When money is tight, we’ve discovered that it PAYS to be creative (literally). There are thousands of ways to find more money. We have a few basic ways of stretching our tight budget:
1. We are big fans of ‘free money’. We jump on 30-day free trial offers. We read e-mails, take surveys, join savings programs, actually mail in those mail-in-rebates–all in the name of saving a few bucks. In time, those few bucks begin to add up and we can see the difference in our budget. In fact, here are some of our favorite ‘free money’ programs and the areas of our budget they help to fund:
- MyPoints: Home furnishing fund
- The Cha-Ching! Christmas Club: Christmas fund
- Upromise: College fund
- Saving on a Shoestring: Vacation fund
2. We are always looking for ways to save more money. The List of things that we were not willing to do in order to save money continually gets shorter. We’ve discovered that sometimes a very simple change can save a large amount of money.
3. We are learning to plan for the future. This is a constant learning process–part of the journey that we plan to share with you! Planning for the future might mean creating a grocery list in advance, or it may mean thinking of out-of-the-box ways to save money for our children’s college fund.