"I don't know," says my husband. "Let's go to Target."
This is an exchange heard all too often in our household. And while there is often something we "need" at Target, that place is like walking through a retail mine field.
Once I got serious about curtailing our debt, paying it off, and starting to save in earnest, I realized we really still need to slash expenses in our household. I guess "slash" is probably a misnomer. I haven't been able to cut too many expenses because we weren't that extravagent to begin with. But we certainly do have our weaknesses as a family when it comes to spending. I've tried to attack them wherever, possible, but I'm still at the mercy of my husband, who is less willing to give things up than I am. I've decided to pick my battles.
Here are the steps we've taken so far:
- Cutting breakfasts at local restaurants on weekends. I miss this tradition a lot, actually. I love eating breakfast out. In fact, I'd much rather have breakfast at a restaurant than lunch or dinner. But when you think about it, we can easily spend $25-$30 at a very unfancy diner for EGGS and toast with two strips of bacon. What a mark-up! Now we only go on VERY rare occasions and choose to cook healthier egg options at home (like an egg scramble with spinach, mushroom, and peppers with Applegate bacon).
- Cancelled magazine subscriptions. I love reading magazines, particulary HGTV magazine and Better Homes and Gardens. But really with Pinterest now, you can essentially get the same thing on demand with fresh info whenever you want. I can search for whatever I want to see: master bedroom built-ins, recipes, kid activities, and have it all at my fingertips--with pictures--in seconds. Who needs a paper magazine that just takes up space and gets dusty and actually has varying content of interest to me? I figure if I miss paper magazines, I can always get them from the library or perhaps inherit them from a friend.
- No boredom shopping. This is so hard for us, particularly in winter. Sometimes a retail store is the best place to take the boys for a change of scenery, particularly if it's cold or rainy. I'm hoping as they get older, there will be more and better options so we won't resort to using the mall as an indoor gym! It's just too hard to go to Target, the mall, Saver's, or anywhere else and leave without buying anything. And most of it is not stuff we really need. I'm planning on using the facilities where I work (at a school) much more often from now on. We have an excellent gym the boys can run around in, and we have all sorts of free shows, performances, and athletic events that will eventually be fun for them as well. And playgrounds--we've got some great ones in the area.
- Buy kids' clothes and toys at Saver's and thrift stores. This sort of contradicts my last point in some ways because to find good deals at Saver's and thrift stores, you have to go often. It's not like you can go once and find everything you need at a given moment (at least not usually!). I guess the upside is that when we do go, we leave with good stuff and spend very little money. I also take advantage of their half-off sales and coupons to do most of my buying. But..I am a used book addict and spend money I probably shouldn't on books. I love anything from my childhood that I find, anything with a publish date earlier than 1980, and am always on the hunt for Christmas, Halloween, and other holiday books. I do believe that books are good things to spend money on (relatively speaking), but at the end of the day, like magazines, books collect dust and take up a lot of space. There are THOUSANDS of kids' books in our local library--they can read different ones every night of the week. So why spend money on books--even used ones--unless they are truly ones we are going to want in our collection forever? In any event, I do get almost 100% of the boys clothes either free or dirt cheap from thrift stores, so this is a great way to save given how fast they are growing!
- Shop at BJ's with coupons and Market Basket. We no longer have a need or a desire to go to Stop & Shop or Shaw's and thank God--their prices are so much higher than MB! I also don't shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's--there is very little that I would buy from Trader Joe's lately now that I'm trying to avoid anything processed. And Whole Foods is just too darn expensive. I can't do it. MB has Bell & Evans chicken--same as Whole Foods--and I'm sure it must be cheaper.
- Use face cloths for eating with boys instead of baby wipes. This seems so obvious, but we were in the bad habit of using wipe after wipe after wipe to clean mouths, hands, the table, etc. as the boys were eating. I rounded up all the baby face cloths I had from when the boys were young and all our old face cloth towels as well (we never use them) and put them in the kitchen. We use two per meal and wash them frequently. We go through much fewer wipes now.
- Plant a garden. While the initial investment was rather significant because we went with a raised Square Foot Garden and used Mel's Mix (available via Home Depot), I think it will be worth the money in the long run. The soil itself is viable for over 10 years--you need only add compost when you plant a new crop--and the beds should also last for at least a few years. I bought seeds, and will only buy a small number of seedlings. And we do eat a LOT of veggies lately. I figure money spent on health is money well spent to hopefully buy more life and have fewer health issues and medical bills.
Here are steps still to be enacted:
- A BJ's and Market Basket price book. I am actually not 100% sure where I should be buying certain products. I think that strawberries, for example, are cheaper to get at BJ's, but I've never actually compared the unit prices. And often the huge clamshell of strawberries from BJ's is too much. So I need to take my receipts some day or just go with a notebook to both places and note the unit prices so I can made educated purchases.
- Meal planning with the Market Basket circular in hand. I need to be better at this. No more buying what looks appetizing in the moment; I need to buy what's on sale and plan meals around these items.
- Sign up for Cumberland Farms Smart Pay. You get $.10 off per gallon if you set this up. It debits the amount of the purchase from your checking account, though, and things are so tight at the end of each month that I don't want to risk not having enough in my account to cover this or other expenses. But with the amount of gas we use, it seems silly NOT to take advantage of this. Ideally, I'd like to set up a separate checking account for Smart Pay and then put money into the account every week to cover gas.
- Turn off extra fridge in basement. It's an old 1980s fridge that mainly is in use to chill my beer (!) and store stuff that doesn't fit in the kitchen freezer. What we really need is to have people over to drink the beer (and then not buy so much beer!). And we need a used chest freezer for the garage that will be more energy efficient than running that old fridge.
- Run dehumidifiers at night only. We have to run two dehumidifiers almost every day in the summer to avoid mold in the finished basement and garage. Last year we didn't run one in the garage and ended up with mildew and mold everywhere. It was nasty, nasty, nasty. But electricity is much cheaper in off-peak hours (night). So I am hoping we can get away with only running them at night.
- Dry clothes on clothesline in porch. This is self explanatory, and only laziness explains why I haven't done this before.
- Potty train the boys so we can get rid of diapers. I should have used cloth diapers. I have them, but after a lot of leaking diapers at the beginning, I caved and went to disposables. What a shame. I'm hoping I can sell the used ones on Craigslist--they are pretty much brand new. But we will save hundreds of dollars per year once the boys are out of diapers.
