How We Save Money

everyone knows how hard it is to save money these days and that includes Nathan and i. with 3 kids, Nathan in school and me being the only one working to support us you might ask how the heck we do it! well i though i would blog about some of our money saving tactics in hopes that it may help someone else. if you have some of your own please share cause im not going to be able to fit all of mine in one single blog!

first i will tell you about our very inexpensive entertainment for the whole family. some times we might pack a picnic and go to the park or their are several water parks around here to all of which are free. other things we might do is go visit some of the local farms around here. our favorite is superstition farms (superstitionfarm.com). they have several mommy and me classes where they teach the kids how to make ice cream and cheese and butter all of which is fresh from the farm. they let you play with the animals and in season will allow you to watch a calf be born and walk for the first time. they let everyone roam the farm and play freely! there are so many things to do here!!

another thing we do is visit the zoo. usually its like $40 for all of us to get in but we buy a year pass for $75 and we can then go anytime we want. we have been known to go several times a week!!
we do the same at the Arizona science museum. we get a year pass for $85 which saves us alot of money. i think normally its $16-$20per person admission. they have a TON to do there and they are always changing their exhibits. the kids are free to touch and discover everything they have to offer!

we LOVE to watch movies but $10 a person is crazy! so we rent from redbox its only $1 a day and they have all the movies that have just been released every where else. its easy to go to redbox.com and find a movie at your nearest location and reserve it online free.

Nathan and i love to go out to eat but that can get expensive. so we go to restaurants.com and they have a huge selection of places to choose from. you go and find a restaurant you want and then you purchase a $25 gift certificate for only $10 and if you register for free you get a email offer every week for a $25 gift certificate for only $3 that's a crazy deal and we love it. we just print it out and then give it to our waiter.

Nathan and i have no interest in buying a house right now since he is in school so we decided to rent a nice apartment instead of a house so we could take advantage of the amenities. we shopped around for months and it was worth it! the first time we checked out the apartments were in now it was $920.00 for our 1200sqft apartment but we went back 1 month later and they were desperate for tenets and gave it to us for $560.00 a month! were in a nice safe neighborhood and they are luxury apartments so we couldn't be happier! we have 4 pools, a nice full gym, 2 parks and 2 lakes where the ducks often hang out and are eager for us to feed them. this allows us to have lots to do even when we cant think of much not to mention we save on gas and a gym membership!

not shopping on impulse is another way we save money. we do alot of online shopping when we can get free delivery. make up is something i prefer to buy online. i use elf.com to buy my makeup brushes. I've bought the $25 MAC brushes and i think elf.com is just as good and they are only $1-$3 each. they offer makeup as well which is comparable to most drug store makeup and everything is $1. i also go to buymebeauty.com and they sell Covergirl, Revlon etc for Clearance prices.

craigslist.com is our best friend!! we have bought all of our furniture everything but maybe a handful of items off craigslist and we usually trade our furniture for other furniture with someone else off of craigslist.com. its all clean and name brand. baby/kids items and the free section is probably our favorite. we buy new boxes of diapers off here to. just recently we bought 600 diapers for $72 off a lady who just didn't need them any more. that's a great deal. Costco sell a pack of 172 for $42ish. people also sell unopened baby food and formula as well for very cheap!

we are not afraid of the 99cent store! all the kids birthday supplies have pretty much come from the 99 cent store and we get pretty elaborate however we usually spent about $100 per child for their party and make most of the decorations, food, cake etc ourselves. we also buy all our holiday decorations from here aswell! we dont have a pet but they have a lot of name brand pet food, toys and treats here to!

we also make our own detergent and have learned how to save on fabric softener to. if you would like my recipes for this let me know and i would love to share them with you.

buying in bulk is something we do to and we eat very healthy. eating healthy doesn't have to be expensive. we also buy our tires from Costco as well.

were also apart of a food co-op. its $25 a basket packed full of fresh organic fruits and veggies. they also provide cheese, bread, grains, granola and much more. superstitionfarm.com is one place we go and boutifulbaskets.com.

we never stop for fast food. we cook at home and in bulk and ill usually freeze the other half of what we make.

when we shop at regular grocery stores we usually use Fry's food and drug. sometimes there items may be a couple cents higher but you usually end up saving more money if you use the Fry's gas stations (or ones that except their card) cause they will give 10cents a gallon off when you spend $100 at Fry's.

we also have always made our own baby food, and whole grain baby cerial which saved alot of money.

i cut all the boys hair myself and that alone saves us between $30- $40 a month depending where we go. if you don't know how to use clippers you can YouTube it and learn. its VERY easy!!

for my hair i go to a local beauty school to get mine done and costs me $10. i get one of the higher students and have never had a problem.

we save a ton of money shopping for shoes and clothes for us and the kids. Ross is a great place to save money. another thing we do is buy out of season. so when its winter we buy all the clearenced summer clothes and vice versa.

again we also buy clothes and shoes online. they usually have free shipping and you can usually find the clearances that are sold out at the stores. also if you google almost any website and put coupon behind it (ex clothes.com coupons) you can almost always find some sort of 10% off or even more. and we also use ebates which is a free online coupon for stores like target, barns and nobles etc. ebates.com

resale stores are great places to save money. they will buy your old name brand clothes or you can shop their selection of gently used name brand clothing. buffalo exchange and my sisters closet are just a few good places.

another thing we do is look up annual community consignment sales. they usually have a whole warehouse full of baby, kids and teen items for a fraction of the price you would find in the stores.you can google one in your area. alot of times we will set aside a weekend for yard sales. they usually post an add on craigslist so we can get an idea of who has what and how many families are involved.

children consignment stores are great to. we really like once upon a child. they are clean and have great deals not to mention their pretty organized, and wont bye any expired, recalled or blemished item.

not having cable saves us alot of money to. channel 8 shows appropriate cartoons from 630am till 4pm and i stay busy with the kids that i don't really have anything that i HAVE to watch. if i do want to watch something i can usually find it online. i know for a fact that apple (the comp/phone place) has Internet for $20 a month. you can pick up the wifi from your phone and use it for your computer. so if you get an apple phone with Internet you can cancel cox or whatever you have and get rid of your land line. it saves you money. look into it to see what the service is like in your area. if your not willing to do that you can slow your Internet service down. we did and saved $15 a month and i haven't seen a difference at all! also buying your cell phone off of amazon.com will save you money and you wont have to hassle with those mail in rebates either.

buying refurbished is also a good way to save money (google it) you can buy refurbished TVs, ipods, mac computers etc.

something else we have done is changed out our bulbs for energy saving ones....every penny counts!

we don't have credit cards and never have!!

a huge thing we do is do whatever we can to pay our car off in 1 year MAX! it makes a huge difference in the long run.

buy used and save the difference....when we paid off our 1st car we still made payments every month but instead to our bank account!

a locked saving or mutual funds is a life saver for us.... we put the "difference" in there and then we cant take it back out so really we just forget about it!

we have a rule before submitting an insurance claim. we wont submit a claim on a loss that is less then twice my deductible. so for a $250 deductible on a auto loss, ill pay out of pocket any loss up to $500. why?? the $250 id receive from my insurance company is not worth the increased premiums I'm likely to pay, but check with your insurance to see how your claim might impact your premiums before filing the claim.

so these are just a few things we do and i know their are MUCH more. like i said please feel free to share yours!!