bread and water in a cardboard box. They own their own home, just finished out the basement, and occasionally splurge on something like a big screen TV, all on one teachers salary. The difference is - they think about each little everyday expense and how to get by on less and it pays off big in the long run. Following are a few hints my girls and I have learned to do to keep more of our husband's hard earned money in our pockets instead of someone else's pocket.
Saving Money @ the Grocery Store:
Watching the store sales and using coupons is a good way to save money. You can get many things for free. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, margarine are all things you should never pay for if you watch the sales and coupons. Shaving cream, razors, body wash, shampoo, are some of the other things that you can get on a regular basis for free or pennies. Go to the many coupon sites on line to get started. My favorite one is www.frugalfritzie.com Go to the side of her home page and click on the store that you frequent and she will tell you what items are on sale that week, and where you can find the coupons to make it an even better deal. I will say though, that you need to be careful and don't get too caught up in the coupon craze. My girls and I all did for awhile until we discovered that too many of the coupons are for junk food that you may get for virtually nothing, but you are also feeding your family virtually nothing when it comes to nutrients. But, if you watch the sales and coupons, there can also be good deals on good, whole, nutritious food.
Try to get in the habit of cooking from scratch as much as possible. You will not only save money but will also be consuming much healthier food with less preservatives. We have found that time spent doing this is much more worthwhile than the time we had invested in our major couponing escapade!
Find our what family meals you enjoy will freeze well, then make extra and put it in the freezer. Then when you are tired or rushed, pull it out, defrost it in the microwave and you won't be tempted to go pay Pizza Hut $20 for a large pizza! I keep a dry erase board in my utility room with the foods I have frozen so a quick glance will tell me what's in there. I freeze chili, spaghetti sauce, lasagna, browned hamburger, chicken or turkey and broth, roast and broth. I'll cook a large roast in water on top of the stove, then divide the meat and broth up, put it into containers and freeze it. Then it is right there ready to be made into beef and noodles or vegetable beef soup, or roast, mashed potatoes and gravy. If the meat is already done than it doesn't take very long to do the rest of it. If i make a cake, banana bread, cookies etc, we could eat it all in one setting but we certainly don't need to! I will serve it one night, then cut it into one meal serving sizes, wrap it well in saran wrap and freeze it.
Save the bag inside of your cereal boxes, tear them along the seams and you won't ever have to buy wax paper again.
When you get to the last part of the loaf of bread, take it out of the wrapper and let it dry. When it is hard grind it into little crumbs, store in a container and you will always have bread crumbs.
Save your butter, sour cream, and soft cream cheese containers for leftover containers instead of buying containers. You can write on the lid with a marker what is in it, then cross it out and write something new when you use it the next time. When you have no more room to write, you can toss it in the trash, because you'll have a new one to replace it then.
After you roast a turkey or a chicken put the carcass in a large pan, cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for a couple hours. Let it cool and you won't believe how much more meat you will get off of the bones. Plus you have a whole pan full of broth. I then put it in the refrigerator overnight and the next morning any fat can be skimmed off the top of the broth. You can then either make turkey/ chicken soup or noodles or freeze the broth and meat to be used at a different date
I make my own laundry detergent. I used to buy the Sam's club house brand of dry laundry detergent for about $15.00 per bucket. I now make my own detergent, storing it in the same bucket and it costs me $3.50 per bucket. And believe me, I have some seriously dirty laundry to contend with. Hubby Mark is a semi-truck mechanic and he is greasy from head to toe every night when he comes in. The homemade detergent does just as good a job if not better. I have the recipe posted above complete with pictures of how to do it (it's very easy) .
The fact is, you can make all sorts of things yourself instead of paying someone else to do it. Homemade cleansers of every sort cost pennies to make instead of dollars.
Break yourself of the pop habit. BELIEVE me I know that is easier said than done, but if you drink one pop a day at an average of .75 a day that is $273 a year. Take that times every person in your household who drinks one pop a day!
Organize your pantry and your kitchen shelves so you know at a glance what you already have so you aren't buying a can of spice to try out a new recipe, and the spice is already sitting on your shelf somewhere.
One way I save big on hamburger is to buy it at Sam's Club in an 80 pound case. 90/10 hamburger costs $2.29 per lb that way, and if I was to buy it at the grocery store in a 2 lb amount it cost $4.89 a pound, so that is less than half price. If you can't use that much get a friend or two to split it with you.
I also save by buying a big (about 2 1/2 foot long) pork loin at Sam's. I don't remember the exact price, so I will check and get it on here, but it as the hamburger is considerably less. Once I get it home, I then take an electric knife and slice it in 1 inch sections and voila! I have made my own sirloin pork chops which are much MUCH more expensive in the grocery store buying only 3 or 4 at a time. I also cut some of it into a hunk about 6 inches long to be roasted as a pork tenderloin.
Saving on Your Utility Bills:
Even though the initial cost is awful, the curly fluorescent light bulbs really do help you save tremendously on your electric bill and they last forever.
The best way to save money is to turn off the lights if you are not using them. It is so simple but does take thought and effort to do ,especially if you have children.
I bought a drying rack from www.VermontCountryStore.com for around $80 several years ago. I use it to dry all my clothes in the winter when it's too cold to hang them on my clothesline. They dry overnight and I only use my dryer to dry my loads of little stuff like socks, underwear, washclothes, kitchen rags etc.
Whenever I am making baked potatoes I bake them in a roaster on the cabinet instead of firing up the oven. It also is big enough to bake a meatloaf or other small casserole's in a 9 x 9 casserole pan. This is really good to use in the summer because it has the added benefit of not heating up the whole kitchen.
Even though we have central air, we have a small window unit in our bedroom. That way we turn the central air off at night, close the bedroom door, and sleep cool as a cucumber for a fraction of the cost.
General Savings
Vow to not ever buy anything at full price. Wait for it to go on sale, use a coupon, shop at consignment stores, shop at garage sales, research to find the best price and so on. The savings will add up to a lot of money in a years time.
I fully believe there is nothing you cannot find at a garage or estate sale if you are only patient. We have found a cover for our hot tub, paid $20 for a cover for the bed of our pickup that my husband had just about been willing to spend $500 for, a piece that fixed our GPS, furniture, TV, washing machine, garden tools, shop tools, sewing machines for all four of my girls, Kirby vacuum sweepers for only $10 and so on and so on.
This could be a bit out there for most people (seeing as it is for my own girls). I learned it from my mother so I continue to do so. I cut up old socks and use them for my dishcloths. The fact of the matter is, I have so many that I am able to only use them once than throw them in the wash. Having read about how germ filled kitchen sponges and dishrags are, I feel good knowing that mine are washed after only having been used once.
I also cut up all cotton t-shirts or anything else cotton and after saving a few in the house to be used as cleaning and dusting rags, I haul them out to my husbands shop for him to use as shop rags.
If you love to read, use the library instead of buying books. If they don't have the book you are wanting to read, most likely they can borrow it from another library for you, just ask them. I would request audio books from my local library and if they didn't have them, they would put out a request on line and more times than not would find it somewhere else and would request to borrow it and in a couple days they would call and tell me it was in. I like to listen to audio books as I clean house. Most library's also have a big selection of DVD's you can borrow instead of renting them.
As I said in the grocery section above, being organized is probably the one thing that will save you more money than anything else. If you have a place for everything and everything is in it's place, you will know what you have and won't be spending your hard earned dollars on something you already have three of, but don't know where they are!
One thing I absolutely cannot bring myself to buy is wrapping paper! I do get Christmas wrapping paper when it is like 75% off after Christmas and if it is a shower or wedding gift I will buy paper, but for regular family birthdays I just don't see the point. For my grandkids a lot of times I will put their present in a brown paper bag or wrap it in newspaper with $5.00 taped to the outside with a note that says "this is what I would have spent on wrapping paper". They are always tickled pink!
