Stretching Every Dollar

While I have to say Jason and I have never been exactly big spenders, lately we have been looking for more and more ways to cut back on spending to save money for upcoming big ticket items such as a second car and a down payment on a house.

Here are the tips and tricks we have tried so far.

• Groceries - Clipping coupons from the newspaper and buying the "loss leaders" (deep discounts at the chain stores like Kroger) has been a good way to save $ at the checkout. Our grocery store doubles coupons up to 50 cents, so there have been several times we've gotten items for free or very cheap by using coupons. Another tip I learned from The Coupon Mom is that all items go on sale about every three months. When you see it on sale, buy enough to last several months. Use sale flyers from other stores at a Walmart Supercenter to see a big savings.
• Motorcycle - Jason is driving a motorcycle to work every day. We estimate that it gets about 50-60 miles to the gallon. This will drastically cut our fuel costs.
  
• Energy costs - We turned up the A/C setting to 78 degrees...It hasn't kicked on in a long time! We'll probably turn down the heat setting to something in the 60s and just dress warmer.
  
• Clothing - We get most of our clothing by shopping at Goodwill and garage sales along with the occasional trip to the clearance rack at Old Navy or Target.
• Homemade baby food - We're currently making most of Noah's baby food at probably one-fourth of the cost of purchasing it in the little Gerber containers. Plus it is fresh and doesn't have preservatives!
• Upromise.com - Saving pennies from our groceries and any other online purchases for a 529 plan.
• Recycling Cans - We found a local can recycler that pays by the pound. We have asked family and friends to save their pop cans for us to recycle toward Noah's 529 plan. We have collected a lot of cans already!
• Free Classes - We regularly watch for Free opportunities for entertainment as well as "first week free" exercise classes, gym memberships, baby classes, etc. The trick is to just use the free pass, not end up paying to continue.
• Read & Watch from the library - This does save a lot of money when you consider the cost of buying books to read and renting movies.
• Online Bill-pay - Save money on stamps to mail bills as well as late fees for the occasional time that a bill gets stuck under something else and forgotten about.
• Craigslist.org - Look for local deals from people selling their stuff. (And sell your own!)

There are plenty more where this list comes from. Maybe I'll update it when I think of other things to save $.