Guest Post: Money-saving Tips from Kelli of More Bang For Your Bucks!

Hey-ho Happy Readers! (Yeah, I don’t know where that came from either).

I’ve got a treat for you! Today, I am “blog-swapping,” which means that Kelli, from More Bang for Your Bucks, is here to share some of her best money-saving tips while I am writing over at her blog-house about some simple tips for scoring great Goodwill purchases. 

I’ve known Kelli for years, but it really hasn’t been until recently, when we live several hundred miles apart, that we’ve really connected through the wonder of blogging + the internet.  Ain’t it grand?!

But enough blathering from me…Take it away, Kelli!

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^{Kelli with her three sweet children! Her youngest is almost exactly the same age as my Della.}

Hi everybody! Don’t you just love the fun, super-helpful blog Abbie has created? I know that I enjoy seeing each day what she is going to share!

My name is Kelli. I am a preacher’s wife with three kiddos, and we live on one income. Our church takes very good care of us, but in order for me to stay home and care for my family full-time, I have come up with creative ways to stretch our budget further.

There are so many, many ways to save money, and I think it would drive any one of us crazy to try to implement them all at once (or ever!) but here are a few suggestions that have really helped us:

1) Use Groupon. Use Groupon. Use Groupon. Okay did I get my point across? Obviously, the cheapest way to save money on eating out is to not do it. But I know very few families who have completely cut out this luxury. But if you live in or near a larger city*, Groupon has a new restaurant coupon up almost every single day! And we have found that we are trying some places that we wouldn’t otherwise try. Here’s how it works: Restaurant A puts up a coupon on groupon.com The savings are usually 50%- you pay $20 for $40 worth of food, for example.

Then when you go eat, if you don’t go over the $40 amount, you don’t have any other expense except for the tip!

*Even if you don’t live near a large city, you can still take advantage of Groupon while travelling. It just takes a little planning ahead.

2) Use dollar stores. While we all know that dollar stores are full of junk that will break in a day, there are also some incredible deals. My favorite deal? The pregnancy tests at Dollar Tree for $1. My blog is full of of things you can snag for much less than other stores.

3) Shop clearance racks for clothes. Very, very rarely do I walk into a store and pay full price for an item. My kids use LOTS of hand-me-downs, but if I know I am running low on something, I go at the end of the season and stock up for the next year. One year in July, I went into Children’s Place and bought several outfits for my daughter for the next summer- all for $1 or $2.

4) Find out what meat is on sale, then plan your meals. For so long, I would plan my meals (on the weeks I actually got around to planning!) then go to the store. But I have found that by buying meat that is on sale, then planning, this saves tons of money. I don’t have to have ribs this week- I can wait until next week when they’re on sale for $1.59 a pound instead of $3.99 a pound.

5) Learn to live with less! I know this is very basic, but really, do you need another pair of shoes? This is a practice I am trying to instill in my own life. I am a “reforming pack rat”- meaning I have held on to lots of junk over the years but am finally learning to let go. And it is so freeing! But it does absolutely no good if I constantly bring in another armload of stuff every other week. Whether or not (gasp!) it was a good deal or not! Here’s a little challenge: try to go one week without buying anything but groceries. It is a fun way (sort of!) to see how addicted we are to buying things.

Well, that’s all for me today, but I hope that you found at least one idea in this post that can help you stay on your budget, and I’d love for you to share your own ideas for saving cash!

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Thanks, Kelli! Great post! I especially like the “learn to live with less” advice—something I could stand to do more of myself!

Meet you back here, same time, same place for Flicky Friday tomorrow!