Your Daily Savings Tip - 6/4/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by Mama Reg at Mommyhood Adventures. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

"I like to add rice or beans or potatoes to the meat portion of dinner to make meat stretch. I have added rice to shredded beef for tacos and made an entire meal out of half of what I normally would. It is a great idea to eliminate meat once a week."

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 6/3/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Cook in batches. Make a full weeks meals in a few hours one day. You can do this bi weekly or monthly too. Read how we prepared a month’s worth of meals in 3 hours and then create a meal cooking schedule that will work for your family. You can do this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you want . This can save a ton of money! Having dinner already prepared and ready to heat and eat can keep you from eating out last minute. It also gives your grocery shopping more of a purpose. There is less tossing whatever into the cart when you have a specific meal cooking day planned with a grocery list to follow.

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 6/2/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Compared to the cost of having a coffee house coffee every time you are out you can make those delicious concoctions at home for a fraction of the cost! There are tons of recipes out there for homemade lattes and mochas. Try a few until you find your favorite! Even more frugal, do away with specialty coffees all together. Cream, sugar, and a little vanilla can make a simple morning treat.

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 6/1/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Utilize CVS and/or Walgreens saving programs. I have more toothpastes and tooth brushes, soaps, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, Tylenol, etc… than I know what to do with and I got most, if not all of it for free. I literally do not have space to store it all. Not only does this save my family money, but I have the ability to donate items to others who aren’t so fortunate, as well.

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 5/31/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Get a bread maker if you don’t have one already. If you have one - use it! Of course, you can always make bread by hand but if time is not always on your side the bread maker is a definite help. We have had two, both purchased used, both worked like a champ. The one I have now was found at a thrift store for only $13! It is a top of the line one, too. We eat bread with most of our meals. The fact that the bread is homemade and I include wheat flour in it helps fill us up and keeps us from going for seconds. I also like knowing that it is healthy without any added sugars or other unnecessary ingredients.
I have 7 children and I have noticed that homemade bread does fill them up faster than store bought loaves. If you're looking to save money this could help quite a bit.

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 5/7/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Instead of eating out plan fun pizza making nights at home with your family. Tortillas work great for this! Creating personal pizzas on tortillas is a lot of fun for the little guys! Setting aside a little money for soda water and flavored syrup (like Toranis) can make a lot of fun for very little money! The syrup goes a long way and can be saved for the next family night. Add in a game or a favorite movie checked out from the library and you have a perfect, inexpensive and special evening!

How much does this save? Eating out costs no less than $60 for our large family. However, with smart shopping I can pick up the makings for a special, fun dinner for less than $10. That's a $50 savings!

Pretty good!

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 5/6/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Eat less meat. Americans have way oversized meat portions. I’d even suggest try going meatless one night a week! We have found that garbonzo beans are delicious as well as rice to take the temporary replacement of meat. We wouldn’t do this every night but we do enjoy the challenge once a week. My husband greatly enjoys my meatless stew with its large chunks of potatoes.
How much can you save by doing this for a year? Since meat costs more than twice the amount of rice or beans, and we eat no meat 52 days out of the year, we do save quite a bit - 52 meals with meat cost us over $100 for just the meat alone. But when we use rice or beans instead that cost goes down to less than $50.

Pretty good savings!

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 5/5/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Wash out your plastic storage bags after using them or go to washable containers with lids instead. Glass containers with tight fitting lids are great and you can get them in freezer safe, microwave and oven safe varieties. Imagine the ease of going straight from the fridge or freezer to the oven without any waste like foil or baggies!
Glass containers do cost a bit more than plastic but they definitely hold up through years and years of use if you can keep them out of your toddler's hands.

How much can you save by doing this for a year? This really depends on the size of your family and how many bags you go through. We freeze everything in freezer bags and use the smaller bags for prepared, frozen meats and veggies. Washing out our baggies probably saves us somewhere around $5 a month, maybe more. That's about $60 a year.

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.

Your Daily Savings Tip - 5/4/2009

Your Daily Savings Tip for today is brought to you by The Money Herder. If you have a quick savings tip, or a tip including a tutorial, we'd be happy to consider posting your tip on The Money Herder - giving you complete credit, of course. Please email me with any tip you would like me to include!

Today's Daily Savings Tip is:

Make your own detergents!

Dish detergent -
Equal parts borax, baking soda, & regular cheap powder detergent (we get the dollar tree stuff). Use one tablespoon in each compartment per load. You don't have to add in the regular detergent. We like to use regular detergent and make it go farther by adding in the borax and baking soda. You can also put vinegar in your rinse compartment!

Laundry detergent -
Hot water
½ cup Washing Soda
¼ cup Borax
½ Soap bar (Fels or Ivory. Castile bars like Dr. Bronners work well, too)
½ to 1 tsp essential oils for scent (if desired)

Grate the soap and stir into hot water in a pot. Stir it over low to medium heat until the soap is fully dissolved.
Fill a 5 gallon bucket half full with very hot water. Add the borax, the washing soda, essential oils (if desired) and the melted soap. Stir well until everything is dissolved then add enough hot water to fill the bucket to the top.

You can either leave this mix in the bucket with the lid tightly in place or you can pour it into old detergent bottles. Remember to always mix your detergent or shake the bottle before you use it. 1 cup per load in a top loader, ¼ to ½ cup per load in a front loader. If you have hard water you may want to add in a little lemon juice every so often, too.

How much can you save by doing this? The above laundry recipe costs about a penny a load. Compare that to a bulk buy of Tide detergent at about 3 cents per load, or the average bottle at a grocery store at about 8 cents per load and you have a terrific savings! Especially if you do 90 to 100 loads a month like my family of 9.
Nice!
The dish detergents nets similar results.

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Remember that not all of our daily savings tips will work for every family. We don't even use every tip we give ourselves. However, these tips can be terrific money savers when you can make them work in your situation. Just give them a try, one at a time. Keep doing what works and discard the not-so-doable ideas. Also, keep in mind that what might seem like minimal savings and not worth the work does add up when added in with all the other little money saving ideas out there.