Thanks to Dave Ramsey’s ELP program for sponsoring this post! For more information, see my disclosures here.
Ever since I shared my budget binder printables waaaaaay back in January, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how we manage our moneyand what we do to be able to live on just one income while I stay home with the Cs. Today I thought I’d lay it all out there and share the top five things we do as a family to save more money and spend less. I know talking about money can be a little awkward; the goal of my post today is not to suggest that our way is the only way or to imply that we “have it all together” in every aspect of our life. It issimply to show some methods that have helped improve our financial picture and that are possible for everyone to try or consider. Ready to hear our secrets? Here we go!
1) We track our spending.
You probably could’ve guessed that from my budget binder post, right? It may seem tedious to keep track of every budget category and write down our spending information from every receipt, but when we’re are holding ourselves accountable for every purchase, we spend less money. It’s assimple as that. If I’m at Target and I get the urge to purchase one item from each aisle in the home decor department {which may or may not happen on a weekly basis 😉 }, knowing that I will have to record my purchase and that it will put a major dent in our “household items” category for the month helps me rein myself in and only choose items that are realistic for our budget. {If you’d like your own free budget binder printables, you can snag some in this post!}
2) We set up an automatic transfer to our emergency fund.
We learned the importance of an emergency fund when we read Dave Ramsey’s book The Total Money Makeover several years ago, and I can honestly say that building an emergency fund was one of the best things we have ever done for ourselves, particularly after we bought our home. It eliminates so much stress knowing that if we have a true emergency {like when our air conditioner bit the dust on a 95 degree day last summer}, we will be able to handle it financially without going into debt. The emergency fund didn’t just build itself, though. To make sure we are adding to it each month, we set up automatic transfers from our bank account that go out just like our bills. That way, the money is already gone; we can’t access it without jumping through a bunch of hoops to do so, so we’re not tempted to spend that money.
3) We bought less house than we could afford.
At this point in our lives, we could probably go to the bank and be pre-approved for a house that costs much more than the three bedroom townhouse we currently own, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. When we were looking for a place to purchase five years ago, we took a lot of things into account, including where we would want our kids to go to school, which area would be close to family, our church, and Donnie’s job, and where we could get the most for the modest amount of money we were willing to spend. We ended up finding our townhouse, which is in an excellent school district, in an area with low taxes, and is just a few minutes from family, our church, and D’s job. We also got an awesome deal because while the house had great bones, it was in pretty awful shape cosmetically, and the owners didn’t want to take the time to fix it up before they sold it. We may have had to paint over a ton of pink (yes, pink) walls and make a lot of other cosmetic changes, but it has been beyond worth it to only have a very small mortgage payment each month.
We have also made our littlehouse work for us. At one point we were seriously considering moving– I even talked about our plan to move on the blog. We bought this house when Connor was an infant and didn’t take up much room, and after he got bigger (and accumulated more stuff!) and we had Caleb, I was feeling like we needed a bigger place to fit our growing family. Instead of moving and committing to a larger mortgage, though, we made some simple but effective adjustments. We created extra pantry space in our entry closet. We moved the Cs into the same room, giving me some much-needed office space. We created an office for Donnie in our basem*nt. We purged, simplified,and got rid of tons of stuff we weren’t even using. And you know what? We have plenty of space. And the house really does work for us now.
4) We don’t go into debt to pay for projects.
Speaking of all of those cosmetic changes I mentioned above, a lot of them have happened more slowly than we may have liked because we only do projects when we have the cash to pay for them. We don’t buy furniture or electronics if we can’t pay for themright then and there. I would have liked to have gutted our kitchen and rebuilt it from the studs up several years ago, but since that wasn’t in our budget, we gave the cabinets a coat of paint and live without our dream kitchen until we save up the money to afford what we want. Our goal is to have as little debt as possible so that we control our where our money goes and aren’t spending our hard-earned money on sky-high interest payments.
5) We make sure all of our monthly payments are as low as possible.
The smaller our bills each month, the more money we have left over to put toward debt, add to our savings, and pay for necessary home improvements, so we make it a point to continually reevaluate our budget and see where we can make cuts. We got rid of cable and use a Roku with Amazon Prime instead. We check with all of the local internet providers a couple times a year to make sure we’re still getting the best deal, and if we’re not, we switch. We triedevery major mobile phone company out there until we found the one that met our needs for the smallest price.
One of the other areas where we’ve found we can end up saving a lot of money is insurance. It is so easy to just pay the bill on our policies each month without giving them a second thought, but if we’re willing to take just a few minutes to talk to a trusted insurance provider, like those in Dave Ramsey’s Endorsed Local Provider (ELP) program, we can save ourselves several hundred dollarswith just that one call!
Have you reviewed your insurance policies lately? One of Dave’s trusted ELPs willlook over your current policies for free (!) to see if they can save you some money (and sometimes it’s A LOT of money!). The only cost to you is a few minutes of your time, and you could literally end up saving hundreds of dollars. Can’t beat that! It’s almost time for Donnie and I to do another review as well, so we hope you’ll join us in the challenge to chat with an ELP and save some dough! Be sure to stay tuned to the blog for an update on what we learned from talking to one ofDave’s ELPs, and let me know if you take the plunge as well so we can compare notes.
So those are our top five tips! I’d love to hear your money-saving tips, too, so be sure to leave them in the comments! Now go out there and save yourself a bunch of cash! 😉
And if you’re looking for more ways you can start saving money right now, check out my 10 Practical Ways to Save More Money This Month:
Thanks to Dave Ramsey’s ELP program for sponsoring this post! For more information, see my disclosureshere.
