Guest post from Rachel Whitmire. Originally posted at the browneyedblessings.blogspot.com.

Photo by jenni40947

I made my bi-monthly bread shopping trip earlier this week and was thinking about some of the things I do to save money. As most people know, I’m a stay-at-home-mom which means we only have one income. And, if you’ve been paying any attention at all then you probably know that police officers don’t exactly rake in the big bucks! So, we have one income and it’s a small one. But, having me stay home with the kids is important to us and so we make it work. We still have a wonderful life and I find we really don’t miss the “extras” that we might have if we had two incomes.

I love to read about what other people do to save money. It’s much more helpful to get “real life” ideas then the stuff you read in most articles and books. I mean, how many times do you need to be reminded turning off your lights will save electricity? I think most people also already know to create your list from the sale fliers, always shop with a list, eat less meat, etc.

It’s so much more helpful to find out what real people are doing in real life.

As mentioned above, I buy bread in bulk. I don’t get it at Costco or somewhere like that, though. I get it at our local Dollar Tree. All of the stores in our area have an agreement with several bread companies and they get their surplus bread a few times a week. It’s possible that all of the Dollar Trees do this so you should definitely check. The bread our stores get is brand-name, high-quality stuff and it isn’t even day old bread. The batch I bought on Monday was dated for May 5th! The brand that I buy is Nature’s Own, 100% Whole Wheat. At our grocery store, the cost is generally about $2.50/loaf. At Dollar Tree, it’s $1! The trick, though, is that the store gets a fairly limited quantity and doesn’t keep it in stock. So, you have to act quickly. I talked to the employees and learned that they get their biggest shipment of bread on Mondays by 11:00am. I time my shopping trip accordingly. I get a cart and fill it up if I can. I think I bought about 16 loaves this week. I kept a few out and the rest went in our freezer. When we start to run low, I’ll go back and stock up again. We’ve been buying our bread like this for over a year. Besides saving money, it’s also wonderful to not have lunch time come around and realize I’m out of bread. There’s always more in the freezer.

Watching for bargains like this can be a huge deal. Sure, saving more than 50% on bread isn’t going to make it possible for a parent to stay home but it’s the little things like that that add up.

Here are a few other things I do to save money on the things we buy most . . . .

• Shop for groceries in lower income neighborhoods. I learned this when we lived in one of those lower income neighborhoods (which, incidentally, was one of the most friendly, open communities I’ve ever experienced!). I was surprised, though, to find that a lot of food items were cheaper at our local grocery stores than they were at my mom’s stores about 20 minutes away. Even if it’s the same store you normally shop at, the prices may be less in a different area. For example, we now live south of a big city where there are a bunch of smaller suburb/cities. If I drive 10 minutes in one direction to one Walmart, milk costs 50 cents less per gallon than if I go to another Walmart that’s 10 minutes in the other direction. It’s the same store chain, same stuff, just a different part of town.
• Try to never go shopping for things you need right away. I’m still building this up but my goal is to always have what we need on hand – that way I can just shop to stock up on things we’re running low on. This allows you to buy only the really good bargains and leave the other stuff until it’s on sale.
• Get a freezer! I knew I wanted a freezer but I really had no idea how much it would help us save money. We got the smallest size chest freezer (ours is from Costco). It has been just the right size for us, though I usually do keep it pretty full. When I find low prices on items I know we’ll use, I buy as many as I can afford and then freeze it for later.
• Thrift store shopping. We buy probably 75% of our clothing from thrift stores or get them via hand-me-downs from other families (and we do our best to pass our clothes on to other families when we’re done with them too). That’s pretty much all of the kids’ clothes and some of my clothes and my husband’s as well. My husband probably has the fewest items from thrift stores because he is 6′ 3″ tall and it’s very rare to find second hand clothing for tall guys. Let me clarify, though, that just because our clothes come from thrift stores does not mean that they are rags. We only buy the good stuff – the high quality, no stains, no rips, stuff that you find if you keep your eye out. I’ve found the best way to do that is to not shop for clothing when I’m desperate for something. If I wait until Chief’s pants are all high-waters and then go to the store, I might not find anything or might only find the higher priced merchandise. But, if I keep an eye out for stuff my kids will grow into soon, I can go ahead and get it and set aside. Then when Ace comes to me and wiggles his toes out the ends of his tennis shoes, I can produce another pair without even going shopping.

So, those are a few things that I try to do in order to keep our costs down. What do YOU do to save money? Please share in the comments!

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