Like every­one these days we’ve been find­ing ways to save money. There are some­times easy ways we’ve found to help us save money. And we didn’t need to go liv­ing off the grid to do it, they were sim­ple changes.

1. Cook­ing on a Bud­get: When I wrote the post about Cook­ing on a Bud­get I did so because I believe it is the eas­i­est way to save money & the fastest way to spend it when you aren’t pay­ing atten­tion. Food can really eat up more of your money that you think it will. When we didn’t go in with a plan, bud­get, and cook more at home we spent tons of extra money. I swear we spent just as much if not more money BEFORE we had kids as we do now that we are a fam­ily of 6. Before we bought lots of frozen meals, didn’t plan or bud­get, & we ate out more. Chang­ing those habits alone was a mas­sive cost savings.

2. Util­ity Bud­get Plans: We real­ized that we had months were some util­i­ties were higher and oth­ers were very low or nonex­is­tent. We called & found out we could do a bud­get plan. This means we pay the same amount of money EVERY month & we know exactly how much to bud­get. If you aren’t able to do a bud­get plan with the com­pany, then cre­ate your own bud­get plan & stick to it. Fac­tor in pay­ing the same amount every month & pay it.

3. Turn down the ther­mo­stat: OK, I know every­one says to do this, but seri­ously it can add up. We just turned it down by 3 degrees and we are still com­fort­able. No one is freez­ing his or her tushie off & we save money on our bill.

4. Turn off the TV: Not only does the TV use extra energy and that WILL add up on the elec­tric bill increas­ing your util­ity costs but it also is a time sucker. Turn­ing it off a few hours a day gives you more time to do things (like cook at home, read a book, get out­side to enjoy some fresh air) and it saves money.

5. Check out your local libraries: I use to spend SO much money on books. Now I make use of the local libraries & don’t spend a penny. Our libraries also allow you to use your card at a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent pub­lic libraries. It’s great for the kids and cre­at­ing a day out as well. Just make sure you are turn­ing the books back in on time.

6. Drink Water: When you drink water more often you save money on filler drinks like soda/pop and you get to see if you are really hun­gry or if you are eat­ing out of bore­dom sav­ing money on extra food. It also helps you feel bet­ter to rehy­drate & you might lose a few extra pounds that those drinks are adding on.

7. Can­cel any unused mem­ber­ships and extra ser­vices: If you are one of those folks who has a mem­ber­ship that is going to waste to the gym or some other ser­vice then can­cel it. We had a ser­vice that was auto­mat­i­cally billed and it was to have a debit card. But it was an account we don’t use, it’s only a sav­ings, while it was a small fee a month it added up over the course of a year. Can­cel­ing that fee saved money that can now stay in our savings.

8. Dis­tin­guish a need from a want: Prob­a­bly the hard­est thing in our mate­ri­al­is­tic cul­ture. I know I strug­gle with this but tak­ing an extra two min­utes can make a HUGE dif­fer­ence. Ask your­self if you need what you are buy­ing? Do you already have some­thing that would work? Could you wait to buy it and come back a week later? (often you’ll find that you don’t even want it a week later). It helps with impulse want buys to do this, Tar­get & Costco were my places that I had the worse time with. I would see some­thing, think it was a need when really it was a want. For Hubby it’s Home Depot, we all have our weak spots.

9. Shop with a list: We use this when shop­ping for gro­ceries and any­thing else now. It is another tool to dis­tin­guish a need from a want & keep us on track. It only takes a few sec­onds to make a list but it can save hours of worry over a bill or short­age on cash later in the month.

10. Use Cash: A good way to save money because when you have cash, actual paper money in hand, you spend less. Hand­ing over cold hard cash for pur­chases makes us think about the pur­chase more and we are more likely to shop within our means. Debit cards, even though they come out of our bank accounts, don’t have the same out­come for us. I know that for Hubby he didn’t think about the lit­tle pur­chases on that debit card (that add up!) but with cash in hand he does. We also think more about big pur­chases if we are using cash ver­sus credit or even a debit card.

What easy ways do you save money?

Tech­no­rati Tags: bud­get, finance, fru­gal, money, save

I am start­ing to fig­ure out to edit pho­tos for this blog and just because I’d like to have more pol­ished pho­tos of our fam­ily mem­o­ries. I don’t have the abil­ity to buy a pro­gram to edit pho­tos right now. I would love to get Adobe Pho­to­shop and learn it in more detail. I have putzed around with Pho­to­Shop in the past but never gone in depth with it. But as of now I’m learn­ing on a free pro­gram until I fin­ish sav­ing for PhotoShop.

We also don’t have a fancy cam­era. It would be AWESOME to get one like one of the many Nikon dig­i­tal SLR cam­eras that I’ve been drool­ing over (seri­ously DROOLING–Costco is going to ban me from the cam­era sec­tion). BUT cur­rently we have a basic dig­i­tal cam­era, I believe the pic­ture I’ve been edit­ing is with the cur­rent Canon Pow­er­Shot A530 we use. No fancy addi­tional gad­gets with it.

Any­way after play­ing around a bit I highly rec­om­mend giv­ing Paint.Net a try if you are look­ing for a way to edit pho­tos. It is designed for Win­dows 7, Win­dows XP, or Win­dows Vista (SP2 or newer) or a Win­dows server (2003 SP1 or newer). And while it is lim­ited in com­par­i­son to Adobe’s Pho­to­Shop, it’s still a pretty good pro­gram for free.

I decided to post it because I thought that it could be good for some of you who are look­ing for a fru­gal way to learn photo editing.

Reminder that I’ve ONLY been play­ing with it a LITTLE AND I ONLY have a basic dig­i­tal cam­era. I AM NOT A PRO. In fact, I am sure oth­ers when look­ing at these ini­tial attempts will think I could have done a lit­tle a lot bet­ter. I don’t dis­agree because I AM STILL LEARNING!

Here is an orig­i­nal photo from when we took a fam­ily vaca­tion 2 years ago. We went up to the north of our state. It is beau­ti­ful there. We took a few pic­tures that were scenic. I decided to play around with a photo that I loved because it has a beau­ti­ful scenery and sim­ple farm in the shot. You all know how I love the sim­ple life fan­tasy, even though I’m a city girl.

Then I played around a lit­tle with con­trast, sharp­en­ing, and bright­en­ing the photo. I did crop it and straight­ened it. I wanted to try to make the pic­ture pop. The shot then looked like this:

After that I took the photo and played with the sepia func­tion. I wanted a feel of a news­pa­per photo, from the turn of the cen­tury, that had aged. Cap­tur­ing how the world has changed. That adjust­ment turned out like this:

I’m only begin­ning to fig­ure out how to use the pro­gram and I’m really impressed with what it can do for free. And so I wanted to pass on the infor­ma­tion to any­one out there who is inter­ested in edit­ing pho­tos but may be cash strapped. I plan to adjust some of the fam­ily pho­tos we have too. I’m look­ing for­ward to hon­ing my cre­ative skills.

Tech­no­rati Tags: edit­ing pho­tos, fru­gal, paint.net, pho­tos, pho­to­shop

Pic­ture Cour­tesy of www.bigfoto.com

We’ve been try­ing to stick a bud­get for our gro­ceries and my back to school refo­cus on health will again be an essen­tial part of that. Our stay­ca­tion this week­end in just another way to pro­vide a lot of options to reduce costs–like camp outs, cook outs, & find­ing inex­pen­sive local fes­ti­vals. The joys of shar­ing food can­not be beat. I really believe food has heal­ing & bond­ing pow­ers, so hav­ing good food to share as a fam­ily is essen­tial to me.

Right now D-man is still on breast­milk only. He is mov­ing to cereal and then he’ll join the rest of us in eat­ing baby ver­sions of “reg­u­lar” food. Which means pretty soon that num­ber will be 6 peo­ple eat­ing in this house and let me tell you these kids can EAT!! It’s insane how much their lit­tle bod­ies can pack in. They already get SO hun­gry, THEY ARE STARVING TO DEATH. Or at least that’s what they’ll lead you to believe even if they just at 10 min­utes ago. I trem­ble at the thought of their abil­ity to pack it in as teens.

And then there’s me and gro­cery shop­ping. With back to schools start­ing we’ll have to pack lunches, snacks, & prep more food for my evening classes away (Hubby & I trade off, I start din­ner & he fin­ishes on those nights). AND I have to admit with food it’s REALLY EASY for me to over spend. Like seri­ously EASY. I can go in for 2 items, say bread and milk. But I have shiny ball syn­drome with food, I get eas­ily dis­tracted and want what­ever is new. I will find 122 items I think I *need* and end up spend­ing way too much money.

Usu­ally these are things that later I will regret. And this is the issue with eat­ing healthy, I know bet­ter but if I’m not focused it’s like I LOSE CONTROL. I will buy any­thing and every­thing that is prob­a­bly a trans­fat (oh trans­fats). Leav­ing me to walk a food hall of shame the next morn­ing after going town devour­ing an entire box of cook­ies. Not that I’ve ever actu­ally eaten an entire box of cook­ies, but let’s just pre­tend I have. (Please indulge me here, I know I should have stopped after the first 3 cook­ies, but they were so GOOD).

STICKING to bud­get­ing (not just doing it but stick­ing to it) really is nec­es­sary for us so we can have a lot of good food avail­able to eat for those starv­ing kid­dos. And because there are times when I don’t get a pay­check due to the adjust­ing of the pay peri­ods of the school semes­ters. This means keep­ing money aside to cover that, if either myself or Hubby goes to the store & over­spends we are SCREWED BIG TIME (& it’s not even any fun). Really I don’t know any­one who hasn’t felt the pinch lately with the econ­omy, where we live it’s been really tight & lots of peo­ple have been hit hard or worry about being out of a job even if they are OK right now.

Still, the dif­fi­culty stick­ing to a bud­get and eat­ing healthy are prob­lems for me, if I don’t keep them in check we could end up hav­ing lots of food but no house to put it in. I mean really I can rake up a gro­cery bill like no tomor­row if I’m not focused going in.

Pic­ture Cour­tesy of www.bigfoto.com

We have to do some things to keep the shiny ball syn­drome with food in check. Hubby also has the same syn­drome, it’s why we are a good fit.

Here are some ways we’ve found to keep it in check:

• Make a list & Check it twice: no list then I’m leav­ing with 122 items ver­sus 2
• Shop sales: I’m not going to go all over God’s green earth to save a $1 but I will plan ahead & know what’s a good price
• Shop local: farmer’s mar­kets are great for this
• Menu plan­ning: we aren’t super strict but we make a loose menu plan that way we can move things around & we can menu plan around sales & good finds
• Veg­gie gar­den: we have done a small one for the last 2 years
• Stock­ing up the pantry & freezer: when prices are good & only do what we like, no sense in stock­ing up on items we hate
• Shop gener­ics: most of the time a generic isn’t dif­fer­ent than the brand name
• Don’t shop with the kids: really they try to sneak things & wear you down. If I hear “Can I have this??” too many times then I’ll over­spend on a big­ger bot­tle of liquor.

We do shop at the local gro­cery store, but also check out Costco & Trader Joe’s. Those help a ton since Mr. J can­not have very much gluten and Mamacita can­not digest diary (cow’s milk prod­ucts). Buy­ing a few spe­cialty items at Trader Joe’s really helps cut costs & Costco can have great bulk items (but a list is REALLY IMPORTANT or you can eas­ily over­spend). I adore our local farmer’s mar­ket, it has some really great selec­tions & the cost for fresh grown food can­not be beat. There are also good deals on buy­ing meat from a farmer in bulk, I’m talk­ing the “good stuff” (hormone-free, grass feed, etc…). A deep freezer is nec­es­sary if you decide to do that though, because buy­ing meat in bulk takes up space.

I also LOVE hav­ing tips from oth­ers to help me. By far the cutest lady offer­ing food tips out there is Clara and she is fea­tured on Depres­sion Cook­ing with Clara . She offers great sto­ries with her food videos. I just adore her and have watched every one of her videos. She reminds me of my Grand­moth­ers in a good way. I pic­ture her being that tough but lov­ing Nana, I want to just go to her home & let her cook for me for hours & tell me all sorts of sto­ries of her life. She makes me ache from her adorableness.

And then there is a good gen­eral sec­tion on All­recipes for Cook­ing on a Bud­get. The site over­all is good for fig­ur­ing out how to use pantry items, since you can enter in ingre­di­ents that you want to use and select those you don’t want in a recipe. And I’ve def­i­nitely been faced with a “WTF?” night on fig­ur­ing out what to make out of ran­dom pantry items, this fea­tures kicks BUTT! The recipes also get a lot of feed­back which helps when fig­ur­ing out about try­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent, I also like being able to get other ideas for healthy food choices. We’ve been refo­cus­ing on adding in on extra veg­gies and fruits either to the meal or as snack items.

I’m hop­ing to con­tinue to hone my skills at bud­get­ing & offer­ing good foods. I get all giddy when I’ve man­aged to get a lot of deli­cious items but not gone broke. It’s like a con­tact high.

And since I’m always look­ing for more tips, feel free to share your own tips on keep­ing shiny ball syn­drome when food shop­ping in check. I’d love to read them & I’m sure oth­ers would too!!

Tech­no­rati Tags: cook­ing, food and drink, food bud­get, fru­gal, shop­ping