Saving

A bunch of us sat around talking about the way things are going with the economy. When one of the girls asked why I didn't post my ideas. To be honest I really never thought about it. Some stuff is posted just in the normal course of my daily life . Other things are so ingrained that I really don't think about it . Over the years I've tried tons of different things some worked some didn't. I've had people look at me like I was nuts but oh well lol.I'm a firm believer in the saying "to each their own". So here are some of the things we do to save money.


I save small bills and at the end of the month I put half in savings. Than I split the other half between Christmas and yard sales envelopes. You all know that I do try to thrift or make all of our gifts. We also save all of our loose change roll it in the fall and use it to finish our Christmas shopping. If there is any money left( which happens more often than not) we put it into savings.


At the beginning of the month we but a pretty big amount in savings envelope. Unless there is a huge emergency we don't touch it. When the next month rolls around it goes into savings. This money is a combo of savings and/ or emergency fund. Because we don't have credit cards, we use this money for stuff like car repairs or replacing the fridge.

People always offer us free stuff all the time and we take it lol . If we can't use it we always find some one who can. The only problem with that is having the space to store it until it can be used. I can't tell you how much money we've saved. But I can tell you that just about everything in our house was given to us one way or another.

Our electric bill runs us about $50 a month ( last month it was $48) People tell us that's good considering that there is always some one home. Some of the electronics we have we don't always use. The stereo , the DVD player, PlayStation, or the surround sound unit aren't used every day. So we went around and put all of the "Energy Vampires "on surge protectors. We have a ton of surge protectors lol. This way nothing is left on " standby" We even put one on the computer so when we're done we can shut down everything including the printer and modem.

When I food shop I go to 3 stores plus the farmers market. I know the prices of just about everything we buy. In recent months I've have been thrown off because the cost of food continues rise so I will wait if I'm not sure .I keep at least 3 months of supplies in the house at all times. I also rotate all of our extras putting the new stuff in the back while moving the older stuff up to be used next. All of our clothes are either used or bought at a deep discount. The big kids buy most of their clothes but Bear out grows his stuff so fast that it makes more sense to spend less. Bear has play clothes and school clothes. When the school stuff gets to worn or stained we flip them to play than when they get to small I save them to craft with.

OK now that I've bored everyone to tears lol I'm gonna stop here . I'll just put this question out there..... What do you guys do to save money??????? With that I'm off to get some house work done. Til next time have a great day.