When you are feeding and raising a Medium Sized Family, you really have to be aware of waste and spending. I mean, we aren’t Washington D.C.! Here in the real world, we have finite resources to use.
With that in mind, here are 5 ways we’ve saved money this week.
Brown Bag Lunches
Sometimes we let the kids buy their lunch as a treat, but I generally feel like they can pack a good, healthy lunch for less than $2.50 per child. Each child chooses a fruit or veggie, a dairy (yogurt or cheese), a main course (sandwiches, muffins, wraps, etc.), and they are allowed one junk food item (sometimes). My hubby also packs leftovers to take to work rather than buying an expensive meal at the cafeteria.
Here are my best tips for packing lunches that make it more doable on a tight schedule.
Haircuts at Home
Let me preface this by saying that I hate cutting hair!! I always feel like I’m doing it wrong. It’s tough when your boys have stick straight blonde hair!
I often joke that when we win the lottery, the first thing I will do is start paying for haircuts. (Yeah right, at $60 per month I would probably still not want to waste that kind of money!)
All that said, we bought a set of clippers and recouped the money with the first round of haircuts. No one has complained of my “skills” yet, and it really doesn’t take much time to do each month.
Planting a Small Fall Garden
I was able to get seed packets of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, and some other fall growers for just 2 cents each. (Like us on Facebook if you’d like to learn about deals like this!) This fall we will have yummy salads without risk of recalls (that seems to happen a lot with store bought lettuce, doesn’t it?) and for the price of just pennies.
Planning Ahead
There were a lot of errands to run around here lately. I made sure to plan ahead so that we weren’t constantly buying food and drinks while we were out and about. Sticking with my plan to try to be less comfortable all the time!
I also have been making more effort to make breakfasts ahead of time. We have been stuck in a cereal rut for a long time, and I am finally at a place to make this more of a priority. This week we had Scrappy Baked Oatmeal, which is a great way to use up older pieces of fruit.
DIY Repairs
My hubby has been fixing up a lot of things around the house. This has saved us hundreds of dollars that we would have paid a handy man! When he is tackling a project, he often looks up YouTube videos to learn how to do it.
He also asks advice from people who have already done similar projects. We can sometimes make repairs using scraps of wood and things we had previously purchased, which saves us even more. I love the fact that he will attack a problem around here, even if he hasn’t done anything like it before!
Click here to see more ways we’ve saved money this week.
How did you do this week?
I'm Jamie, and I want to help you afford a beautiful life with your family. 
I love this. Though I’m not yet a mom and don’t have the added responsibility of extra mouths to feed, I did just find out that I would be losing 50% of my income this week, which definitely means having to tighten the belt. I am going to continue to try and make lunches at home and do some of the other things you mention here (though probably not haircuts, b/c I have a lot of it and lord knows how that will come out, HA!). Stopping in from SITS Sharefest and hope you are enjoying your weekend!
I love this list every week!
I planned errands for after lunch, too, so I wouldn’t eat on the road. I packed lunches. But my husband is no handyman, so we didn’t do that one.
I plan my suppers accordingly so my husband can have lunch for work the next day.
That’s a great idea. Sometimes everyone is extra hungry, and the leftovers I thought we were gonna have just aren’t there. I should separate his lunch before I put the food on the table so we know it’s there for the next day.
Great money saving tips. Thank you for linking up with #ShowcaseTuesday
I love the haircuts at home tip. I cut my husband’s hair. At first I was a bit nervous, but I found out I’m actually pretty good at it! Plus his hair grows so fast, you can’t even notice after a couple days ha.
You’re so right! That’s funny, because that’s what I usually tell my hubby. “Oh well, it will look better in a couple of days.”
Great tips! We save a ton of money by brewing coffee at home and investing in some good travel mugs, too. It doesn’t seem like much, but a $2.00 cup of coffee per day, five days is over $500 a year. That’s a lot of money!!
I just bought rosemary and basil plants so I don’t have to pay a fortune for the little sprigs at the grocery store. I also cut my daughters’ hair. Most of the time I do an okay job…LOL. I stopped going to Supercuts, etc because sometimes it would turn out great and sometimes not so great. If it’s going to be “not so great”, I can do that myself for free 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing at Share The Wealth Sunday
xoxo
Lisa
Great tips! When I fall away from meal planning, my checkbook truly shows it.
Mine, too! That’s why I try to keep it as simple as possible, because otherwise I’m too lazy to meal plan. haha! Thanks for visiting!
I always tell my hubby that if it wasn’t for him and his handyman qualities we would be in trouble. He saves us so much money!
These are things we tend to do on a regular basis, because resources are limited and we just don’t happen to be ‘rolling in the dough’, as they say lol
Nonetheless, Hun has a tremendous amount of skills in construction so, we definitely do most everything ourselves (or he does it and I help and support as needed). Hun, also knows a bit about car repairs, so he does our work when it comes to those things too.
Baby Boy and I were able to save a bit of money this week when we traveled out of town for our midwifery appointment, in that my dad prepared a pizza lunch for everyone. Plus, Baby Boy had a chance to hang out/play with his cousin, while I had a few moments to catch up with my sister! 🙂
So many great ideas. I also learned quick how to give everyone haircuts. It saves a bundle!!
Thanks for sharing on the Homestead Blog Hop. I hope we see you again today. Pinned and shared!