Saving Cents

I love saving money! Don't ask me why because after reading Jeni's post here, I am not sure I want to answer that question. Here are some practical ways that my family goes about saving cents:

1) We buy and sell on Ebay and Craigslist. For example, my husband was wanting an office desk for home. He kept checking the newspaper ads and the desks were all so expensive. One afternoon while he was checking Craigslist he found one that said "free desk". He was excited but I told him that sometimes people put that in the ad heading just to get people to look at the ad and that there was no way the desk was free. I was wrong...the desk was free and all he had to do was go pick it up. Here is a picture of his FREE desk:

2) We shop at places like Bargain Depot and Aldi. Bargain Depot is a local store located in Lawrence, KS. If you haven't been there...do yourself a favor and check it out!!

3) I just recently hopped on the online banking bandwagon. It is so nice not to have to buy stamps anymore (or at least as many).

4) We buy generic or use coupons. I haven't done the generic vs. namebrand with coupon comparison. I should and then I would find out which is better. The problem is that most coupons are for food items, which don't help me too much because I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldi.

5) Walmart offers price matching. I have only taken advantage of this a couple of times, but it can really help. All you need is a copy of the sales ad showing the lower price on the same item and Walmart will match the price.

6) We rarely eat out...by rarely I mean two or three times a month. And when we do eat out I usually have a coupon or we pick a place with low prices.

7) We live outside of town and do not have the luxury of running to the grocery store every time we need something. This requires a little bit of planning to make sure the pantry is regularly stocked. I just started menu planning in 2011 and I love it. I plan our menus two weeks at a time and therefore go grocery shopping every other Saturday. We usually run other errands that day and so we try to map out our route so we spend our time (and gas) efficiently.

I hope that this post was enlightening and helpful and that I wasn't blabbing about things everyone already knows or does. If so, sorry to have wasted your time. If not, I hope you are able to take something away that will help you and your family be more frugal.