Share your budget or money saving tips

[SuzySunshine]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

We do shop at Sam's for chicken, shrimp, chicken tenders, green beans, salmon and appetizers for entertaining - ALL are frozen and are cheaper then anywhere else I've looked. Yes, they're large bags but b/c they're frozen they'll keep. We also get milk there if we're there for something else.

The other thing I forgot are these green bags: https://www.greenbags.com/?cid=402572 You can get them online or at Bed Bath & Beyond. DH & I have saved SO much produce - it lasts SO much longer and they've easily paid for themselves.

[DCJenn]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

Sorry-

After Wally world starting covering Viagra for their male employees but not covering birth control, I made it my personal mission in life to make sure to NEVER cross their path.

Jenn

[Momo]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

:funnycry:

...the first thing that crossed my mind was an older man saying to his friend, "hey if we just work for the Walmart they'll pay for our Viagra"

[Tenacious_D]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

Sadly, we have a very short list of money saving tips:

- Buy our fruits and veggies from the weekly farmers market (good produce in the city can be pricey)
- No car, no gas, no parking etc so that saved us a lot of $$$...we sold the car the minute we moved to NYC
- Try to cook at home....we need to work harder on this
- Costco trips when we visit the in-laws they are really helpful and we still have products from our last visit to them in March
- Walking when possible instead of public transportation
- I let DH cut my hair....I don't care enough to spend $80 on a trim

[poky]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

Sorry-

After Wally world starting covering Viagra for their male employees but not covering birth control, I made it my personal mission in life to make sure to NEVER cross their path.

Jenn

Though I actually didn't know this *particular* tidbit, I'm not at all surprised by it; it's completely in character. What kills me is that they could have been a *paragon* of how to treat employees well, and still been the biggest retailer ever, just based on the rest of their efficiencies (some of which are really good and ingenious). But they've taken it way way too far, and I refuse to darken their doors just to save a few pennies.

I can afford to say that, though. I like to think that I'd hold to my principles if I was really counting pennies, that I'd rather do without and be able to live with myself, but I haven't been to that point, so... :huh:

[SuzySunshine]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

Our food budget has doubled in the last few months because of food prices and our only options are Wal-Mart, Hy-Vee and Target unfortunately we have to do cheapest. Once we're done with training I hope to never have to set foot in one of their stores again.

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

Ditto on the food prices doubling and the not wanting to shop at Wal-Mart. It puts me in an ethical bind.

In the last few months we have increased our food budget by half again what it was, and I'm still having trouble staying within it. I don't want to shop at Wal-Mart - but that goes for Target and any large retailer. For me, it's more an issue of wanting to support smaller, closer grocers & businesses (SO hard to even find them).

DH doesn't share my concern, and since he brings in the money and handles the bills, I'm shopping at Wal-Mart for now. But I heartily look forward to the day when I can pay an extra couple bucks a gallon to buy milk just down the road.

[Amiens]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

*********Disclaimer- I apologize if I am repeating, and some of this may sound extreme. This is what worked for us, and may or may not work for you. I admit that dh and I are cheap.******************

This is what we do now or did during residency-

- I have a price comparison log on our computer, so when sales come up, I can see if it is truly a sale, or marketing hype.

- I plan all of our meals, and buy only what we need. I budget $80-100 a week at our local grocer for a family of 6. We don't eat lavishly. I don't buy pre-packaged or pre-made things. I have found that it is cheaper to make our own salad dressings, croutons, and a couple of other things, because I get other uses out of the ingredients needed, and I already buy them. I have a friend who has a 30 day meal plan, and spends $150 a month for her family of 3. We actually have a store cheaper than Wal-mart, so I don't have to shop there.

- We have a food storage, and had a small one when we were apartment dwellers (we converted a large closet to hold it). I watch for things on sale, and then stock up. ie- name brand canned beans at Winco are great at 25 cents a can, very comparable to the generic.

- We buy milk and meat at Costco, as we found it to be much cheaper, in our area, than the 2 grocery stores (we have Winco and Albertsons). We also set a budget for Costco (about $200), and make a list for what we need to stock up on, if Costco has the better price.

- Regardless of how cramped we were, we rented apartments during residency, as houses were way out of our budget. When we bought a house we didn't go over board and bought according to our needs. The park was our yard.

- We had 1 car between the two of us for 7 1/2 years. Dh always rode his bike, walked, or took the bus in Seattle or Denver. We now have 2 cars, and dh rides his bike to work a few times a week to save on gas money.

- we ate out a few of times the whole time during residency. We eat out now, but limit ourselves to once a month. I will plan a nice meal at home for dh and I.

- we rarely go to the movies. We rent either from Netflix or our local library, which is free.

- We rarely buy books from the book store- we check them out from the library, and with our library we can put our names on a waiting list for a popular book, and when it becomes available it is held.

- During medical school and residency, we took advantage of the free dial-up internet connection offered by the university. We also didn't have cable, and had rabbit ears on our television. We would still use an antenna, but we can't get a signal in the boonies, so we have DirecTv. We shopped around and priced compared, and went with the most basic thing offered.

- We now have DSL, and I renegotiate our price when I can. I just got it cut in half. I also try to do the same with other services.

- Cell phone- we have a bare bones, no frills plan, one to cover only what we need, no text messaging, no web access, etc.

- This year we did a garden, and we were successful at carrots, so I think we will have quite a bit to get us through the winter.

- clothes: I buy them for myself every 2 years, and a small amount at that. The kids, when they were babies I shopped at second hand stores, and never bought a piece of clothing that cost more than $5. Because I knew we were going to have more children, I kept all of their clothes, and still do. I am starting to rid of our baby stuff. Lorien and Reed get all of Emma and Brigham's hand me downs. Now that Emma and Brigham are getting older and I am finding the selection of quality clothes at resale stores very limited, I am shopping the clearance ($5-$10) Old Navy, Gap and last year I splurged and bought Emma a few outfits from Hannah Anderson. She will be able to wear those again for 2 more years.

- I try to take very good care of what we have, so I don't have to buy it again. I also am more willing to spend more money up front on a higher end product, than purchase the same item over and over. Our vacuum cleaner is a prime example of this.

- We keep our thermostat turned down low in the winter, and higher in the summer. We were fortunate during medical school and residency to live in apartments where we only paid telephone, and electricity.

- I cut dh's, and the boys' hair. I used to cut Emma's hair until she decided to do a hack job on herself, so now every few weeks I take her to have her hair evened out.

- we don't drink alcohol or coffee, and so I know that is saving us a chunk of change. We had friends in Seattle who would tells us about the swanky restaurants they would go to, and when my friend would get to how much the tab came to, she would say "Well you'll save a bunch because you won't have drinks."

- we look for fun, FREE, activities to do- hiking, art festivals, parks, story time at the library. My two older one didn't go to preschool when we were in residency and didn't do any extracurriculars. Seattle was great for free things- story time, free preschool through the local high school's child development program, music and movement through the library, etc.

- sad to say but during residency- if it cost money we didn't do it. We missed out on a lot of Seattle- SAM, the Symphony, restaurants, etc. Even now, we limit ourselves- one play Shakespeare Festival, etc.

- we don't do dental insurance, instead we sock away the money we would spend on dental insurance each month, and then pay out of pocket for dental services. FIL is a dentist and says dental insurance is a waste of money- you end up paying more than you would if you pay out of pocket.

- we won't go into debt for anything, no money, oh well. Pay for it when we can. We also plan for the future, if we know our tires are going to need to be replaced, then we figure out how much, and determine how long it will take to save up.

- During medical school I worked and we saved that money for emergencies. During residency we took 5-10% of our paycheck to save for emergencies.

- Craig's List, Newpaper Ads, Donation Stores (Goodwill, St. Vincent de Paul, Deseret Industries) for furniture and major baby items. I found a guy who is building me a cabinet cheaper than it would be to buy some piece pre-fabricated in China.

- toy swap- we have swapped toys with friends and neighbors- kids get new toys without the price tag.

- my latte factor- magazine subscriptions- I am starting to let magazine subscriptions lapse, and whittle it down to 3 or 4, instead of the 10-15 that I have.

- Christmas time: 3 gifts each. This year I am making the kids each something, and will buy them one thing from the store. I am sick of the consumerism of Christmas. Plus we will be taking 3 things each from our toy area and donating them. We talked about doing one gift each, as our kids are #2, #5, #7, #10 of 11 grandchildren on dh's side, and the only gk on my side. So they are spoiled rotten by their grandparents. I have also thought about having them not send toys but keep them at their place so the kids have something to play with when they come to visit.

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

The only thing I can think of that has not been mentioned already:
I often cook for 4 or 6 instead of 2. Leftovers get frozen or we eat them the next day.
I also stay well clear of Whole Foods these days, and am close to caving in and checking out Walmart for food.
Grocery spending is a big stressor for me these days. I started a money saving recipes thread in the recipe forum, please share your ideas frugal ones!

[rockgirl]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

other than what has been said to save money we/I...

- have a hair cut seldom...maybe once a year if that often at the local hair school for about $10 and keep it a little longer so I do not need to go often

- buy our gas at the club store BJ's (usually ~20 cents cheaper per gallon) Also diapers, wipes and other household staples are much cheaper here.

- use credit card points for big items we would not be able to afford (digital camera, jogging stroller, etc) especially if you only use the card to buy gas and food every month and pay them off, the points can accumulate very fast.

-ask for gift cards for holidays/birthdays or have specific requests so you are not accumulating unwanted items and prevents you from having to purchase things you need or could use. keeping a current list helps...... we already have requests from family for gift ideas for ds for the holidays.

-check out library passes for local museums, the zoo or other entertainment. many are free for us and some are available at substantially discounted rates

- only purchase what you can afford..... we are working on this one and not doing so well... we were better at it in med school than residency even though our income has increased.

[TulipsAndSunscreen]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

I know this isn't for everyone but we actually run to and from the grocery store. We are marathon training so we run a lot and we'll run to and from with backpacks. We've run to CVS too.

We've joined local farm shares and this winter, we'll get our beef from a cow pool. We invested in a chest freezer and we buy whatever meat is on sale that week.

We never let veggies/fruit go bad. Most past-ripe things can get frozen in the freezer until you have time to make bread, etc. (especially with bananas).

I pool the anatomy lab laundry with another med spouse to be so we're only doing one load of "dead laundry" as I call it since nothing else can get washed with it.

[alison]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

One haircut ... over one year? I don't think I could swing that. I've got so much and it grows so fast. The added amount of shampoo I'd have to buy by letting it grow out would easily pay for a second haircut.

We save a ton of money by living in small apartment in a city where we have one car that we use seldomly. Or course, we walk lots and don't exactly save money at our destination. Starbucks and both Barnes and Noble and Borders are within a 5 minute walking distance.

[Auspicious]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

I have never found a generic or an 'environmentally friendly' laundry or dishwashing detergent that worked so having to wash things multiple times is even more of a waste!

Jenn

I know this is OT but Seventh Generation DW detergent has to be the worst detergent out there. I might as well use dirt instead of it, it would wash them the same. My DH who doesnt do much in the kitchen insisted we go back to cascade.

Quick shout-out for Palmolive Eco for the dishwasher. I don't know how eco it actually is (it's phosphate-free, it says) but it works way better than the seventh gen or Trader Joe's powders, and it doesn't seem to etch our cheap glass dishes the way cascade was.

[Auspicious]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

Make your own baby food. I've gotten by without buying any special equipment for this, I think--$12 stick blender I already owned and ice cube trays I already owned have gotten us through. Gerber must have quite the profit margin on some of their items!

Loving this thread.

[DCJenn]

Re: Share your budget or money saving tips

Honestly, my biggest savings in food is at the commissary. Those of you who are eligible and don't go- it's just incredible the savings.

and at least at the Ft. Sam commissary, the quality of the food has drastically improved. and I still do the delivered organics once a week or so but the commissary is the place to go for frozen stuff, staples, etc. and the bakery is just as good as any other grocery bakery.

Jenn

And Peggy, Rapunzel, etc- you need to find out when they do their case sales. Holy Moly you can get a lot of food for cheap. We don't bother w/ cases of stuff because it's just three people but anyone with a bigger family could do well.