PiCKLEBERRYPOP

Now that the holidays are officially over, it’s time to begin another year of playing the ole stash the cash game! I love socking money away, and I try to do it every week. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way, but that’s ok. I’m always looking for ways to save in our household, so I thought I’d share a few tips that have worked for us lately.

Stick to the list when you go to the store.

It doesn’t matter what store you’re going to, if you’re after more than 1 or 2 items, make a list – and stick to it! If you can’t stick to your list, see if you can order online and do a store pickup instead. I do this with our weekly grocery run and with Best Buy purchases – 2 of the 4 “problem” stores for me. I have to look at everything in Best Buy and often impulse buy. Same with the grocery store. I have to go down every aisle to make sure I don’t miss anything on the list. The problem with that is that I put stuff NOT on the list in my cart. Hubs, too. So I order online and pickup at the store now, and I also make a lot of stuff from scratch instead of buying prepackaged stuff. Use coupons and take a look at the store flyer to save even more. It’s cut our grocery bill in HALF, and I stay out of trouble at Best Buy. I go straight to the pickup window and straight back out the door, lol. Staples & Hobby Lobby are my other 2 problem stores. I just stay away from Hobby Lobby as much as possible (if I need to go, I make sure there’s somebody with me to slap my hands), and at Staples I grab printer ink and paper as fast as I can and get out of there LOL!

Drink more water.

This has been a tough one for me. I’ve been drinking literally nothing but diet coke for about 15 years, so the switch has been hard (I still drink 2 diet cokes a day). But drinking water is not only better for your health, if you drink a big ole glass before you eat, you’ll eat less and stay fuller longer… cutting your food bill down! Win win right there!

The 30-Day Rule

This is one my husband is REALLY good at. He’ll want to buy something, like a drimmel with some fancy tips (or whatever they’re called), but he’ll talk himself out of it for at least a month. Me? I would have purchased it on the spot (if I was into that kind of thing, lol). Waiting 30 days before you make a purchase, especially for a big ticket item, is a good rule of thumb for your finances (and your checking account will thank you). This also gives you time to research the item and get the best deal if you still decide you need it a month later!

Get rid of the premium cable/satellite packages

This was a HUGE deal at our house. We’d been using DirecTV since 2006. With the appearance of services like Netflix & Hulu, it took me 2 years to convince the man we didn’t need DirecTV anymore. I signed us up for Netflix years ago, and he used it occasionally, while I watched it almost exclusively. Last year AT&T bought DirecTV and the inevitable bill hike happened, so I was finally able to convince him to drop them. We now have Netflix, Hulu + Live, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus and it’s all over $100 cheaper than what we were paying DirecTV. (We won’t talk about the weeks he spent cussing the TV trying to figure out how to work the apps LOL)

Write down everything you spend

It might sound a bit trivial or time consuming, but it’s really not. I write down everything we spend money on & why – it helps with the budget and helps us NOT spend money. Having a budget has saved our bacon on more than one occasion, and it’s helped put money into a savings account that we call our Emergency Fund – something that has saved our bacon on more than one occasion as well.

And lastly…something else that has helped build our savings account

At the end of the month, when all the bills are paid, all the groceries have been bought, and anything else that has come up has been taken care of, whatever is left in the checking account goes straight to savings. All of it. We start fresh every month with a $0 balance. It could be $5, it could be $500, it doesn’t matter. There is no amount too small!

What do you do to save money? As I said I’m always on the lookout, so if there is something that you’ve done that has helped you and your family, I’m all ears!