My Top 5 Money Saving Tips

50% Income Decrease

How We Survived

My Top 5 Money Saving Tips

1. No Cable- 

We asked our internet and cable provider to take off our on demand cable service. This took $70-$100 off of our bill and that money went to other things. We have Nextflix ($10 a month) that we can watch on our TV and our family enjoys watching YouTube together.

2. No Name Brand Clothing- 

This was a huge change for me. I enjoyed buying my 8 year old son clothes from Mini Boden and Tea collection because the quality was amazing. I cut out name brand clothing for my son and replaced it with cheaper options form Target and Old Navy. The only exception to this rule is that I do buy name brand jackets and shoes for my son (which are great for resale on eBay). His clothing expenses went from $400-$800 per season to $150-$300 per season.

3. No Eating Out- 

When I was working full time it was really convenient to pick up fast food a few times a week and we would go out to a sit down restaurant as a family each weekend. We eat out still now just only once a month and we try to make it more of a special occasion. We were spending up to $100-$120 a week on fast food, or over $400 a month. We now have this down for $40-$60 a month.

4. No Frozen Meals-

 Luckily I love cooking, but when I was working full time I was so busy it was hard to always cook. We don’t purchase any frozen meals for my husband and I. This saves us lots of money. For example a frozen lasagna in store may cost up to $12 I can make one at home for under $6 and I make sure to freeze the left overs. My alternative to “frozen meals” is freezing left overs. My son loves when I freeze our homemade waffles.

5. No Prepackaged Snacks- 

Prepackaged snacks are so easy and convenient, and I used them all the time when I was very busy and had a larger budget.  More often than not my grocery store or Costco offers the prepacked snack in a bulk option that costs less per ounce to purchase. I place the snack in zip lock bags myself and have also cut out purchasing extra snacks to save money.

Our Family

I have been a teacher for 4 years and decided to work part time and homeschool my 8 year old son who has autism. To do this I had to start working part time, our already tight income was cut by 30% and the income I was bringing in was cut by 50%. This set us on a journey we are still on, to live with less, but still enjoy the little things in life.