Easy Money Saving Tips- Part 3

If you have missed Part 1 and Part 2

Today's money saving tip is.............

Stop throwing money away by buying paper towels.  We would go through a 3 roll of papertowels every week for this family of 6.  That is alot of papertowels, but with 4 kids and 2 animals we have alot of messes sometimes.

I am not saying don't ever buy papertowels, just don't buy so many.  We do buy a 6 roll of papertowels, that I barely pay anything for using coupons and sales, once a year.

You are probably looking at your computer screen asking how in the world do we clean up spills if we only buy papertowels once a year.  Simple, we use rags to clean up spilled milk or other easy messes.  We also use rags to clean the bathrooms and kitchen and other areas of our house instead of using papertowels.  The best part is we didn't spend any money acquiring our rags. 

One evening, my husband was sitting in the living room trying to repair one of his favorite t-shirts (yes, I am so blessed my husband can do some simple sewing) and he got discourged that his shirt was too far gone.  As he was heading for the trashcan, it hit me and I yelled- "Freeze!!"  We can cut up his holey shirts and use them for cleaning rags.

We went through his shirts and found quite a few that were beyond repair.  I handed him a pair of scissors and we went to town cutting them into long strips.  We also use an old shirt that Nathan can no longer wear that has some stains on it for a dusting rag.  A great part to using rags is that once you are done, you can throw them into the washing machine with whatever you are washing and whalaa they are clean and can be reused.

So, if I use rags to clean up messes and to clean with, why in the world do I buy papertowels?  I have been asked this question.  Well, with 2 pets- accidents sometimes do happen and those messes along with grease, we would rather just clean up and toss. 

As most of you know, I love to run numbers so here is what we are saving by using rags instead of papertowels. 
$2 for 3 roll papertowels once a week
x4 weeks
$8 a month
x12 months
$96- wow almost a $100 a year we are saving each year by using rags that don't cost us anything to make:)

Easy Money Saving Tip- Part 2

In case you missed my first easy money saving tip post, you can get caught up here.

I promise all my tips are not food related.  This is simply the order that my family discovered the little things that we can cut to save money in the long run.

My second tip is......

Yummy and super sweet- sugar.  We discovered that our family loved Kool Aid.  We would drink a rather large pitcher that used 2 Kool Aid packets to fill it up every day.  That not only meant that we had to buy the Kool Aid packets but we were going through a 5 lb bag of sugar every week- just in Kool Aid- Yikes!!  And that is when sugar was $2 for a 5 lb bag.  So, I ran the numbers...

$2- Kool Aid packets for the week

$2- Bag of sugar for the week

$4/ week

$4 a week doesn't seem like a lot. 

I then took the 4/week X 4 weeks= $16 a month

$16/month X 12 months= $192- WHAT!!!  I was spending $192 just in Kool Aid and sugar. 

But we decided to take things just one step futher.  Since we were taking away something the kids loved, we thought it was only fair to take away one of our guilty pleasures- Soda.

Michael and I could drink a 12 pack a week each.  And I thought I was doing great buying it on sale.  So, I ran the numbers just to prove to myself that our little soda habit didn't cost that much.

$3 for a 12pk soda X 2 people= $6 week

$6/week X 4 weeks= $24 month- see we were only spending about $20 month- no biggie

$24/month X 12 months= $288 a year on soda- Oh my- that was an awful lot of money.

If you combine the $192 in Kool Aid and sugar and add it to the $288 in soda we were spending- that equals $480 a year in sugar.  That is a whole lot of sugar and a whole lot of money.  Not to mention the mention the money we would save on dental bills if we gave up our sugar habit. 

So, we bit the bullet and decided to try just drinking water during day and I was shocked at how much we don't miss all that sugar.  And we were able to put the almost $500 we were spending towards a bill:) 

Give it a try- run your numbers and see what you are spending in Kool Aid and soda and see if you come close to my numbers.  And then think about all the different things you could do with that sweet money........

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Easy Money Saving tip

I wanted to write a series where I can share with you the different "little" things that we do to save money and you can do also.  If you are like me, you have researched this topic before and found all these cool and interesting ways to save money, only to try them all at once and fail.  Then I feel miserable because things didn't work out like I had wanted.  I am so blessed to have such a wondeful family and awesome husband who have "gone along for the ride" on several of my money saving adventures that just didn't work. 

I am going to post about one "little" thing that you and your family can do each week that can save you money and add up in the long run.

One of the first things we did when we were trying to save money is too look at all the things we buy and see if they were necessity.  Something that stuck out at me was CHIPS!!  We all liked different flavors, so we were buying 3 bags of chips a week.  We were buying the Walmart kind and thought we were saving money.  It wasn't until I ran the numbers and found out that even though we were only spending $3 a week at that time.  Walmart chips have now gone up to $1.50 a bag.  $3 a week didn't seem like much, then I multiplied that by 4 and we were spending $12 a month- still didn't seem like much.  But take that number and multiply that by 12- WOW!!  Were we really spending $144 a year just in chips?  Do you know what I can do with $144 extra dollars?

We decided to not buy chips but to buy bananas and whole unpeeled carrots.  Later we discovered homemade tortilla chips- YUMMY. Will share the recipe later this week.  At first, I thought the teens were not going to be thrilled.  I am so happy they welcomed the change.

So, my "little" money saving tip this week is to:
Check your receipts and see what you currently pay for chips.  Take that number and multiply it by 4 and see what we pay each month and then take that number and multiply it by 12 and see what you are really paying for chips over the course of a year- you may be surprised.  Then take that number and write it down in your budget notebook ( I encourage everyone to have a budget notebook, will blog on this in depth later).  Alot of times, when I write down the number, it becomes more real.  Take that number and think about what you want to do with it~ maybe you can use your chip money to pay off a bill, set it aside for an unexpected emergency or maybe set it aside for something you really want and cannot afford right now.

Until next week.....

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