Living Cheap (Without Having a Cheap Life)
Whether you are trying to get out of debt, wanting to spend your money differently, or hoping to end the cycle of living paycheck-to-paycheck, the solution is the same: live cheap. My family has been trying to do all three!
Living a frugal life is difficult, especially when you have bad habits. There are a few bad habits I have needed to break. First, I needed to waste less time. It seems off topic, but I was wasting time out of boredom and exhaustion, which allowed little to no time for deal-seeking. Second, I needed to be flexible with my idea of a budget. Just because a certain percentage of income allocated to buying kids clothes works for one person, it may not work for you. Before, I was trying to save money in less obvious ways so that we could still appear to live like everyone else. That was stupid for two reasons: I wasn't saving as much money as I needed to, and no one in my life expects me to be well off. It was all in my head. Third, I needed to be less flexible. I found that I once I compromised a little, say on my entertainment budget for the month, I let the whole thing fly out the window. So I broke down each category in my budget even further, so I knew what spending my max amount would look like. That way, when I was about to buy something I was more likely to realize if I had already spent enough that month.
My favorite website for saving money right now is pocketyourdollars.com. It has shopping lists for the stores in my area, deals on a variety of things, and tips for saving money. Through this website and my own personal web searches, I have compiled quite the list of websites and other sources for finding a good deal. (I am also going to start shopping at Aldi's more). Here are some of these sources for saving money:
Coupons and Deals:
Deal sites
Pocketyourdollars.com (Shopping lists, Deals, Tips)
Thefreebieblogger.com (Only free stuff!)
Printable Coupons
Check Manufacturer websites (Like Huggies diapers)
Check Store websites (like Target.com)
Commonkindness.com (when you print coupons, this website gives $ to your favorite charity!)
Coupon Databases
Paper Coupons
Sunday Paper
All You Magazine
The Coupon Clippers
Eating Out
Cash Back Sites
Ebates
Mr. Rebates
Daily Deals
Coupon Codes
Coupon Cabin
Flamingo World
Cooking
Allrecipes.com (Great for entering ingredients you have on hand to find a great recipe)
Homemade Cleaners:
Vacations:
Mobissimo.com (Flights and Hotels)
Hipmunk.com (Flights)
Cruisesonly.com (Cruises)
Smartertravel.com (Discount Travel)
Living Social (escapes)
Well, this is a good place to start. Have fun living cheap!
Side note: if you are hard up for money, you should not be looking at the sites I listed for vacations. It's a trap. Wait until you are back on your feet. :)
