You already know what I’m about to say: prices have gone up for everything. Homes, cars, food, even football tickets. So what’s a mom to do when she’s in charge of the household budget? Sometimes it’s not enough to watch what your family is spending. These days, we are all feeling the pinch of inflation and having to be proactive about saving money here and there.
I hope these tips that I use in my everyday life will be a little bit of help to you:
1. Foaming Hand Soap
OK, this one is random, but I got this tip from a stay-at-home mom who raised six children of her own, so you know she has some money-saving tricks up her sleeve! She said you can make your own foaming hand soap with regular refill soap. The recipe is one part soap, two parts water, however that fits in your soap pump. You can buy really cute glass pumps or do like I’ve done and just buy the clear plastic containers of foam soap and then when they run out, refill them. What I love about this is that I’m not limited to the foam scents on the shelf. For example, I just refilled all the soap in my house with either apple or pumpkin soap for fall. One dollar bottle of apple Softsoap filled up four pumps and still has some left over because it barely takes any. I also like that it’s easier for my kids to spread and rinse the foam soap off of their hands and it makes it fun for them.
2. Meal Planning
Meal planning makes it so, so easy to save money on your grocery bill. And when I say planning, don’t be intimidated. I just mean you pick out as many meals as you want to eat at home for the week, write them down on a list or in your Notes app, and plug all the ingredients into your grocery shopping app for pick-up (which also saves money because you aren’t wandering around in the store!). I keep a running list in my Notes app, and then when I’m out of ideas, I can scroll back a few weeks and see what we haven’t had in a while.
3. One Grocery Trip a Week
I don’t know how common this is, but I only go to the grocery store once a week, and I normally don’t even go inside since I utilize the grocery pick-up because I don’t want to spend any more time than that on groceries. Budget-wise, grocery pick-up keeps me from spending extra money. It’s a time and money saver, but you have to meal plan if you’re going to make it work. I put in my grocery order on Sunday nights, and pick up on Monday mornings after I drop my oldest off at school. This is also the least busy time at my store for pick-up.
4. One Sam’s Club Trip a Month
Similar to my one grocery trip a week, I only go to Sam’s Club once a month. We all know the joke that’s actually so true it hurts: it’s hard to go into a store like Sam’s or Costco without spending $300 minimum, am I right? So why bust your budget by going in multiple times a month? If I buy meat there, it goes in the freezer. Even rotisserie chicken gets shredded and put in the freezer for recipes later in the month. And don’t forget to treat yourself to something from the café when you’re done shopping — talk about a deal!
5. Budget App
My final tip is to keep track of your monthly expenses in a budgeting app. You may need to print out a couple of months of bank statements first to get started with this, but once you get going, it gets easier to know what you can and can’t spend. It also makes it really easy to project spending for future months, especially if you’re saving up for something.
