I have been trying to document some of the money savings tips that we do in our house. It is hard since we are just so conditioned to it, we don't really think about what we do. I'll try to list a few below:
1) Buy used cars
This one to us is pretty obvious to us right now since we are shopping for one. We have bought new cars in the past, but we will never do it again. At least not until we are too old to care about our money. We can afford to buy a new car today without debt, we choose not to. This would be counterproductive to our savings strategy. We buy used cars and then donate them when we are done with them. We have donated one to a friend in need and we will most likely soon be donating another one. We are currently searching for another used car and will be purchasing one soon.
2) Plan meals
Another way we save money is to plan meals out for a month. This allows us to shop more efficiently for food. Trust me, when we don't plan we spend! This one is a huge one. We need to be more consistent with our planning. We are still working to perfect this one and discipline ourselves to follow it. Limiting our trips to the store saves us money! Let's face it, in a large family like ours, food is a large portion of our monthly outgo.....
3) Implement a spending control plan
Way back when we went through an experiment to see how much money we were spending every month and also to see what we were spending it on. We did ours by saving receipts from everything that we purchased for the day. We threw those into a envelope and then at the end of the month we totaled them up. So much for food, so much for gas,..... so much waste! It was amazing to see what we were wasting our money on. This was a real eye opener and I highly recommend that everyone try this for one month. It only works if you are true to yourself and really follow it!
I am running out of time for this post. If anyone else has any general large family money savings tips, please post them in the comment section. I will try to post some more of these soon.
3 comments:
I think one big money saver is to look for free and cheap entertainment! My kids do book groups, clubs, shows, all for free at the library. Parades, fireworks, seeing Santa, DVDs and books from the library, giant bags of books for $2 or $5 at library sales, parks, playgrounds, trails, nature centers- all are good!
Tracy
This may seem straight forward but paying for things with cash really does slow our family down on the frivolous spending. It started by mistakes when I forgot my credit card and new I only had $X amount of dollars. I put more junk back then I even realized my family has accumulated in our shopping cart.
Right on Amanda! It hits home when you are spending cold hard cash four your goods. Paying with cash helps to take the impulse out of some spending.
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