It takes a lot of thought and time and energy trying to organize all your spendings and manage your money in such a way so you're always on the (+). Now that we are living on our own again, Eugene and I have to be a lot smarter with the way we spend and save our money. Eugene is about to start his second year in Pharmacy school, and with three more years of tuition before us - there is a certain amount of financial planning that needs to take place so we don't get stuck having to eat mac n' cheese every day (even though I love mac and cheese!) There are a few things we've tried and a few tricks I've learned in our 1.5 years of marriage so I thought I'd share. :)
When we first started budgeting - two programs that friends/pastors recommended to us were Mint and YNAB - You Need a Budget (FYI - these photos are not mine. They are from the websites)
YNAB is a program we tried when we first got married but we dropped it pretty early so I'm not as familiar with this one. It's an actual computer program that you download onto your computer (FOR $60).
In theory, it basically does the same thing that Mint does but you are required to manually record and categorize the money you are spending yourself. When we had this program, we were saving all our receipts and designating a day or two during the week to input the data into the program. It was fairly time consuming and hard for me to manage with my inconsistent work schedule so we were unable to keep up with it.
With both of these programs we got pretty discouraged.
However, in January we started an "allowance program" and it has been working great for us! Basically what we do is this - I get paid every other week on Thursday - so my "pay day" is "allowance" day. On pay day, I would pull out $240 cash for the both of us to spend for the next two weeks. Eugene gets $60 to spend on food/coffee, etc. and I got $180 ($60 to spend for my personal things & $120 for groceries/home needs.) The rule was we were only allowed to use the cash allotted to us every other week. No credit card. No debit card. (unless it was for gas.) This really forced us to watch what we were spending because we physically saw what money we could use/not use.
This forced me to find creative ways to budget my money and really maximize our money.
Here are a few tips and tricks I've tried and found to be very helpful in saving money - specifically in terms of grocery shopping and meal planning.
1) Make a grocery list: When I first got married I was often overzealous about my cooking adventures that I would just go to the grocery store and wait to be inspired. I usually left the grocery store with enough supplies to make 10 different exotic meals. This often resulted in wasted food and wasted money. Never again! Making a grocery list forces you to go in and out. Try your best not to add things just because they are on sale or because you are temporarily inspired to make something crazy. It can wait.
2) Use a grocery basket: My rule of thumb when I go shopping is to only buy what I can carry. I found that using a basket instead of a cart helps me to stay conscious of how many things I'm buying and it forces me to reconsider if I really need that extra bottle of cooking wine that is on sale or that 50 lb bag of meatballs that they are sampling! It helps!
3) Maximize your ingredients: We now live only 3 minutes away from Costco. This is good/bad. Good because Costco is awesome and you really can't beat their price. Bad, because they sell everything in bulk so buying your produce there is probably not the best choice. When I do choose to buy my produce at Costco, I plan my meals in such a way to maximize every ingredient and yet keep the menu versatile.
In this case, I bought romaine lettuce, avocados and cucumber at Costco. I also bought a huge back of sprouts from the Korean Market. I've been using these ingredients for our lunch sandwiches and integrating these same ingredients into our dinners (i.e. California Bowl - yum!)
It also doesn't hurt your wallet to eat $1.50 fish tacos on Taco Tuesday at Rubios!
I'm also saving up my pennies for this cast iron I've been eye-ing for the longest time. Nothing wrong with saving up pennies :)
In the end, we know that everything we have is not really ours but the Lord's. Even the money we have to save and spend is ultimately something God has entrusted us to be good stewards of. Our prayer in these next coming years is that we would faithfully manage our finances in such a way that would be honoring to Him! We know that He is the giver of all things - and we trust that He will continue to give us the wisdom to be good stewards of all the things he has entrusted to us!
Hope this helps! If you have any good tips for me - please share! :)
Happy saving!
XOXO
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