Hellobee

Some of you may know that Mr. Jacks lost his job recently. While he has been a SAHD before, he’s always had an income while staying at home.  So, when the news came of his lay-off, we decided to see if we could weather the lay-off without dipping into our savings.  It was time to get serious about ways to save money in our day to day living.

Let me preface this by saying that we were always pretty frugal with our money.  We sit down every other Saturday to check how we’re doing on our budget and focus on ways to trim the extras. Eliminating any consumer credit debt has always been our first priority (we paid off our last credit card before Little Jacks was born), and our savings cushion was always priority number two (experts recommend 6 months). Still, we have two Montessori pre-school tuitions to pay, college to save for, and whatever other unexpected expenses that may come up (health issues, car troubles).

We also see this lay-off event as a temporary one, and so we’ve taken a lot of temporizing measures, hoping to have another income in the next several months.  Some of our cost-saving measures will be permanent for us, but there are a few that are probably temporary and shifting costs to a later date.  Depending on your family’s needs and situation, cost shifting or cost savings might be the best strategy.

So we needed to find ways to cut the family budget even more than usual.  Here are a few things we’ve done to save money:

Girls’ clothing budget.  This was a super-easy, don’t have to think about it way to save. Our budget for their clothes was $25/girl/month. Kids grow fast and it seems like they always need a new pair of shoes, new hat, or something. We just cut this out right away. Savings-$50/month.

Cable TV.  We don’t have a TV and so we don’t have cable TV costs. Well, we do have high speed internet and we pay a fair amount to the cable company for that. Mr. Jacks called the company to see if they had any specials or package deals that would save us money. Did you know that you could do this?! Indeed, they were willing to negotiate. So now, in addition to saving $20/month on our internet for the next six months, the cable company also threw in basic cable as a sweetener.  We still don’t watch it, but we actually got something more than what we had before while lowering our costs!  Savings- $20/month.

Food.  I feel like the family food budget is both the most important and hardest to get a handle on. Previously, we were spending around $600/month on food.  We wanted to see if we could lower that cost more. I know a lot of people coupon, but I really don’t have time to do that, so we had to find other ways.

-We had already eliminated meat one day a week as both a cost savings and health measure, but we decided to increase the number of days.

-We also wanted to focus on using everything that we already had in our pantry. When we took a hard look, we realized that there are a lot of good foods that we pass over week after week because we’re always bringing more stuff home.  Also my parents raise pigs and cattle, and we take for granted our stock of organic, free range pork (no beef yet, but soon!). We focused on ways to integrate those foods into our diet as our primary meat source.  The added benefit is that when Mr. Jacks does get another job, we will have rotated our stock and can replenish with new stuff.

-We also took a hard look at what organics we felt were absolutely necessary and we decided to go conventional for additional cost savings for everything else.  We’ve maintained our habit of using organic fruits for the girls, organic milk, and organic/natural meat (though we’ve cut way down on the meat, so that helped most of all). For everything else, we have been focusing on finding the best prices.

-Any name brand items that we usually get, we switched to generic.

-I decided that now was a great time to reduce my portion size for both health and savings. I’ve lost 3.5 lbs so far!

-We made an investment in big bags of flour, sugar, steel cut oats and other bulk items that we could use to replace any of the processed items that we would usually buy and instead make them from scratch. (Did you know that you can make crackers from scratch?  I didn’t! And that it isn’t hard to make a homemade potato chip?)  Since the lay-off, we’ve made so many wonderful treats that we would have ordinarily bought… And you know what?  They taste way better than the store bought items!

Average grocery bill savings: $25-30/week, $100-120/month (That’s almost a whole week of our monthly grocery budget!).  This week alone, we actually saved $50, but perhaps I was even more aware because I was writing this piece.

Eating Out. Our family already had a rule that we would only eat out twice a month.  We’ve cut it to once a month maximum and we’ve downscaled what we’re ordering and where we’re ordering it from. Savings-$100/month.

Health and Beauty.  I save by doing one really nice haircut very infrequently, but in light of our current circumstance, I’ve decided to cut down the frequency even more, skip any eyebrow waxing (and boy if anyone needs this, it’s me!) and switch to generic shampoo and conditioner.  We’re actually on hiatus from buying any beauty/grooming products (but we could do that because we shop at Costco). Cost savings-$60 every 3 months.

Home Care Maintenance. Because I work 60 or more hours every week, our one splurge was to have a house cleaner come every 2 weeks and do all the deep cleaning for us.  It’s one of those marriage savers and something I thought we’d keep up even during the lay-off.  But last weekend, Mr. Jacks was away and I was able to clean the whole house top to bottom with the two girls. At that point, we decided to cut the house cleaner down to once a month and have her focus only on the things that are really hard for me to do, like windows and scrubbing tile. Likewise, Mr. Jacks has demonstrated that he can mow the lawn every week, so we cancelled the yard service.  Savings-$105/month.

Commute.  Mr. Jacks’ last job was 35 minutes away, so we had significant commute costs.  We’ve decided that for his next job, we are going to eliminate any commute.  It will be better for our lifestyle, the environment, wear and tear on the car and our wallet. Savings-$240/month.

Child Care. We were in a real child care dilemma when the lay-off came.  Our nanny is seriously the best nanny a family could ever ask for.  We are her livelihood, are like an extended family, and want to make sure her income doesn’t suffer while ours does. We also don’t want to lose her to the lay-off.  We’ve tried to maintain her hours as much as possible, and we do need her services while Mr. Jacks is on the interview circuit. We’ve made it so Mr. Jacks interviews on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays so that the nanny can have Mondays and Fridays for other temporary jobs.  Savings-$200/week.

Utilities.  We are already ridiculously frugal with our energy usage.  In the winter, we turn down the thermostat to 64 during the day and 58 degrees at night.  In the summer, we are not turning on the AC until it hits 100 degrees outside.  We are utilizing all the ceiling fans (we have them in most rooms). We open the windows in the evening when it hits 80 degrees outside and leave them open through the night.  In the early morning, we get as much cool air as we can in the house (open doors, create a strong cross-breeze), then when the outdoor temperature hits 76, we close up all the windows to trap in all the cool air.  Luckily, we’ve weatherized the house well, so that gets us through most days in the 90s.  If it’s over 100, we’ve chosen not to suffer and we just turn on the AC. Savings- $10-30/month.

Amazon Prime Subscribe and Save.  Diapers, wipes, chia seeds… anything we use a lot of on a regular basis is now subscribe and save.  Savings- $10/month.

Gift Cards. Over time, we have amassed a number of gift cards to places like Crate and Barrel, Starbucks, REI, American Express, and a credit card credit.  We are getting very creative at using these cards to keep life interesting. We used the credit card credit to buy a zoo pass, and that’s been a life saver as a free fun summer outing that we or the nanny can do with the girls. The zoo is putting in a splash pad and has lots of cool events and activities. REI has all sorts of kids’ clothes, so if we absolutely had to, we could use our dividend to buy socks, shoes or whatever might be a pressing need without spending any additional money. I had to buy a shower gift and I used the American Express gift card to pay for it.  We are members of our local public radio station.  They gave us a card when we became members with a variety of low or no cost benefits.  We’re finally using them.  I can’t put a number on the savings, but for the time being, it’s helped eliminate nearly any discretionary spending.

The Library.  No need to buy books, DVDs or CDs when they are all available for free at the Library. I always feel like I’m getting away with something when we walk out with an amazing stack of books, but it’s lovely to know that our tax dollars are providing us with such a gift.

Re-purposing. Most of our needs that have come up during this time have been deferred.  Our mantra has been, “We’ll worry about that once Mr. Jacks gets a new job.”  But some things can’t be deferred.  Jack Jack has learned how to climb out of the crib.  It simply won’t be safe for her to be in the crib much longer.  We need either a floor bed or a toddler bed.  Likewise, we were tripping over the toys in our dining room.  It was becoming a hazard.  We needed a shelving solution and we’d love it to be Montessori style.  My first instinct ordinarily would have been to go to Target or Ikea and buy a solution to the problem.  Instead, right now I am looking towards what we already have for the answer.  Last weekend I combed through the garage and found one of my old grad school bookshelves.  We made it shorter and are using it as our brand new Montessori shelving unit.  We also realized that Little Jacks sleeps on her floor bed, well, never!  So we’re pirate-ing her floor bed for Jack Jack’s use for a little while.  If other needs come up, we’ll look to what we already have first before going out and buying new things.  I hope that we always remember to do this.

Cancel un-needed subscriptions. I went through all of our automatically debited subscriptions. We realized that we could cancel the discs on our Netflix, saving $6/month and that I had a yearly subscription to Ancestry.com that I didn’t need.  Savings-$15/month.

So, while each thing we did seems small and insignificant, our total savings is $910/month, which is huge for us. We’ve trimmed pretty much all the fat out of our lives with the exception of one cleaning visit each month, which we could cancel in the future if we need to.  I know what it is to live paycheck to paycheck (or even without paychecks) on a tiny amount of money, as I did for years before I went to medical school and during medical school. I don’t ever take for granted how far I’ve come in life and feel very fortunate. Until I did this project, though, I had no idea how much additional savings we could squeeze from our lives or that the challenge of it would be so fun!  I can’t imagine that we’ll ever go back to the way things were. Rather, when we have that second income again, we’re going to shift it towards our savings.

So do you have any more tips that might help our family save more money?  No suggestion is too small!