budget

Money Saving Tips for Decorating the Home and Staying On Budget

09/07/2016 By Jenn 9 Comments

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When it comes to decorating your home you don’t have to break the bank to show your decorating skills. Finding great deals to decorate your home is all a matter of planning and timing.

There are many different ways to decorate on a budget. Here are money saving tips for decorating the home.

Shop thrift shops, second hand stores, and garage sales

Thrift shops, second hand stores, and garage sales are all great ways to find amazing deals on good quality items for decorating your home. You have to look past the dust and old paint but look at the bones of the item. If it has good bones, you can clean the items up or repaint the items.

Refurbish items yourself

This is the part of fixing up the good quality used items that you find for great deals. Cleaning the item, repairing any damage, and painting will go long in making a used item look new again. There are so many things you can do to take items that are used and recycle, reuse and make a difference in your decor. It is, also, valuable to the environment to reduce, reuse, and recycle by keeping items out of the landfills.

Buy your big items during the big sales

There are times of the year that you can get amazing deals on the pieces of furniture or other big ticket items to decorate your home. Save up your money and buy during black Friday sales, New Year’s is another good sales time, or during Memorial weekend. You can save a lot of money by shopping during these times of the year.

Make small changes that make a big difference

Even making small changes can make a big difference. Small changes like changing your curtains, adding a new painting or re-staining your dining room table can make a huge difference in your overall decor.

Use your creative side

Whatever you like to do, bring your creative side, and decorate your home putting your personal touch. If you like to paint, repainting your room will make great strides in redecorating your home. If you like to sew, make new curtains or new pillow covers for your sofa. All the small changes add up to help you get the decor look you want.

Whenever you can DIY

Just because you’ve never done something before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Use DIY websites to look up any project you want to take on. If you want to refurbish a piece of furniture and you’ve never done it before, find a website to get instructions. You can watch videos to show you demonstrations on how to do the project you want to do.

Buying smart, refurbishing items, making small changes, using your creative side, and doing it yourself are all great ways to help you decorate your home while saving money. You can have the home you’re proud of with a little planning and creative work.

What saving money tips to decorate would you add to this list?

How To Save On Groceries Without Using Coupons

07/13/2015 By Jenn 2 Comments

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Trying to save on groceries when you are a tight budget can be difficult. For many years when my kids were little and I decided to stay home couponing was my thing. I got things for free, stores would pay me to “buy” items and my grocery budget was in check under $50 every week for a family of 5.

Well 5 years later it has not been as much as a priority for me. Don’t get me wrong I still use them here and there but researching, printing, clipping and going from store to store became to much work for me. It really does not take that much time when you know how to play the couponing game but it got harder as my kids got older.

I have played around with how to save on groceries without heavy couponing for a few months now. And yes I am spending a little more money each week but I am not burnt out from chasing deals and it feels great to just hit up one or two stores each week.

Here are my favorite tips to save on groceries without using a single coupon:

I Still Shop The Sales

Each week when my circulars come out I browse through them. I make a list just based on what’s on sale that week and stick to it as best as I can.

Score BOGO Items

BOGO is an instant savings of 50%. When a product goes BOGO at my grocery store I stock up for the next few weeks so I know I get the best savings.

Menu Plan

I have always used a menu plan but I have really cracked down on it this past year. I only buy the sale items for the week and plan my menu accordingly.

Shop Once A Week

As I menu plan I go through my pantry and see if I ran out of a staple for that week. I know if I go back to the store a second time during the week I am bound to wind up with more in my shopping cart.

Set A Weekly Cash Budget

I always did this, even when I used coupons. For our family of 5 I try to stay under $125 each week. That includes groceries, toiletries and cleaning items. Most weeks I come in way under so I take that cash and apply it to the next week.

I do miss all the freebies from time to time, I mean who doesn’t like the word free? So, I may go back to heavier couponing once all my kids are in full time school. But for now these tips help me feel like I am still in control of my money and still saving where I can.

What are your favorite ways to save on groceries?

How To Start Budgeting – The Easy Way

07/03/2015 By Jenn 7 Comments

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Just about everyone at some point realizes they have been spending too much money and recognizes the need for budgeting. This need to learn how to budget spending properly is a valuable skill that many people need to improve. The process is a little like losing weight: you start out slowly by making a few easy changes to your lifestyle, and these changes gradually build up until they become second nature.

Here a few thing that you can get started with on your budgeting adventure.

Get Started – Make the Decision to Save

As an example, a person who realizes they’ve been eating too many high-calorie foods starts losing weight by reducing portion sizes and slowly replacing unhealthy foods with whole fruits and vegetables. In the same way, a person who realizes he’s been spending too much money can begin building a life-long financial plan by reducing unneeded expenditures and then finding more cost-effective solutions for his necessary expenditures. Recognizing where you can save is essential to success and a preliminary evaluation is necessary in most cases. Take a look at where you can improve or ask someone to audit your spending for you.

Don’t Shop at Convenience Stores

A possible scenario could be someone spending $10 to $15 every day on energy drinks and snacks from convenience stores or gas stations. Every month, this person spends $300 to $450 on unhealthy food and added sugar. This type of spending can become a habit that’s hard to break, so doing so gradually might be the only option. After eliminating junk food, sodas, energy drinks and cappuccinos, the next way to save money is by cooking all your food at home instead of eating out. By eating only at home, you not only make it much easier to plan your monthly budget, but you make it much easier to count the calories you’re consuming every day.

Eliminate Unnecessary Expenses

The next step is to use a budget calculator to add up your monthly expenses and see what can be eliminated. Write down all your monthly bills, and then add up the total amount of money you spend each month. Begin reducing your expenses by making a second list only of bills that can’t be avoided, such as rent, utilities and credit card payments. Ideally, your monthly expenditures should resemble this shorter list as much as possible, but you will probably need to spend a reasonable amount of money on entertainment each month. It’s okay to spend money on something that isn’t strictly necessary if it enriches your life and makes achieving your goals easier.

If you’ve never thought about optimizing your budget before, you may be surprised by how much you can save. The bottom line is that you won’t be able to stop wasting money without a minimum level of self-discipline. If it helps, you can start your new lifestyle by throwing a wasteful, gluttonous party for yourself to get all the bad urges out of your system.

This is a guest post written by Meghan. Meghan is a freelance writer, blogger and researcher from Oklahoma.
She enjoys being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise as well as researching new topics to expand her horizons.

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Free Budget Printable For Your Home Binder

05/12/2014 By Jenn 35 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Read the full disclosure.

Free Budget Printable

I have another free printable to add to your home binder today! A monthly budget printable.

Tracking your monthly budget can be very important to your finances. You never know what you are really spending if you do not write it down, right? Back in 2009 after our second child was born I had no idea where our money went. So I got to work on a budget.

Once I saw the $5 here and $2 there, it scared me how much that added up and we were wasting it. I started meal planning and using coupons as a part of keeping the grocery budget in check. Since we had just had our second child meals out were impossible so we ordered in a lot. That all stopped and we cooked more at home. Just that little step saved our monthly budget.

I have been planning my monthly budget ever since and I am proud to say we are at least $40 thousand less in debt. I know, scary huh? We used all the extra money we were wasting to play down bills. We still have a way to go but we are getting there. I don’t think we would be here if we didn’t start to buckle down with a budget years ago.

Download the free monthly budget printable and get started saving more money.

Have you missed any other free printables to add to your home binder? Check out all the ones listed below that I have already posted. Of course, they are all free!

Free Meal Planning Printable

Daily To Do List Printables

Address List Printable

Weekly Cleaning List Printable

Kids Chore Chart

Goal List Printable

Grocery Check List Printable

2014 Year in Advance Calendar Printable

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