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Savings in the Household Budget

Your household budget is a wild card in your family. Sometimes you might find yourself stretching to make it all month long, while the next month you easily meet your household budget without going over. What you need to consistently do is find additional ways that you can cut back on the things you buy and in what you do to make sure that you meet your household budget every month!

No matter how much you have coming into the house in the form of money, it never seems to be enough. Starting a journal and keeping a journal for a few weeks, and if possible, a few months, you will find that you can make ends meet, by cutting back on those things you really don’t need. 

Starting with the food that your family eats, try generics, no names, and store brands. These cost much less and sometimes are even made by the label brands that you are paying twice as much for! The store names and the generic brands of cereals, baggies, and even coffee, breads, and frozen foods don’t cost nearly as much as what the brands cost on that same store shelf!

Look for sales. After you have established a new listing of foods that you can purchase in the lines of generic or store name brands, look for the sales where you can use coupons, buy one get one free or that you will get other rewards for. Getting more for your money is the real name of the game. 

Buying in bulk when there is a sale cuts your over all costs. If you have a hard time thinking in the monthly budget, think about it yearly. How many packs of soap do you use in a year? If you use one bar a week, you need 52 bars a year. You find a sale where it is buy one get one free, and you have a few coupons. Purchasing, as many as you can afford will cut the price of soap that you will use this year. 

Even if you were paying $1 per bar, and you were getting them buy one get one free, you are paying just $26 for soap for the year. Add on that fifty-cent coupon (that you have four of!) and you are now going to be spending just $22 for your soaps all year long. You will find a great savings when you plan ahead. Use this plan with the many items that you purchase for your home, and keep a larger stock when you purchase items on sale, the savings you will experience help you save money to purchase other items that you need as well. 

Reusing containers is another method of finding savings in your home. If you pack your lunch, reusing containers as often as possible is going to help you cut back on baggies that you use in the house. Using containers for chips, sandwiches and such instead of baggies is going to save you pennies a day but over the course of the year, it all adds up, and cuts the total cost of your food bills. You don’t have to purchase some containers as you will find deli meats, foods and other things like butter, and jello will come in containers that you can reuse as well. 

Do you often find that you are throwing away little slivers of soap from the tub or on the sink? Melt these little slivers and put them in your hand soap bottle. Use every ounce of soap that you buy and leave nothing to waste while saving money at the same time. 

Buy the biggest bottles of refillable soaps possible. You will find that you can often purchase a ½ gallon for just a few more cents than the small bottles of soap that sit on your sink, and all you have to do is refill that one sitting on the sink for a real savings that will put more money back into your household budget.