Monday, March 31, 2008

CraftyMamaMia's Frugal Living Tips


What is Frugal living you ask? When you live frugally, you spend less money than you make each month. Resulting in saving money to pay off debt, build a house or maybe even retire early. Over year ago my husband and I did not know how to manage money. Our bills were always late, we spent way to much on groceries and other unnecessary items , etc. Now we have been living frugally and I am proud to say we have no debt, we have 4 acres and a mobile home, and a car, it is all paid off, our bills are now 1/2 of what my husband makes in one month. We are now saving to build an eco-friendly home on our land.

Tip #1
You can save money on the electric bill by unplugging everything when not in use, especially big appliances. They still use electricity when they are completely off, about 40% of what they use while on.

Tip #2


A BIG money saver is switching your home to all cloth, get rid of disposable. If you have a baby in diapers using cloth can save you over $2,000, cloth wipes too. It is not much different than using disposables, except for having to wash them. (Oh my, you might have to smell poop!) If you have sewing abilities you can save yourself even more money by making your own diapers. (I made the diaper in the picture above)

Tip # 3
Using cloth wipes instead of toilet paper for the whole family can be very beneficial too. Much softer than the cheap toilet paper, plus better for the environment and your wallet.
Cloth Menstrual pads, cloth napkins, towels instead of paper towels. There are so many things that people buy these days just to use for a few minutes and throw directly in the trash because they are too busy/lazy to do an extra load of laundry each week.

1 comment:

Kirsten said...

Congratulations on being debt free. That's really a huge accomplishment these days.

I could save money if I'd spend less time on Etsy ;). I'd better turn off the computer now too and save some electricity by going to bed.