Saving

So this is just sort of an overview of what we've done so far in attempts for saving, especially with a new addition to the family.

1) Buying things used

Especially with a lot of baby things - we have found craigslist to be great. We spent about 150 dollars and got a full wardrobe of baby girl clothes to last from birth-12 months and some pieces up to 2T. It's all in good condition - nobody would know the difference. We got our swing on craigslist, our glider, way better than paying full price. We also went to a consignment shop to buy our Ergo baby carrier. Obviously you don't want everything used, but there's a lot of good stuff out there. The Boston area has a very good craigslisting population.

2) Coupons

Initially it was my husband who wanted to start couponing and I thought he was crazy. I saw those shows on TV with people diving through dumpsters for coupons and coming out of the stores with 1000 cases of ramen and sports drinks and having it take over their whole house. Well, I've found that couponing has worked well for us even though we only do it really basically and just get one set of coupons from the Sunday paper which we get delivered to us. What's really helped is Kathy Spencer's How To Shop For Free (HTSFF) - she posts coupon match ups and alert you to good deals. But what I think is the best is there is a coupon database. So now all I need to do if I know I want to buy something is type it into the coupon database and it will tell me if there's a coupon for it and if so, where to find it. I also recommend Kathy Spencer's book - I checked it out from the library - I didn't read the whole thing but it was good to skim through for the basic information I was looking for.

3) Lifestyle changes

We already downgraded our TV package, changed insurance companies to get a better rate, and big things like that. The biggest change for us is really going to be with regard to our food budget. We are used to eating out way too much so my new goal is to eat at home more. We've really kicked the comparison shopping into high-gear - for everything, but especially groceries. My new goal I'm just starting out with is meal-planning. I want to at least have good things to eat instead of just making junk because it's fast and easy, you didn't think ahead, and now you're starving. Still a work in progress, but hopefully I will find some good recipes and can post them here.

Budgeting

Getting Started

    When setting up a budget for our family, I initially downloaded a budget template on Excel and painstakingly went through our credit card statements and checkbooks, categorized each transaction, then totalled them all up. What a pain! It took forever. Then my husband told me about mint.com.

     If you haven't yet - check out Mint. It's a great, free, site to manage your finances. If, like me, basically all of your purchases are on credit cards, it's pretty amazing. (And really purchasing everything on credit card then just paying it all off at the end of the month is the way to go since you get points, which is basically free money.) Anyway, mint.com syncs up with your online accounts for your banks and credit cards, so all of that junk I was doing in Excel? Mint does that for you automatically. Every single purchase you make on your credit card gets categorized automatically and it will total up expenses in each category. If you set a budget it will show you how much you've already spent each month in each category you set, so you have a good visual on how you're doing throughout the month. It took a little bit of tweaking to get it set the way I wanted, but once you do that it's pretty low maintenance.

How much to budget?

    To figure out how much to budget I first went through all of our set costs - the things that are the same every month: the mortgage, student loan payments, internet/tv bills, etc. Then after subtracting that amount from our monthly income that's what we had left for things that change month to month like food expenses, utilities, gas for the car, general shopping, and other miscellaneous spending. Some things I had a basic idea, like for gas - we usually fill up once a week, so I budgeted about 120 dollars a month. Some things I just took a random guess - baby supplies? 100 dollars a month - and we'll see how that turns out.

     In an attempt to be somewhat scientific I found average monthly food costs as per the USDA. For a family of 2, a moderate budget is around $600/month, "low-cost" around $480/month, and "thrifty" around $375/month. I guess we're somewhere in between. I set a budget of $250/month for groceries but also $250/month for restaurants/coffee shops etc. So $500/month for food. Though I do count non-food items in grocery like buying toothpaste or trash bags. Too hard to separate it all out.

Keeping it up

     I hope to use this blog to help keep track of my progress and document some good finds and money saving ideas. I plan to make one more post as an overview of how I'm doing up to now, then get going in real-time.

What's this all about?

     I'm a new mom with a 3-month old daughter and my current goal is to stay home to take care of her. But as lovely as that sounds, there is of course the issue of money. With only one income, money would be pretty tight. I'm hoping to eventually pick up some weekend work hours when my husband will be home to watch the baby. In the meantime, I'm trying to come up with ways to save and stay on a budget so that we won't be losing money every month if I don't work. We had a rough budget plan before, but with two incomes we never really had to worry too much. With two frugal individuals married to eachother, we always had money left to put into savings. As of now, I'd say we're losing at least a few hundred dollars each month I don't work.

    My goal for this blog? To document my money saving ideas, plans, and outcomes and see if through budgeting, couponing, and lifestyle changes I can reverse our negative cash flow and start saving!