Do you find yourself wishing that you could be a stay-at-home mom but you don’t think you can afford it? I’ve been writing a series about how you can afford to stay home because so many women seem to think they have to work.  You really don’t if you can learn how to lower your expenses.  On previous days I’ve mostly shared ideas on how to bring down your basic expenses. Today I thought I’d share some ideas with you for how to save money on normal, everyday things that you might not have thought of.  They aren’t in any particular order – I just jotted them down as they came to me.

1. Instead of taking your kids to get a haircut and spending upwards of $10 every time invest in a clipper set and/or a good pair of hair cutting scissors and cut it yourself. It is especially easy to cut boys hair that’s kept short. We have a clipper set and I cut my son’s hair and my husband’s hair so that we don’t have to pay someone else to do it. I realize that it could be a little harder with girls who have a certain style though. If you must pay someone else try to find a beauty school, a vo-tech, or a discount place (such as Supercuts) to get her hair cut and you will spend far less than you would in a salon.

2. Rather than going to the movie theater to watch movies, wait until they come out on video and rent them. Our family rarely goes to the movies because when we do it’s at least $20 just for the tickets. And that’s at the “cheap” time or at the “cheap” theater! Movies used to take a long time to get to video so you really had to have patience but now it seems like within a couple of months of leaving the theater they are out on video! We like to rent from Redbox. It’s only $1 a night for a movie that we can all enjoy in the comfort of our own living room! We can also have all the pop and popcorn we want for a fraction of what the theaters charge!

3. Shop at thrift stores and/or garage sales for things that you’d like to have but aren’t a necessity. You’d be amazed at what you can find! A large portion of the things in my house that are decorative I found at thrift stores and garage sales. Much of it looks just like it would have if I’d purchased it from the store too!

4. Limit the number of times you dine at a restaurant during the month. If you do decide to go to dinner, rather than ordering a dinner for each member of the family, pair up and share a meal. Restaurants are making portion sizes so huge that it’s way too much food for one person to eat anyway (at least it should be!) so rather than eating too much or having food left on your plate – share with the person next to you. Our family of four does this most of the time if we go out. We order two (sometimes three) dishes and then we share them between us. Our bill is so much lower this way!  Also, if you all drink water when you dine at a restaurant you will save almost $2 a person. Drinks have gotten ridiculously expensive lately!

5. Refuse to pay full price for things. Most stores have at least something on sale all the time. If there’s something you need, watch for it to go on sale and then purchase it. Don’t purchase it while it’s full price. Clearance racks are a great place to find good bargains!

6. If you have an Aldi near you – use it! They have great prices on their groceries and you can save a lot of money by getting everything you can there! They don’t carry everything like a full grocery store does but they do have most things. I always make my list and then go to Aldi first to get everything I can off my list and then I go to the grocery store to get whatever I couldn’t find at Aldi. The savings is well worth going to two different stores.

7. Continuing with the grocery theme – don’t by name brand! Generics are so much cheaper and most of the time just as good. I say most of the time because there have been a few things that I’ve bought in the generic brand that I wasn’t impressed with at all. For the most part though I get generic brands for almost everything though.  If you really like name brands then cut and use coupons. You can save a lot of money with the coupons available in the Sunday paper every week.

8. Sign up for rewards programs. We have shopped at Best Buy for our appliances, cameras, TVs, etc. and they have a great reward program. After spending a certain amount of money with them they send out rewards certificates that you can redeem in the store. I have $10 in certificates waiting to be used right now! They also send out coupons with the certificates for a percentage off on certain things.

9. Try not to buy convenience foods. The more food you can make from scratch the more money you will save. There are so many things that can easily be made from scratch but we are so used to picking up a packaged item at the store that we don’t even think about it! For example: cookies, cakes, bread, biscuits, pancakes, and waffles just to name a few! It’s so much healthier if we make it ourselves too.  This is an area that I’ve really been working on lately.  I’ve never bought much of the convenience foods but I’m starting to learn that there are so many more things that I could make from scratch!  It’s kind of fun too! 

10.  Don’t pay for cable TV that you aren’t using.  I know a lot of people cut out cable TV completely.  Ours isn’t one of those families.  Not because we like to watch tons of TV – we actually watch very little – but most of the shows we like are on cable.  It seems like network television has just gotten trashier and trashier and the higher quality TV shows are on cable now.  So, if you’re like us, figure out which channels you regularly like to watch and make sure that your package isn’t full of channels that you never watch.

This list is by no means exhaustive – it’s just a few things that you could do to start saving money.  There are countless ways you can change your style of living to reflect a change in priorities so that you can be a stay-at-home mom!

If any of you have any other ideas that haven’t been shared already please feel free to do so!  Every little bit helps!