Typically, it’s not the big purchases that put your budget over the edge. It’s the small ones. We don’t notice these as much, but they add up. Suddenly, your fairly decent income is gone. I’ve blogged about my friend who is faced with bankruptcy while having a combined family income of 100K earlier.
Today and tomorrow, I’d like to share some tips from another friend, Rene, who lives on a scant 33K, and is a single mom. She’s got a great FICO score and makes ends meet for three dependant kids as a self-employed medical transcriber working out of her home. She’s widowed. When her husband died eight years ago, he had only enough life insurance to cover burial. With nothing but a social security income (at a pittance) for her kids, and no savings built up, Rene has made it successfully for a decade on a single parent income.
Here are her tips:
- Start looking around at every source of spending you do monthly by keeping a small notebook in your purse, car or by the computer and log where every dime goes. Do this for a month and then group your spending by utilities, food, extras, housing, medical, insurance, etc.
- Take a look at the extras you’ve dropped cash on and consider what they are. In my case, I was dropping a lot of money with my kids for after school drive up snacks. They’d come out of school ravenous. We often had errands to do, which meant we weren’t going home for a while. It seemed easy to just stop at the drive up to grab a quick item off the dollar menu. I realized I was spending about $50 extra dollars a month on these stops. Instead, I packed the car with wholesome nutrition bars and zip lock bags of cereal. I keep fruit by the door to take with me before I pick the kids up also. On average I purchase $20 worth of snacks (granola bars, raisins, apples, rice cakes, and seasonal fruit) monthly and have cereal here on hand. Now when we run errands, they’ve got better, healthier snacks and I’ve saved at least $30.00 a month or $360 a year.
- Save on gas by mapping your route in advance. We live in an Amish community and I’ve learned a lot from watching them. Amish women pay a driver to haul them into town once a month for necessary errands. Every time you make an extra stop, you’ve lost time, gas, and usually money- since frequent stops almost always account for impulse purchases. Go with an agenda, map your route and buy what’s needed for longer periods of time.
- Use the internet for as many purchases as possible, because you’ll save on impulse buying. With no kiosks to seduce you into purchases, it’s more likely you’ll spend less. Many retailers offer free shipping on all orders or those orders over a certain amount. Staples, Drugstore.com, CVS online, K-mart, Wal-Mart, and Amazon are examples of this. I can buy most of what I need from these retailers, pay no shipping for qualifying orders and stick to a budget. Most months, produce, meat, dairy and groceries are all I buy in a physical retail store.
- Limit shopping with kids. Seriously, this saves. Sometimes the urge to spend, when looking in small begging eyes, is overwhelming. If you have several children, and allow each one a few “extras” usually you’ve spent more than you planned. Another option, as my kids get older and understand budgeting, has been to allow each kid a dollar amount for an extra or to rotate who picks the breakfast cereal or other item. However you do it, stick to a budget.
Tomorrow, more tips from this successful saving’s mom!