In a family of 10, unless you have a system for shopping/ purchasing and using, it is very easy for expenses to get out of control. We easily go over about 1.5 gallons of milk in one day, and about 10 lbs chicken leg-quarters in just 2 meals. Now you know what I mean! In this post, I am elaborating on what all we try to do to save money.
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One golden rule we always try to follow is to always try to live within our means. If one adopts a lavish lifestyle that is beyond their means, it is very easy to fall into debt. God does not want us to be misers, but at the same time, He wouldn’t appreciate when we spend way more than what we should be. Teaching the value of money to our kids is something we should do, and in order to do so, we need to know the value of money ourselves.
First, on our spending habits. I cannot say either me or my husband are stringent at not buying much. We do have a tendency to buy most things we need, without making much sacrifices on that end. But we both have a good saving mentality, and we try our best to impart it to our kids.
First up, we only focus shopping few select stores. Being a busy family, it is not a good investment of our time to go to any random store to save few bucks by scrutinizing all the deals available. So we only shop at few select stores, but we make sure we maximise the savings in these stores.
Some things we do to ensure careful spending in general, and thus saving lots of money:
1) We rarely buy things that we know usually come on sale, for full price.We always buy things on sale, or on clearance. For example, there are certain things we know periodically come on sale in for example, Costco. We wait for the sale to come, and then go ahead and buy couple more to stock up, in an amount that we know we will end up using. Examples will be diapers, wipes, paper towels, toilet paper etc and many other non-perishables as well as even perishables including crackers, cereals, sliced cheese, lotion, etc. In a house of ten, toilet paper can go very fast, so we stock up when it comes on sale. Even snack crackers, or cereal, and the like. We always stock up on cereal when its on sale, as it finishes pretty fast!
Even though we buy these in bulk, we store them away and take out only according to necessity, and limiting what we take out at a time. Sometimes, even though a snack cracker just finished, and we still have some in our storage, we would wait a bit until we give out the next one. Just because we have more in storage, doesn’t mean we use it loosely. And we let kids know that too.
We periodically go through our inventory and see if there is something that won’t finish by the date. In that case, we make an effort to finish that first, or if we are very sure we won’t finish, we go ahead and donate before that date.
2) We do the same for school supplies and stationery items. We always buy any school supplies only during back to school sale, or clearance. We stock up on school supplies during sales, as we know we go through a lot per year. One example is cardstock paper which is always expensive full price. But it very often comes on sale at Michaels for more than half off. We buy only when it comes on sale, and then stock up. With school supplies also, it doesn’t mean I just hand over a new box of crayons every day if someone loses them. I try to postpone giving them another set until a reasonable time has elapsed. Otherwise they will never assume responsibility for caring for their stuff, and will take for granted that all these things are ‘always available’.
3) When it comes to clothes or shoes, we don’t go for top brands/ designer wear. We go for a reasonably good quality, and tend to buy clothes off season, when it comes on clearance or sale, sometimes even a dollar or 2 a piece! We buy sizes for the coming years. In a house with 5 boys average 2 years apart, we can be safe that we can end up using most boy clothes. In the event that we do end up not using, we happily donate them. We are not in favor of buying expensive clothes for kids, as they very rapidly outgrow them. Even in a case where you can use them as hand me downs, almost inevitably we end up having to replace often due to stains. We have had a lot of luck with finding good kids shoes at Target, on clearance, and we buy a few extra and bigger sizes, for the coming year. We also find good deals for clothes online at Macys.com, when they have free shipping or free pick up in store.
4) We take advantage of ‘after Christmas clearance’ to buy Christmas stuff for the following year. Prices can go down as much as 75-90%. We replace any ornaments that we need to buy, or any lights that are not working any more, by buying during this time. Same with Easter. Though we don’t officially celebrate Halloween, we buy costumes after Halloween for 50-75 % off, for pretend play.
5) For toys, we usually only buy new during Christmas time and their birthdays, and very occasionally throughout the year. Once a year, there’s a garage sale in our community and we participate. We usually find good gently used toys and even some bikes and scooters and other household items including gently used furniture. We constantly keep checking through our toy-bins and donate some as we get ‘new’ ones.
6) We rarely dine out. Mostly only when we are traveling. Instead, we do a family candle light dinner once a month with some fancy home prepared dish, which usually my daughter wants to make, along with a home-cooked dessert. Occasionally we buy a more expensive cut of meat for such dinners.
We almost never do emergency food takeouts or cater food for household use. We have a system for emergency backup home cooked meals. (I had mentioned it briefly in my post here)
7) We maintain a vegetable garden. My husband loves gardening and plants seasonal vegetables, so we rarely have to buy any during the summer months. This saves a lot of money and he finds it very relaxing. (Did you pick up that I said he’ finds it relaxing’? haha)
8) Whenever we go into any store, we always run by the clearance isles, just to see if there is anything worth getting. In Costco, most clearance items are interspersed between the regular items, but ends in 97 cents. Half Price books has a section of clearance books, where we have got great deals several times.
9) We have an Amazon Prime membership. We use the services a lot, and it is really worth! We get most of our reading books from Amazon or Half Price Books clearance sections. If we come across a book we check reviews, and compare the price on Amazon, and decide whether to get it from the store or Amazon. Amazon Prime shipping has become a huge life saver for us for emergency small things that are hard to go out and shop just for that, and things that are hard to find elsewhere or don’t know where to look for. HUGE time saver! In case you don’t have a membership, you can check it out by doing a one month free trial, by signing up here (affiliate link). We are great fans of Amazon!
How to save money on groceries?
The number one secret here, is to not have to buy anything last minute, especially meat. The only weekly grocery items we shop regularly is for perishable items such as fruits, veggies, milk, bread, which we get from local chain stores, including Kroger, HEB, Sprouts. All other things will also be bought throughout the week, but not because we need them that week. It is mostly things that come on sale, or have store coupons, that we buy to stock on. Also, for fruits and vegetables, we only buy in-season ones, whatever has a sale that week.
Whenever there’s something that is running out, or we need to buy, I update it in our Cozi app. I love Cozi, which is a shared family app, that can be used to maintain grocery lists. We keep several lists in it, for things we need to buy from specific stores, or to buy soon. That way, we can avoid a lot of reminders on the phone. My husband does all the grocery shopping on his way back from work, so he can just look in the app and know what needs to be bought, as soon as I update. Eg, If I open the last bottle of cooking oil, I immediately put in the Costco list, and he knows we need to get it next time he goes to Costco. This is how we maintain a constant supply of grocery related items even though it may not be something we need that particular week. Basically, we never ‘run out’ of things since we buy up front, and this gives a lot of lineage when it comes to planning meals, as most ingredients will already be at hand.
We buy bulk quantities of meat on sale, cut/ chop them up and freeze. This itself is a huge money saver, as to buy meat when not on sale can be quite expensive!
The best place to find deals for grocery will be the store flyers themselves. We rapidly go through the week’s grocery fliers ( on flip app) for the 3-4 main stores we buy grocery from, and decide which store to buy what from (mostly seasonal fruits and veggies). We also check for any additional store coupons that can be found in the apps for respective grocery stores.
Just remember to stock up taking your family size into consideration. If you stock up too much, it could happen you end having to discard stuff as you couldn’t finish it within the expiration date. So use your judgment!
Helpful Apps
We have found the following apps helpful for finding good deals:
Flipp- to find weekly store sales deals
Slickdeals- online deals
Cozi- shared family organizer that we use to maintain store specific shopping lists
I hope this provides some insight into numerous options available to save money, as God always wants us to be good stewards of the money He has given us.
I would love to hear what all tips you have to save money!