5 Ways To Save Your Family Money

Fun fact about me that you may not know is that I am pretty frugal and I love a good sale. I can still remember the first lesson my mom taught me on the value of a dollar. I really wanted this yellow Tommy Hilfiger jacket and she told me that I could buy it with my own money, but that she wasn’t going to buy it for me. So, she took me to the store to find out the price, then I went to work. I worked really hard for about the next two weeks, then she took me back to the store to buy it. I sat there, staring at the price tag and decided that I didn’t want to spend my hard earned money on an overpriced jacket.

It was a simple, but profound lesson. It made a big impact on me and I have used that lesson a lot in life. I was thinking about this the other day as I was brainstorming was I could save our family money and decided to share my list with everyone. I mean, who doesn’t like to save money? I honestly don’t think i’ve ever met someone who doesn’t love to save money. So, here we go, here are 5 ways to save your family money:

Budget

The best single thing you can do to save your family money is to have a written budget. I always suggest this as the very first thing to do. You can’t save money, if you have no idea where your money is going or whats its doing. If you have never practiced this before, you will be surprised at how much money you are wasting each month on things you don’t realize or even need. We do a written budget each month (on the EveryDollar app) and we stick to our budget. This is such an awesome free tool!

Negotiate your bills

Call your tv provider and internet provider and negotiate your bill. It is amazing how easy it can be to get your monthly bill down and save a ton of money. I recently got our tv bill cut by $50 a month and our internet bill cut by $20 a month. Plus, they threw in over $200 in credits and visa gift cards. This was awesome savings that keeps on going each month! You can do this each time your bill goes up, and if your company won’t budge, price shop them and even change companies.

Hunt

Hunt for a good deal! One of the things I do is watch sales. Almost every large business has a sale pattern. If you have been studying them, you know when a sale is actually a good deal vs. a marketing gimmick (well most are gimmicks, but you will know when your getting the best steal). If I am looking for a certain item, I often pin it to a private Pinterest board and write the lowest price I have seen in the comments. I will watch this go down until I feel like its the best time to buy. This is a good way to track sales as well!

Create A Grocery List

So much money is wasted at the grocery store on impulse buys. Plan our your meals for the week, create a grocery list and stick to your list. This well help you have a plan for your family and save you money. This will help you cut down on the cost of wasted food and you will be more likely to wise food decisions. We have several cheaper meals in a week and 1-2 more expensive meals. This helps us balance our our budget and not spend too much on one week of food.

Coupon

Now, be careful with this. People can get in trouble with couponing, because they buy stuff they don’t need. There are a ton of different coupon sites you can use, but be sure to only print the ones that you actually need and are for things on your shopping list!

There are lots of other little things you can do to save money. You can turn your AC up while you are at work so that your energy bill isn’t as high, you can limit the times a month you eat out, you can have a garage sale, or even pay your insurance premiums for the year instead of monthly. I would love to hear from you. What ways do you save your family money?