When I was pregnant and planning on the finances of having a child and hopefully affording to become a stay at home mom, I decided that I needed to figure out where our money was going each month. I’d heard advice over the years that a great way to get a hold of your finances was to keep track of every dollar you spent for at least three months in a row. Doing that would give you a great overview of exactly how much you made and exactly where that money goes.
Knowing where your money goes each month is really eye-opening. For us, I was truly shocked at how much money we spent on groceries! We are admitted ‘foodies’, but that monthly grocery bill was a little out of hand. Once we were able to see in black and white how much we spent we were easily able to widdle down our grocery bill into a manageable sum. And now we divert that saved money into our savings account. The story held true in many of our other categories as well.
The difficult part of keeping track of our expenses was actually finding a spot to keep track of it all. At first I tried using an actual notebook, which was a great big mess and a pain to add up. Then I tried Quicken, but quickly found that was too complicated and I couldn’t layout my categories like I wanted and print them out as I wanted.
So I decided to be resourceful and I created my own Excel spreadsheet that would add, subtract and divide everything I wanted it to do.
Fast forward four years and I’m still using the same spreadsheet, with a few small updates. I don’t keep track of our expenses every month these days, because I’m familiar with our spending habits, but I do track them every two months or so to make sure we are staying in line.
If you’ve been procrastinating on keeping track of your finances or have been searching for the perfect budget spreadsheet then sign up to receive our free budget spreadsheet! Enjoy!
Oh, and if you’ve been thinking of becoming a stay at home mom read this article to see if you can afford it.
While the rest of the country goes shopping today. I recommend that you do the opposite and save money by taking advantage of free stuff! One way to save money on a baby is to sign up with different companies that offer free coupons, trials, samples, etc. In addition to Shopping for Two’s Free Baby Stuff page, here are two sites I recommend signing up with:
Babies Online
This is a really nice site that not only will send you free offers as they come up but will also send you info about your growing baby with personalized weekly calendars, calculators, articles & information. ALL 100% FREE! Can’t beat that.
Sign up here: Free Stuff For New & Expectant Parents!
Baby to Bee
Baby to Bee is another great website that collects all sorts of free baby related offers and sends them to you via e-mail.
Sign up here: FREE stuff for any Mother or Father-to-be!
There are so many good things to share with you this week!
Saving on Groceries
First, Mindi at Moms Need to Know explains all about how to create a price book for saving money on groceries. I kept a rudimentary price book for a while about two years ago because I have a horrible memory for numbers. I only kept about 25 things that we regularly buy jotted down in a notebook. This helped me figure out which grocery store or Costco carried the item for the cheapest price. I’d also make a note when the item went on sale and for how much. Once I got the hang of where the best deal was I stopped keeping up with the price book. However Mindi’s post has made me think that maybe it’s a good time to re-price everything.
If you don’t already menu plan, you might want to take notice of Blissfully Domestic. Every week now they are doing a weekly planning menu complete with photos, links to recipes and shopping lists! How fantastic. And I’m now craving ‘Brinner‘!
Money Saving Mom is a great guest post about cooking for your freezer. We only have the freezer unit that comes with our fridge, so we only have so much room. However we do always keep at least a few frozen dinners in there for last minute uses. We also keep extra pork chops, steaks and frozen bags full of our garden produce. I will always recommend to any expecting mom that you fill up your freezer with a bunch of quick dinners for when the baby is born. One less thing that you have to think about.
Making a Little Extra Cash
Also from Money Saving Mom has a great little list of Five Simple Ways to Earn a Little Extra Cash. I already started to bundle up my change with my preschooler last week. He loved helping me sort and stack. We talked about how we are going to take this to the bank to deposit. So far in only a half and hour of coin counting we made about $55! Not bad. And I hadn’t heard of the Cash4Books before. I have a handful of books that I’ve lost interest in. I’m certainly going to take advantage of this great website.
Saving on Car Insurance
One of the things I advise when you are trying to cut back on your spending is to look at all of your regular monthly expenses and see how you can dwindle them down (you can read more here). I’m Will Teach You to be Rich shares some very detailed tips on how you can save money on your car insurance. He gives you actual dialogue that you can use when you call around to get quotes. I’m the worst at negotiating so any help I can get is appreciated!
I thought I would share with you today a few places where I regularly go to save money. Where are your favorite places to go that save you money?
Diapers.com
About a year ago, we made the switch to using Seventh Generation diapers exclusively when we use disposables. I just like how incredibly soft they are, how they don’t use bleach which can be harmful to babies, and how devoid they are of commercial cartoon characters. The only downside is that they can be expensive, but by using Diapers.com, they are only a penny or two more expensive than other cheapers brands. Diapers.com not only is cheap, but if you order over $50 worth, shipping is free and even though I choose Ground delivery my order ALWAYS shows up at my doorstop the very next day! Incredible. You have to give them a try.
Coupons.com
I admittedly don’t use coupons as much as I used to because over the years our eating habits have changed so that the products we buy don’t usually have coupons. But when I do need a name brand product I always check coupons.com to see if they have a coupon. They send you a list of new coupons each week and it’s so easy to print them out and bring them to the store with you. Save on Groceries - Download the CouponBar and never miss another offer!
Sierra Trading Post
I had heard of Sierra Trading Post from a friend a while back, but came upon it again recently when Soulemama bought her kids socks through them. I immediately had to go and order my boys some SmartWools sock and boiled wool slippers too and now I’m addicted. I’ve bought quite a few Christmas presents from them and love the bargains I’m getting. Plus they e-mail you special coupons to save an additional 30%+!
CoolSavings.com
Before I buy anything online, I always do a quick online coupon search. It takes seconds and frequently I’ll find a 20% off code or free shipping code. It’s worth it. CoolSavings has a nice list of online coupons along with grocery store coupons too. Sign up for the e-mails so you can keep up on all the sales.
I’d love to hear where you go to save money.
There’s been so much great stuff going on in the world of personal finance blog lately. Here’s a few of my favorite things:
Many of you have already signed up to receive our free budget spreadsheet, but recently this new way of budgeting has caught my eye. It’s called the Balanced Money Formula created by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi in their book, All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan.
The basic principle is that no more than 50% of your after-tax income should be spent on necessities, such as your mortgage, utilities, food, transportation etc. Then 20% should be put into savings and the remaining 30% should be spent simply on the things you want. Doesn’t that make things easy? Get Rich Slowly has a great further write up with charts, if you’d like to read more.
I will admit if you are a stay at home parent living on one income, having your needs only take up 50% of your take home money is tough. But keeping your spending in percentages is a nice way to work. Maybe at this point in your life 80% of your take home salary goes towards needs, 10% towards savings and 10% towards wants. Or 80% is needs, 15% wants and 5% goes towards savings. You can see how you can customize it for your current financial situation and as time goes on you can work towards the 50-30-20 principal.
I think this is a great concept because it makes living with in a budget much simpler and can’t we all use a little more simplicity in our busy lives? I also like how this method of budgeting gives you a generous 30% to spend on things that you simply want. As you know, I love to be frugal, but I also like to indulge in the occasional luxurious baby item or that seasonal pumpkin spice latte when the mood arrives.
How do your percentages look? What do you think of this budgeting method? If you are searching for the perfect easy to use budget spreadsheet, take a look over here.
I’ll be the first to admit that I like to be frugal. I realized years ago when I chose Art as my major in college that I probably wasn’t going to be making a ton of money during my career so I would have to learn how to stretch the money I had to the best of my ability. During my working out of the home years I saved as much as I could which has served us well during this time of me being at home more with the kids.
I love seeing how much I can save with a sale and I try and use coupons at the grocery store when I get the chance. Luckily there are plenty of wonderful frugal blogs out there that I can indulge in when it comes to learning about how to better manage my money. I want to share these great links with you to inspire you too:
Once a Month Shopping-Save More by Shopping Less by Get Rich Slowly
Enjoy a Simple Christmas with a Well Planned Budget by Simple Mom
A Penny Saved is… $6,977.03! by A Dollar Plan
Works For Me: Cheap Haircare by Rocks in my Dryer
What are your favorite frugal blogs to read?
