Posts
I teach a mini-class on homemaking skills for our Relief Society (women's church group). The latest class was on Saturday and the topic was Budgeting and Money-Saving Tips. We also cooked some sauces (cheese sauce, chocolate sauce, and pancake syrup). I have had a lot of requests for the information so I thought the easiest way was to post it here. So, enjoy!
If you have any comments or questions, the best way to contact me is to email me at sar.mckay@yahoo.com. Enjoy!
Tips:
Always use a budget and stick to it!
Make food from scratch
Buy generic brands
Grocery shop once every 7-10 days
Use a shopping list & stick to it!
Avoid impulse purchases-stick to the essentials
Combine your errands & go out all at once
Do not eat out for convenience-bring food with you or go out in between meal times
Consider your needs vs. your wants
Plan ahead for meals on your calendar
Shop the ksl.com classifieds for used items
Re-evaluate insurance needs & shop for best rates
Call credit cards & ask for a better rate
Get OUT of debt & don’t carry a balance
Don’t buy processed or premade foods
Buy used clothing if possible
The library has more than you know-new books, online downloads, great movies, cookbooks, etc.
The library has more than you know-new books, online downloads, great movies, cookbooks, etc.
Garden and preserve your harvest
Give homemade gifts
Learn to make bread, yogurt, crackers, etc.
Invest in tools that will save you money long term including a mixer for bread, grain mill, dehydrator
Make breads, muffins, pancakes in large batches & store in freezer
Buy multiples of foods you can store
Use & rotate the food you store
Buy only food storage you will use regularly or that has a long shelf life
Buy from a food co-op
Make your own cleaners (all-purpose, laundry soap, fabric softener, disinfectant, etc.)
Eat less meat & more good grains & beans
Cut cable/Dish TV
Use less detergent per load for clothes & dishes –usually don’t need as much as it states on bottle
Use cold water more often for laundry
Clean the back of your refrigerator-dust build-up makes it work harder
Be organized-disorganization costs time & money
Be industrious-laziness is expensive
Garbage is cheap-don’t buy foods just because they’re cheap. Buy for value, not just price.
Nurse instead of bottle feed if possible
Make your own baby food
Use cloth diapers & cloth wipes
Never let leftovers go to waste!
Learn to sew, mend, knit, crochet
Study the Great Depression
Educate yourself as much as possible-READ!
Keep lists of meal ideas on inside cupboard doors
Keep a notebook in your purse for grocery lists
Learn to cut hair—search www.youtube.com
Cut out breakfast cereal
Don’t overload your washer—it wears out sooner
Price compare for your prescriptions
Keep bottled water & snacks in your car
You can learn anything from youtube.com
Clean dryer lint after each load=more efficient
Buy ink in recycled cartridges
EVERY DOLLAR COUNTS
Pay financial obligations first, then budget out what’s left.
Resources:
www.ksl.com –classifieds and free section
foodco-op.net (local organization)
www.utahcoop.org (local organization)
www.sarahsbakingco.blogspot.com (my blog)
The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn
Financial Peace University
Dining on a Dime by Tawra Kellam
More Money-Saving Tips from Sarah's friends
-Insist on proper hand washing and food handling technique. Contamination of bacteria or viruses from your hands or body spreads disease and illness. Cross contamination of unclean or raw foods to your mouth can cause illness. Being sick is expensive! Avoid it by being careful—especially when preparing food for other people, even in your own home.
-Shop around for doctor visits. My daughter had an ear infection and we have a high deductible plan and knew I’d be paying cash for her visit. Draper After-Hours by Fresh Market was $100-120. Our regular pediatrician was $62-80. The clinic inside Smith’s was $49 but the doctor printed out a coupon from their website for $10 off and said I could print one off every time I come in. Her visit ended up costing only $39 plus $8 for her prescription.
-I stopped buying ziplock bags. I just live without them. I do have foil I can use. And I save every plastic tub anything comes in and reuse it instead of ziplock bags.
-I stopped buying paper towels and use and rinse out rags instead. There are some messes I would rather not go down the sink or into the washing machine so sometimes napkin gets used so the mess can go in the trash.
- I stopped buying tape. For the most part I can use something else instead of tape. To wrap presents I use string to tie the newspaper around the gift, no tape needed. Staples often can take the place of tape as well and some how we always seem to have lots of boxes of extra staples.
-I only buy the fruit or veggies at the store that are on sale and will last more then one meal. Like a $1.50 cantaloupe will get eaten by our family in one sitting, not the best deal...BUT a $1.50 bunch of bananas will last a few days. And a $1.50 bag of carrots at Sam's club will last more than a week.
-Call your phone company about once a year and ask them to review your phone bill and give you a better deal. I just called and my new phone bill will be $20 cheaper now.
-Live without out it. There is so much we can live without. I am currently living without: a garbage disposal, (The drains have screens on them and I keep a $1 plunger under the sink to fix the sink when it gets plugged up), two working toilets (we look the top off one and flush it by hand and used duck tape to fix the other), the van door closing properly (my hip does the job), cooking spray (I just use oil in a squirt bottle), lotion (we use coconut oil as lotion and for cooking), 409 (we use vinegar). In the past I have lived without a drier, just hang the clothes up. A washer, the bath tub makes a great place to wash laundry. Beds, sleeping bags do work on the floor. A kitchen table--that did make eating a little tricky with children-- it was a picnic on the kitchen floor every night. An oven-- it is amazing what you can cook in a microwave!
-Help clean up after parties and ward functions. They almost always send you home with the leftovers. We got a week’s worth of food and had more to share with our friends from our ward Christmas party.
-Help clean up after parties and ward functions. They almost always send you home with the leftovers. We got a week’s worth of food and had more to share with our friends from our ward Christmas party.
-Use powdered milk in recipes instead of store-bought milk.
-Turn the heater down. Our heater is set at 68 one the main floor during the day. Heat rises so I have the upstairs set at 66. Then we do the reverse at night. If we are cold we put on socks and a light jacket. And in the fall and spring we try not to use the heater or the air conditioning and open windows and use fans. We also have blankets over many of our windows in the winter and some I even put some large pieces of plastic over the windows. I like the plastic, it keeps the heat in and also lets light in so the house isn't so dark like with blankets.
-When I go to the book store I write down titles of books I find interesting (or take a picture on my camera phone) and then find them at the library. 99% of the time they are at the library.
-I also make homemade tortillas, tortillas chips, dinner rolls, yogurt, sour cream, ranch dressing, french fries, cereal.
-If you buy herbs for medicinal purposes try mountainroseherbs.com Their prices and quality can not be beat. I can get 4 times the herbs I used to get else where for the same price.
- I hope no one thinks too low of me for this, but I do check in the trash. On big trash day in Sandy many people just put everything to the curb knowing someone will take it. And often when someone moves they just start tossing everything because they are just tired of packing. So when my neighbors move I offer to help and I always take stuff home or see what they tossed in the trash and I take that. I just got a working jig saw this way.
-Borrow, rent etc. Follow the 90/10 rule. Don't buy it. We bought a cabin once. The cost of owning a cabin was 100x what the cost would have been to rent one a once a month for a year. In my opinion a boat would fall into this same category. Boats are way expensive. How many times a year do you honestly think your family will use it? Unless you will honestly use your boat EVERY weekend then renting would be cheaper. We don't need to own everything.
-Often a friend or neighbor has that thing you'll only use once and they are willing to let you borrow it. We don't own a ladder, but all of our neighbors do and they store them outside. We have open permission to just borrow them when we need to. With renting or borrowing you have no up keep cost, no insurance costs or registration fees. My only advice on borrowing is to make sure you are willing to replace the item for your friend if you ruin it.
-I cut everyone's hair in our family, including my own. I learned to cut my own on youtube by watching a couple of really cute girls cut their own hair.
-Thin out things like sour cream by adding a little milk. It makes it last longer and you use less of it because it is creamier and does blob off the spoon.
-I use 1/3 laundry detergent and then use baking soda for the rest. I get baking soda in a big bag at Sam's club for cheap.
-Check the KSL.com free section regularly. I needed 2 new toilets, and found 4 new ones for free on KSL. I also recently got a free pinewood derby track from KSL for troops to use that can't afford to rent a track.
-Patch your clothes. I patch everything. And if it can not be patched I turn it into something new. An old pair of baby pants with a whole in the bottom got the legs turned into little draw string bags to hold pencils. An old t-shirt was turned into a vest.
-Newspaper, (from my neighbor who gets the paper) makes great wrapping paper.
-Plan all your driving to be done at the same time in the same direction. This doesn't always workout, but most of the time you know that you need to go to Sandy sometime this week, and South Jordan on that day and the Temple
-We don't rent movies. The library eventually gets most of the new movies. We just wait and see them a year after everyone else. And for that must see movie, go to the dollar theater.
-We improvise a lot. Make do with what we have. For dad's birthday we thought it would be fun to fill the shower with balloons so when we went to get in the balloons would all spill out onto him. Well, to save money we didn't buy any balloons. We filled kitchen trash bags with air, twisty tied them and wrote happy birthday on them. We put them all in the shower and it worked great. And then we still used them as trash bags. We decorate kids’ parties with Christmas lights all around the house. Cards are made out of scratch paper.
-In my kitchen there are 6 can lights. I leave 2 of them with burned out bulbs all the time. The other 4 lights provide enough light.
-Before I ever call a fix-it man I look on line to see if there is some way for me to do it myself. Just google “faucet tutorial” or “fix toilet tutorial” or whatever you are looking for. There are so many great video tutorials online. It is not always possible, but most of the time it is. And think creatively. Most of us think we have to get help because that is what everyone else does, or what we have always done. I have been taking my van in for years to have fluid put in our differential because it leaks. Finally I thought I'd figure this out myself. I went to Checker told the guys what fluid I needed and asked them where I should put it. They walked out with me and showed me the one screw under my car to unscrew, pour the stuff in and put the screw back on. Why have I been paying someone to do that all these years?
-I needed our heater tuned up and green stickered. I looked everywhere to see if I could learn that myself and could not. I had heard an ad on the radio for a cheap green sticker and tune up price and I used them. And I followed the guy around to see what he was doing. Well, a tune up basically consists of vacuuming out the dust inside the heater. I can do that myself next time.
-I only shop at DI. And we love hand-me-downs.
-Sell that stuff you don't need. KSL is a great place to sell that cool thing you just only use 10% of the time. We sold our pool table, spare snow tires to a car we didn't have anymore, our extra set of wedding rings, old basketball hoop that no one used...Most of us think we have to hang on to everything. But it is really OK to be done with things and pass them on. So for me it's the 90%-10% rule. If something fits into the 10% category I don't need to buy it or keep it. Do I use it 90% of the time or only 10% of the time. Will this thing I want to buy help me 90% of the time or 10% of the time.
-Have a price book. Determine what price YOU are willing to spend for an item and try to get the item for less. I usually have a price per ounce for various types of food. For meat mine is $2/pound max boneless and .99 for bone in chicken. For cold cereal it is 10 cents/ounce, honey $2/pound etc. Your price will vary depending on if you will use no name items, if you only use organic items, etc.
-Savers has a 99 cents sale every Monday at 9am. Everything that has the featured tag color is 99 cents. I have found very nice (some still with the original tags on) items at these sales.
-Remember that just because it is in an ad does not mean it is a good price. Just because it is at Costco or the Dollar Store doesn't mean it is a good price either.
-Savers has a 99 cents sale every Monday at 9am. Everything that has the featured tag color is 99 cents. I have found very nice (some still with the original tags on) items at these sales.
-Remember that just because it is in an ad does not mean it is a good price. Just because it is at Costco or the Dollar Store doesn't mean it is a good price either.
-Never buy cleaning products you can make yourself. Why spend $2-3 on a can of Lysol when you can just use vinegar or hydrogen peroxide or bleach if you need something really strong.
-You are in charge of your money. Make it work for you! Tell it where to go and don’t let it be in control—YOU are the one in control! Be a wise steward! Laziness and poor planning are very expensive.
-If you save a dollar here, a dollar there, throughout the month, you could easily save hundreds every month. What would you do with all that extra money? Pay off debt? Contribute to fast offering? Purchase a grain mill or mixer that will help you save money for years to come?
No comments:
Post a Comment