Going into the new year, I try to fall back on my finance background to save us money we spent on holidays and birthdays throughout the previous year. Since I am working part time now, to raise our kids and be available to them more, I'd like to share some of our money saving and finance tips I've used to help my family save a ton of money. I hope that at least one of these can help your family do the same. First, trim the fat. Anything you aren't using or that you have extra of, sell. This includes Dvds, books, or collectibles. I've used Craigslist, garage sales, and amazon to make hundreds of dollars this year. I'll go more in detail to specific programs later in this post. Also, what can you do well? Sew? Bake? use your talent to make gifts and let it be your trade mark. I took a year of cake decorating for fun, my resolve for the upcoming year is to offer to bake cupcakes or a cake for all holiday parties and birthdays in my family in exchange for buying a gift. This will save us a ton of money as I have four neices and nephews as well as Mom, Dad, and Aunts, Uncles. Whether its candles, baking bread, or sewing something, make it instead of buy it. That reminds me of a friend who sews, she hasnt bought new clothes in years but her children dress quite stylish. She alters all their clothes,, dyes them to give them a different look(costs about 2 bucks for dye)..sews on different buttons, alters pants into shorts for summer, and adds patches or designs to shirts.. sHe also exchanges their clothing at consignment shops(they have name brands and in exchange you get a store credit to shop)..those of us with kids know they always want the newest games or toys..its never too early to start teaching them about financial responsibility.When my kids want a new video game, we exchange it at Amazon through their trade-in account. They advertise which games they are accepting(or books or dvds) and how much they will pay. They pay for shipping and in about a week you receive a gift card for amazon. We do alot of our shopping like this. Some people use Gamestop but Ive heard that Amazon pays higher. As an avid reader, I also use paperbackswap.com its a free site that you swap books with other readers for free. As for in the home, there are MANY money savers. My electric bill was $700 so I had a free energy audit(if your bill is too high, request a free audit from your electic co.) and they found my extra fridge in the garage was costing me about $40 a month(it was too old)..heat was escaping through windows not properly lined, and the biggest shocker was that appliances that stayed plugged were using electricity even when not in use! The playstations, and especially cell phone chargers were the worst, costing up to .25 cents a minute even when not being used. My bill dropped from $700 the first month, to $270 the second and kept dropping. It is now under $80 every month. I changed all lightbulbs to LED costs more but saves over 25% on your total bill. Also we turned our water heater down and this shaved off another 20-30 bucks a month(your not using as much energy to heat the water if its not as hot) also cutting down on shower times and making sure kids dont fall asleep with lights/tv on..fixed this by taking tv out of little ones room and installed an appliance timer to cut off all running appliances in older kids rooms by 1130 pm. I see many of my neighbors still have their sprinkler on even though its raining the past three weeks? go figure..I have mine come on every other day for 5 minutes just in case we dont get rain, nothing will die.Also, the pool guy still coming at 80 bucks a month, once i figured out how to treat my own pool(fireyourpoolguy.com) we saved a ton of money on chemicals and cleaning.We dont swim during winter so only need to dump in chlorine to ward off bacteria from growing and use a huge tarp as pool cover to keep out debri. If you have credit cards, take them out of your wallet and put them up. You will be less likely to use them at a sale at the mall if you dont have them. They should be for emergency use only. Also call the number on the back of each card and tell them your considering leaving their company, but wanted to know if you can have a rate reduction and talk to a supervisor if necessary. You can do this with most cable companies and cell phones as well. I no longer use a phone company for residential, but bought magicjack for $40 and this is how we make all calls long distance or otherwise..it goes through your computer. You can also use Skype for free( a computer program to make calls).. Of course we pack our lunches and make our own coffee at home as well as take our own soda when we leave. Aside from groceries, theres no reason to consistantly spend money at drive throughs or convenience stores and we are teaching this to our kids as well. I have no room for planting in my backyard, but I do grow vegetables in terra cotta pots so this is one less thing we have to buy. Tomatoes and bell peppers grow with hardly any maintenance and are even growing now approaching winter time. We order our food through angelfoodministries...for anyone who doesnt know, look at their webpage and you will see that a bundle of food worth 65 dollars is about 31 dollars..its not qualifying and one bundle can feed a family of four for a week. It includes fresh/frozen foods, eggs, vegs and even a dessert. You can pay with credit card or food stamps and order online then pick up. I cut our food bill down by hundreds because we eat what I order, not what we want when we go into a store and are lured by advertisments or ploys such as bread baking and chickens roasting. Check and change vents/filters on heating/cooling units, dryers and refrigerators, again this will cut your energy bill down alot. Any memberships your not using, cancel..if you have your car , home and health insurance all at different places, consider changing to only one because you usually get pretty good discount. Have them give you a rate quote to compare. This goes for health insurance especially. It cant hurt to shop around and see where you can save at. Get your Christmas shopping done, right after christmas. I spent an average of $5 per child for my neices and nephews for pjs, art kits, and bath items..normally these itemsa costs $30 but were on sale 75-85% off right after christmas. So for $30 total I got them all 2-3 gifts and put them up for the next year. Oh i forgot to add, did you know you can improve your gas milage by 5% if you have the correct amount of air in your tires? Also drive slower to get more gas milage, did you know every 10 miles per hour you drive over 60 is like the price of gasoline going up about 54 cents a gallon? If you have more than one student loan, consolidate it into one and this usually offers a lower interest rate. If you are working less than 30 hours a week, or on unemployment, call your loan company and request a hardship deferrment. I did this and my payments of $330 a month have been suspended for 6 months. (use this money wisely dont spend it, I put mine into a high yield CD for 6 months).. Use coupons for everything..you would be amazed how this cuts your bill. If you subscribe to any magazine, ALLYOU is worth it, I get coupons for up to $5 off of makeup , and many many groceries and bath products. I have some sites that Ill give you that you can use for many free products. I encourage you to also sign up for free products. I have gotten coffee, toothpaste, vitamins, and diapers to name a few.They come in handy when your in between shopping. I am a Teacher and always refer parents to cramster.com for free homework help. Tutors are expensive! Also for free graph paper go to graphpaper.us
Your kids can practice the SAT or ACT for free at number2.com
You can also take free college classes at ocw.mit.edu MIT OpenCourseWare is a Web-based publication with most of MIT’s courses and exams, and it’s available to everyone. You can get one free credit report a year at annualcreditreport.com
Enroll your child aged 1-12 in the toyrus program for birthdays and they get a card and gift on their bday..trubdayclub.com Burgerking kids club also offers a free kids meal on their bday and also free cone at BAskin robbins, go to their sites to sign up and the birthday meal and dessert is covered!
I have a ton of more tips, if you have a specific question I can try to research for you or find you more free sites to use..but sleep is calling me so I'll post more another day.
Once I learned to live on less, we had so much extra money but dont spend it foolishly now. I hope that you can do the same so you can enjoy what matters most in life..Your relationships!
Goodnite!
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