Calling all of you thrifty people out there!!
I am sticking to my New Year's resolution of using cash only and also trying to build up our savings account.
I want to be thrifty and also be good to the environment. For example..I love getting my milk delivered because it comes in glass bottles and I'm not throwing out the big plastic containers anymore. I am thinking of going to cloth napkins so I can just wash them instead of going through a roll of paper towel every two days...thrifty and good for the environment. I've started borrowing kids movies from the library instead of buying them off of comcast.
Got any ideas??
If they are just thrifty, I want to hear them.
How do you save tons on groceries? What do you do with your kids on the weekend that is fun and cheap? What do you do so that you can build up your savings account quickly?
If they are just simple ways to be good for the environment, I want to hear them.
What simple ways can I change my daily lifestyle and be good to the environment? What one little thing do you do that helps you leave less of a fingerprint here on earth?
If they are both...that is great too!
I am very proud to say that I only spent $8 this week since Monday. Today I went grocery shopping but that is a necessity. Where do you get the best coupons? I don't get the paper and so I don't get great coupons. I hate Walmart but went grocery shopping there last week...I won't do it again. So...I have to figure it out with coupons. I'm really trying to change my spending lifestyle.
I can't wait to hear your suggestions!
6 comments:
Don't you have curbside recycling where you live? I know my friends near Denver do. I don't know how expensive it is to get your milk delivered, but if you have recycling at the curb or just nearby, you can recycle your plastic containers. You can also recycle your tin & aluminum cans as well as most metal, cardboard (toilet paper and paper towel rolls, cereal boxes, or any box for that matter) paper (all of that paper that mounts up from kids' school work), bills, junk mail, etc., as well as glass, plastic wrappings from toilet paper, or anything that has a wrapper, and plastic grocery bags. Our Kroger takes the plastic wrappings and bags, and the recycle bins at school take the cardboard and paper. The curbside recycling pick up takes the plastic and metals, and I take the glass to a recycle center. I know it sounds like a bunch of work, but once you get into the habit, it's really not that big of a deal. Check out www.laptoplunches.com for some more great ideas. I'll send you one our newsletters from them. The kids love their lunch boxes!
As far as thrifty goes, I'm still working on that! We don't have cable, just rabbit ears, and the kids watch their dvds. I don't buy junk food at all...no chips, no cookies, no Little Debbies or the like, and absolutely no soda. All of those things are not only expensive, but they are incredibly unhealthy too, especially for children. So I hope that saves some money. Extra activities are limited, mostly to save my sanity, but it saves time and money too. Each child can pick one thing to do outside of school and church.
Well, there are a few suggestions anyway. Wishing you well sister! Miss you tons. Have a great day!
If you are looking for Thrify then you should take a look at my friend's blog. The address is http://thehansoncrew.blogspot.com/ we went to high school together and she is the queen of Thrift! My biggest penny pinching tip is buy at Costco/Sam's Club. I recently heard a financial analyst talk about how buying weekly groceries it the worst thing you can do right now with the prices being so high. Warehouse stores are limited in the amount they can mark up a product so buying computers, jewelry and tires there is also a good idea. Sorry, it's the only tip I have.
You can subscribe to the weekend newspaper for only $2.25 a month and when I signed up they gave me a $5.00 gift card to King Soopers. I clip coupons every week and we save an average of $8.00 a week using coupons. I used to shop at Costco, but I can get better deals on a lot of things at Target, Safeway, and King Soopers. I also bring my own bags for the grocers to pack. We don't have recycling in our neighborhood and I can't stand throwing out all those plastic grocery bags.
Red Box at McDonalds is great for renting movies because they only cost .99 cents a day. We never watch movies more than once so this is a really cheap way to see a show.
Also, if we do go out for fast food we get one "meal" and one sandwich and split the fries and drink.
We recently started to unplug EVERYTHING that is not in use in our house. Not only is it a good way to save electricity use but also cut down on your electric bill. Even when something is not in use but plugged in, it still uses electricity. So we unplug lamps, tvs, microwave, toaster oven, phone chargers, flat irons, baby monitor, glade plug ins, and everything else that you can imagine. We only plug it in when we use it.....it is a slight pain but in the end we have saved A LOT of money on our electric bill.
Also, go to www.couponmom.com for great deals and alerts for items at the store as well as google the brands of items you want and usually you can find printable coupons that typically don't expire. For example, if you want to buy Kellogs cereal, google "Kellog's coupons" and it will bring up a list of coupons for a lot of different items.
My last piece of thrifty advice is to try store brands if you don't already. You don't know that they will taste different until you try! We tried once to buy everything store brand to see if we noticed a difference and we only really noticed a few things on just a few products. We saved a lot of money too buying store brands.
Keep up the good work!
I use http://freebies4mom.blogspot.com/
for lots of coupons and free samples.
Krista, I was just watching Regis & Kelly and they had someone on that wrote a book called "Start Late, Finish Rich". He seemed to have some great ideas to cut back on your monthly expenses. I think I will go and buy the book too. I would like to cut back on expenses as well.
When Brooke started working at 16 years old, she went to the bank and set up an RRSP account and had them start taking $25.00 a week from her account ($100.00 a month). Every $500.00 she then has them put it into a GIC account where she is getting more interest and has them lock it in so she can't touch it. My 18 yr old daughter has her own financial advisor. When did she get so clever. Apparently, if she keeps this up she is going to have millions when she is my age. She read the Wealthy Barber, I believe this is where she gets alot of her ideas from.
One more idea, I started composting last year. You can buy a composter at your local garden centre. I also recycle everything so my garbage has been cut dramatically. I started recycling when my kids were young. We actually had a recycling section in our garage (still do) where we could separate everything into different bins. I had the kids help me set it up. They made the signs for the different bins. It's something you can do as a family.
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