SAHM tips....Money saving tips??

[cackydoodledoo]

The school year ends in two weeks and I find myself in a "little" bind. I have noone to watch my kids this summer and between the cost of daycare and gas pretty much my whole paycheck will be spent so I can't see how it is worth it to work just to pay someone to do what I can do myself. I so want to be a SAHM but it scares me to death.

I know we will have to cut out alot of things and I am hoping to find some work that I can do at home. Would love to do some kind of data entry that I could do on my own hours! So I am asking if any other SAHM's or working moms have any money saving tips or tips on how you can bring in a little extra income? All comments and suggestions are welcome!

Oh btw does any do any work with the National Notary Association? I would like to do that but have some questions too!

 

[ADozenGirlz]

Quote:
The best advice I have is to work with the income you already have and start SAVING in lots of places you didn't know you could. Check out http://www.WickedCoolDeals.com for ways to save tons of money at the grocery store. It's not your grandma's coupon clipping, I assure you! Make friends with your paper boy (or grocery clerk) and ask if you can have the coupon inserts from Sunday's newspapers on Monday morning. Then read up on the Wicked Cool Deals site for how to use them. I have saved THOUSANDS of dollars since January in online and paper coupons. I never pay full price for anything any more. If you're on Facebook, there are a TON of these coupon type sites that tell you exactly how to do it. AND they do all the work for you (except aquiring the coupons!). They will email you the store's sales information for the week, matched up with the coupons (and tell you where to find the particular coupon!) so all you have to do is gather your coupons and save like crazy!

You will be shocked to learn at how much you can get for free and how much money you've been wasting. I know I was!

Good luck, being a SAHM is the BEST job I have EVER had!

 

[cackydoodledoo]

I have taken a couple of couponing classes and gotten a lot of info on it. Only problem is while working a full time job and with everything else going on with kids and such I don't have time to do most of the coupon stuff. I am hoping that being a SAHM will give me a little more time to do that. The grocery bill is one place where I could definitely use some cuts!!! Thanks!

 

[ADozenGirlz]

Quote:
My pleasure! You will be astonished!!! The most time-consuming part is in the beginning, trying to get a system organized that works for you, but after that, it's like taking candy from a baby!

Email me and let me know how it works out for you after a couple of months: [email protected]

Cheers!
Kathy

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Breadmaker
Wafflemaker
Deep fryer
blender
rice cooker
griddle
Make everything from scratch that is baked!

Buy meat in large frozen bags
Buy frozen vegetables in large bags

Carefully buy fruit. Only buy exactly what you will eat in a few days. (Fruit is SOOO expensive.)

Buy lots of flour and freeze it
Buy lots of butter and freeze it

Try to go grocery shopping only every 2-3 or 4 weeks.

These things have saved us tons of $.

Take a bottle of generic pine sol and dilute it in a spray bottle to clean bathrooms.
Use diluted bleach to clean everything else (cheap) that can be cleaned with bleach and also parts of the bathrooms.
Make handkerchiefs and don't buy kleenex.

Make cloth napkins and don't buy napkins.
Cut up old clothes that are worn out to make rags and use those instead of paper towels.

Take soap bar remnants from the shower, save them up for a year. Then put them through the shredder (kitchen aid attachment). Take the equivalent of 1/2 bar soap, 1 cup washing soda, and 1 cup borax. Mix to make laundry detergent. Don't use this mix all the time as it is hard on the septic system due to the soap solids clogging things up (my DH's relative says).

Buy large bags of quick oats (25 lb) and cook oatmeal for breakfast with cinn. sugar on it.
Try to discourage cereal eating unless it is the large cheap bags of it (no box buying).

Mix caffeine-free herbal tea up in quantity, add sugar while hot, and refrigerate instead of buying soda.

Give your hens finely chopped grass a couple or three inches long every day or two to decrease feed costs.

Stop buying pine shavings (you can only do this if you are in a mild climate as the poo will freeze to the floor) for the wood floor of the coop. Switch to sweet PDZ carefully sprinkled around on the floor ($16 per bag) and scrape floor with implement every day to treat the whole floor like a poop board (this will eventually ruin the floor though I think). This is what I do. It has saved us a ton of $.

 

[cackydoodledoo]

Thank you for the suggestions! I had thought about getting one of those vacuum seal machines for the meat. That is probably one of our worst wastes is meat freezer burns before we use it. Do you think this is a good idea? I thought if I could get the meat cheap and in bulk and packaged it this way then I wouldn't have any waste!! I do already cut up old clothes for rags and do you think it is really cheaper to make your own bread than to buy the store bought? My husband loves homemade bread!!!

I am not familiar with sweet PDZ??? What is it and where do you get it? My coop has a dirt floor but I do use pine shavings in the boxes.

Also how long after you fertilize your lawn do you have to wait to give the clippings to your chickens? Will it hurt them? I just got three bags of clippings from my BIL to put in my compost pile and lasagna garden and thought about giving to chickens but didn't know if he had used fertilizer.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Quote:
My sister-in-law isn't happy with her sealing machine. She says that it wasn't worth the money spent on it. That is the only testimonial I have ever heard. Sorry I can't help more. You could start a thread on just that subject!

Yes, it is much cheaper to make your own bread. I just paid $4 for a loaf of organic bread so that my child who is allergic to non-organic soy could have it. If I had just spent the time with the breadmaker, I would have saved a lot of money. Most of the recipes call for a maximum of 4 cups of flour in them. The trick is finding the right recipe for slicing bread. Some of the recipes turn out not so good for slicing. I did finally find a good recipe for that.

It takes 3 hours to bake the bread in the breadmaker. We have had ours for 12 years and it still works, but has had light use (it was a wedding present, like our kitchen-aid).

Sweet PDZ is sold at the feed store. It is a stall refresher. They have a website with poultry recommendations: www.sweetpdz.com I think is the website...hopefully that link works.

We don't fertilize our lawn since we are out in the country. I don't know the recommendations on that.

 

[flowerhippie]

I have homeschooled my two son's since they were in pampers, I have learned many crafty ways to earn money in a pinch. I have a few sugestions that my husband and I have pulled out of our hats. We have found deals at flee markets thaat we only paided pinnys for such as ball canning jars. the old ones and new and sold a few on e bay for $ 15.00 and earned a 100% profit. I have found people see art in everything I love birds and wait paciently every year for there nests. I will cut a branch and wire them on fill with artifical eggs and wala. poepole just love them for a center piece on the table. I have used old jeans and turned them into purses, croched them into rugs. I recycle plastic shopping bags that your grocery's in and turned them into bags that i sell for $ 15.00 each. I look for Ideas that I can rely bbon that are handy, you would be supprised what ppeople would buy. If you look on the web site ETSY, you can gather ideas on honemade items people make to sell. there are indless oppurtunitys to earn a buck or two. this year we had a hard time beceause of the ecconomy and my sons and I made wreaths out of hangers and limbs the storm whirled down just for our blessing to use. I am so thankfull for doing so my sons learned that when they tried yhey will be rewarded and standing in the towns parking lots were a humbling experience. We were handed money and had many blessing and our hard work was not a effort at all. I hope all will be o.k. in the time of hard ships in the depression of the fourtys and in 1974, our elders made soaps, sewed clothing, we actually had farm land that was in use now that those thing are gone the old hand crafted workmanship is much desired to colectors. I am new to the forum although I am a old spirit in a young heart do not tire easly and rest your heart within your soal. I know all of you have one thing in common little lovly chickens with such a happyness to waddle and scratch every day. I hope all of you will be blessed with many offering to others that is what ythis world was founded on. Were back to the old basics and time will always start at twelve and end at twelve. Happy crafting fondly a little chicken farmer;

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

Quote:
I just wanted to tell you that birds' nests are beautiful, but carry mites sometimes that don't mind residing in people's homes (the red mite or "chicken" mite). They are different than the Northern Fowl Mite. I just wanted to let you know in case you hadn't heard.

 

[TheBrumstead]

I have a FoodSaver sealer and I love it. I almost always buy meat in bulk and re-package it in smaller quantities.

I've been a SAHM for almost two years now and love it. I'm a Tupperware consultant (things are slow right now), sell things on Ebay, do all my web searches on Swagbucks and get "bucks" for Amazon gift cards (have gotten $35 so far, if you want a referral email, let me know, then your searches will give me credit too!).