The Frugal Family Home Podcast

Inside: Stretch your Back to School Supplies dollars with these 7 money saving ideas. Get organized now and save with all the back to school sales. Can you believe that it’s almost back to school sales time already? It seems like it gets earlier each year. But when you take advantage of the sales, even if they are in the middle of the summer you can really save a bunch on back to school supplies. In this episode of the Frugal Family Home podcast, I want to help you get intentional about saving money on back to school items. To make the most of your back to school dollars I have 7 tips to help you stretch your money, to stay focused on what you need, and to stay on budget. Listen to the podcast below, or if listening isn’t your thing, scroll down to see the 7 tips below. Resources Mentioned in this Episode Free Printable Back to School Price List Get Organized for Back to School   7 Tips for Back to School Sales 1. Take Inventory Before You Shop Take a moment to see what you need and make a list before you set out to do your shopping. 2. Don’t Shop One Store for Everything Be sure to shop around to get the best deals on office supplies and back to school items. Don’t limit yourself to Target and Walmart. The office supplies stores have great deals for back to school too. Also, drug stores like Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid have great deals on school supplies too. 3. Don’t Do All Your Shopping at Once Each week retailers will have rock bottom prices on some items. If you plan to shop each week to pick up those rock-bottom deals you can save the most money. 4. Clip Coupons During back to school sales, you’re sure to find coupons to match many items. Be sure to check for printable coupons and Sunday paper coupons. Print or clip the coupons for items you know you’ll want to purchase. Keep them in an envelope in your purse so you’ll have them on hand when you go shopping. 5. Shop the Dollar Store The dollar store has lots of school supplies and more at really good prices. If you don’t want to bother shopping the sales shopping a dollar store is a good option for inexpensive school supplies. 6. Stock Up Don’t purchase just what you’ll need for the beginning of the school year, really stock up. The best prices of the year are during the back to school sales, so be sure to purchase enough to last all year long until the next big sales season. 7. Use Cash With so many great deals to be had it’s easy to get carried away and overspend your budget. Make a budget now and use cash when you shop so you can avoid overspending. I hope these 7 tips help you to stretch your money during the back to school sales. What tip do you use that we could add to the list? I would love to have you leave it in the comments below.

5 simple money management tips to help you get control of your money. With these tips, you can take control of your money instead of letting it control you. Money some people can do very well on a little money, others don’t do well with lots of money coming in. What makes the difference? It’s all in how well you manage your money. If you struggle to have enough money to last until the end of the month, these money management tips can help. Tips for Money Management Success In this Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m talking about getting intentional with your money. There are a few things you can do to set yourself up for money management success. These tips are ones we use in our home when setting up our budget and they work. If you need help setting up a budget be sure to check out the budgeting series.  It’s a step by step plan to help you make a realistic budget you can stick to. Show Notes 5 Tips for Setting Yourself Up for Money Management Success 1. You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure If you don’t track your where your money is going it will just go. By having a budget you can track where you are spending too much and where you have extra money. When you manage your money you can have enough money for the really important items and know where your money is really going. 2. Don’t Let Perfection Stop You from Managing Your Money It’s easy to not set up a budget until you have the perfect budget. Don’t let perfection keep you from making and implementing your budget today. You can always adjust as you need to. 3. Write Your Budget and Start Using It The first step in money management is writing down where your money will go with a budget. Then start to use your budget and do your best to stick to it. 4. Review your Budget Regularly Review your budget regularly. You don’t want to make a budget and file it away in the drawer, that won’t help you manage your money. But when you make a budget and refer to it through the month you can see where you are overspending and correct it as you go along. 5. Adjust Your Spending as Needed When you review your budget you might find you need to adjust your budget to fit what you are actually spending each month. When you are reviewing your budget regularly, you’ll see where your budgeted amount is working well and where it isn’t so you can adjust as needed. Managing your money doesn’t have to be stressful at all. You can keep your money under control so you can reach your financial goals. When you put these 5 tips for successful money management to work for you with a realistic budget you can make your money work for you, instead of you constantly working for your money. You have two choices, you can tell your money where it will go, or it will just go to whatever you want at the time. Be intentional with your money and choose to manage it. What do you think? What could you add to these 5 tips for successful money management? Let me know in the comments below. Links Mentioned in this Podcast Free Printable Budget Sheet Excel Budget Sheet File How to Set Up a Budget Series

A 6 step plan for how to plan a month’s worth of meals in about an hour. It’s the plan I use to quickly plan a month’s worth of meals at our house and I hope it can help you too. How many times has dinner time rolled around and you go to the cupboard to see what you’ll make? As you search your refrigerator and cupboards you see lots of ingredients but it’s hard to put them together into a meal. The kids are whining, they want to know when dinner will be ready. Your hubby arrives home and is hungry too. You have a choice, throw something together or grab something out. Out of frustration, you grab a frozen meal out of the freezer you purchased just in case. Or you head out the door to grab something to eat to get everyone fed after a long day. You know there has to be a better way to get your family fed. Or maybe you do meal plan but it’s hard to get meals planned each week. Sometimes you forget to put your meal plan together. Or you just don’t have the time to meal plan each week. I understand. In the past, I would meal plan each week, but sometimes I wouldn’t get it done and then we would end up eating out because I didn’t know what to make for dinner. That’s why I switched to planning my meals by the month instead of by the week. In this week’s, podcast I’m sharing my system for how to plan a month’s worth of meal in about an hour. The first few times you give this type of meal planning a try, it may take you a little longer. But once you get everything organized, your meal planning time will short and only once a month too. Show Notes How to Plan a Month’s Worth of Meal in about an Hour Step One, Grab a calendar or print a month on one-page sheet. This will be where you are going to plan your dinners of the month. I only put dinners on here. Step Two, Make a list of your favorite dinners. I use one of my printable sheets with section heading for each type of meat. One section for beef, one from ground beef, chicken, vegetarian meals, pork, and fish. Step Three, On the back of the favorite meals sheet, I add a list of a few meals about 5 that we love to have each month. Pizza is a very popular meal at our house so I make sure to put it on our meal plan at least twice a month. Step Four, Add your absolute favorite meals to your calendar that are on the back of the page. I’ll add them to our meal plan at least once or twice during the month. I like to add our must have meals first so I don’t forget to add them. Step Five, Search your pantry and freezer. See what you have stocked up and make a list. Try to coordinate what you have on hand with meals on your favorites sheet. Step Six, Make your meal plan. Add the meals to your monthly meal plan sheet. I like to make sure to keep our protein sources spread out over the month. Nobody at our house wants to each chicken, even if it’s a different kind for 5-6 days in a row. I’m sure that’s true for your family too. Get the Homemaking Planner The homemaking planner has all the sheets you need to plan a week or a month’s worth of meals. Plus lots of other helpful sheets to keep your day organized one page at a time. Extra Tips to Keep Your Meal Plan from Getting Stale Vary your Meals by Season I like to make a favorite meals list for each season of the year. We have a different list of favorite meals for summer, winter, spring and fall. Using these 4 different lists helps us to keep our meals varied and we stay out of the same din...

Help cut your food cost by stopping food waste with these 5 simple tips. We’ve found they work great to cut our food waste down. When you are trying to cut your spending and bring your money under control cutting your food budget is a good way to start. You can adjust what you buy, buy more items that are on sale, eat less expensive food and so on. But what about food waste? When you work hard to make the most of the food you have, it can really help you to save more money, without having to change your eating too much. Before you cut your food budget to save more money, try a few of these tips I’m sharing in this week’s Frugal Family Home podcast to make the most of the food you have and to waste less food. Links Mentioned in the Podcast, Some of the links below are my affiliate links. Which means when you purchase through them I can make a little money at no extra cost to you. Thanks for the support. One Way to Stop Food Waste Salad Spinner Compost Bin Show Notes 5 Ways to Stop Food Waste 1. Have a plan for the Fresh Fruits and Vegetables you Purchase Fruits and vegetables can be expensive and often they don’t last long. When you purchase them be sure to have a plan to use them up before they go bad. 2. Plan for Leftovers Have a plan in mind for any leftovers you might have. Either plan for them to be lunch or have a leftover dinner each week to keep them from sitting in the fridge and going bad. 3. It’s Not a Great Deal if It Goes to Waste Only buy items that are a great deal if you know you’ll use them. A great deal isn’t that great if most of what you bought ends up in the garbage. Only buy what you’ll use or have a plan to can, freeze or preserve the extra in some way. 4. Plan a Crisper Clean Out Meal Each Week Plan a meal each week to use up any vegetables or fruit that might be getting close to going bad. Making a pot of soup, a stir fry dinner or even a big salad dinner can help to use up those odds and ends of fresh produce before it goes bad. 5. Too Late, Compost It Sometimes even our best efforts fall short and items go bad. Don’t dwell on it, compost it instead. When we have fruits and vegetables go bad we will compost those items in our compost bin. Then we use that compost in our garden. It recycles the bad food into something good we can use. What else could you add to these 5 ways to stop food waste? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments below. More Ways to Save on Food Make Your Own Breadcrumb How to Keep Ginger Longer How to Make Minced Garlic Cubes

Inside: 25 frugal pantry items to stock in your pantry to keep your meal cost low and your grocery spending in check. Stocking your pantry with frugal staples is one way to keep your grocery cost down. I’m sharing my top 25 frugal pantry staples to stock. Having a good supply of frugal staples on hand to make meals from can keep your grocery cost lower. If you make your own items at home, you can really save quite a bit over the ready package items at the store. In this week’s podcast I’m sharing 25 staples I stock in my frugal pantry. When the ingredients you use to cook with are low cost your whole meal cost less to make. Show Notes, 25 Frugal Pantry Staples Scroll down and fill out the form below to get the printable version of these 25 frugal pantry staples. Oats Oats are really versatile. I like to keep rolled oats on hand and oat groats. Rolled oats can be used to make oatmeal packets, as filler in meatloaf, or leftover oatmeal can be added to muffins or other baked good. The oat groats are a nice variation from the regular oatmeal for breakfast. Rice Rice is really inexpensive. So easy to make and can be used in many dishes. Mix rice with beans for a yummy vegetarian burritos bowls. Serve it with stir fry using up the leftover vegetables in the crisper before they go bad. Or use leftover rice to make a bowl of rice cereal in the morning. Dry Beans. Peas, and Lentils Dry beans are a great frugal pantry item. After cooking a pound of beans you have the equivalent of about 4 cans of canned beans for a fraction of the cost. You can use them in soups, along with rice for vegetarian meals or add to a salad. I try to keep a variety of dried beans, split peas, and lentils on hand. Pasta Pasta may not be as cheap as rice or oats but it’s still a great frugal pantry item. We use all kinds of pasta in our dinners. It’s easy to store and great to include in casseroles. Eggs Eggs are so great for a frugal meal. You can eat them for breakfast, boil them and make deviled eggs for a snack. Or use the boiled eggs in an egg salad sandwich. Or make breakfast for dinner for a cheap and easy meal the whole family will love. I usually pay about $.10 an egg so it’s a great frugal protein source to have in your kitchen. Yeast Yeast is something I always have in my kitchen. I use it in my frugal bread recipe, for making homemade cinnamon rolls or dinner rolls. Baking your own bread and other items at home is so much less expensive than purchasing those items at the store. Purchase yeast in bulk to save the most money. I purchase a 2 pound package at Costco but you can also find a one pound package at Winco Foods. Skip the small packages as that is the most expensive way to purchase yeast. I store a small amount of yeast in my refrigerator in a sealed container. I vacuum seal the rest of the yeast to keep it fresh until I need it. It keeps a very long time this way. Baking Soda and Baking Powder If you are not using yeast in baking, then you will more than likely need baking soda or baking powder. This is another item I purchase at Costco. These items save me the most when I use them to make my own baked items instead of purchasing them ready made. I use baking powder in my muffins, quick bread,

Inside: Find 5 tips for how to save money on groceries. We use all of these tips to keep our food budget low and you can too. Changing your food habits is hard to do. You know what food you and your family like to eat. You know how to cook it, so making changes can be hard. You may have noticed that the price of food is going up. I was looking over my price book the other day. I couldn’t believe how the price of apples has risen. In 2011, I usually paid $.40 a pound for apples. Now the prices of apples are regularly $.99 a pound or more. That’s $.60 a pound more than a few years ago. I can find apples for $.39 a pound at my local discount grocery store but the regular store, there is no way I can get even close that price. But as you can see by my apple example, I still can find a good price on apples I just had to search for a different place to buy them. How to Save Money on Groceries, Tips You Need Know In today’s podcast, I’m sharing how to save money on groceries. I hope if you have a goal of getting your food costs in line these tips can help you keep your food spending lower. I use all of them and they do help. Show Notes, 1. Change the Way You Think About Food Shopping Make a conscious effort to change in how you shop for food. Be willing to try a new way of shopping and try new foods. Changes in your spending habits have to start with your thinking first. Change the way you think about grocery spending and you can change your food shopping habits. 2. Stockpile Stockpiling is purchasing more than you need of an item at its rock bottom price. By stockpiling items you use regularly, you can have a nice stockpile of food that’s been purchased at great prices to feed your family from. Instead of having to purchase all of your food each week, you can eat as much as you can from your stockpile and then purchase other sale items for later weeks to use. 3. Purchase Meat in Bulk When on Sale Set your buy price for cuts of meat your family likes to eat and then only purchase meat when you see it at that price. Purchase meat not only from the grocery store, but check prices at Costco, Zaycon Fresh, and meat markets. 4. Be Coupon Wise Coupons don’t always save you money, you can actually spend more money on items with coupons. Only use coupons when it will actually save you money. 5. Be Willing To Try New Things Branch out and try new dishes, new ways of eating and new foods. You might find a new favorite meal or find a new way to save that is effortless. Links to Resources mentioned in the Podcast Purchase chicken and other meat in bulk at Zaycon Fresh (my referral link) How to Cut Up a Pork Loin, YouTube Video USDA Food Cost Report, take a look and see how your food cost compare to their plans 4 Weeks of Frugal Recipes Rock Bottom Price Sheet Herb Rubbed Whole Chicken How to Make Chicken Broth Find More Frugal Family Home ...

Inside: 7 tips that can help you stick to your goals and achieve them. These tips worked for me and I’m sure they can help you too. It easy to set goals and it’s easy to stick with them when things are going well. But what if the progress is slow? These tips can show you how to stick with your goals so you can achieve them. Do you set goals each year? I started setting goals about 4 years ago. But at times I still struggled to achieve them. I really didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I would start out strong and then my enthusiasm would start to go. Then the goals would fall by the wayside. If that sounds like what happens to you, you are not alone. I want to help. I’m sharing a few tips that have helped me over the past year to stick to my goals and achieve many of them. I’m sure they can help you too. 7 Tips to Help You Stick to Your Goals and Achieve Them 1. Find your personality. Take the test and see what personality you are and find your strengths and weakness. I know it was a really helped me. 2. Write Your Goals Down. Putting them down in black and white can help you cement your promise to follow through on your goals. Don’t just keep them in your head, write them down. 3. Look at Your Goals Every Day. Take a look at your goal list each day. It only takes a moment or two but can help keep them in the front of your mind and keep you focused on them. 4. Make Your Plan. Goals can seem so big and feel impossible to achieve. But when you break them down into easily achievable steps you can achieve those big goals one tiny step at a time. 5. Start. Don’t let planning keep you from doing. Once you have your first step planned out, take it. Then figure out your next step and keep on going towards your goal. 6. Know Why Your Goal is Important. Your enthusiasm is going to lessen and that is when it’s easy to give up on a goal. Don’t let that happen. Know why you want to achieve this goal and cling to that when times get hard or tough and you want to give up. 7. Find Accountability. For some people, like myself, having someone to be accountable to other than myself has made a world of difference in how much I’ve been able to achieve. If you know you often don’t keep your promises to yourself, find someone to help keep you going and accountable to the steps you need to take to achieve your goal. Show Notes: Personality Test Habits Test  Make the Most of Your Year (my referral link) Homemaking Planner,  a few different goal planning sheet and more to help you get organized for the new year. If you have trouble reaching your goals, what has been your biggest obstacle? Do you think these tips might help? Listen to More Frugal Family Home Podcasts here!

Inside: A few tips to keep your holiday spending in check. It’s easy to overspend and regret it later. But with these tips, you can be more intentional with your spending and stay on budget. It’s great to give at Christmas time. There are so many people you love and want to give gifts to. Then there’s friends and neighbors, co-workers and more that could also use a gift. But it’s easy to go overboard with your holiday spending and spend too much. When you spend too much it’s like having a debt hangover. But it doesn’t last just a few hours or a day it can last months into the new year. This year avoid the new year’s debt hangover and stay on budget. It doesn’t matter if you have a little money to spend or a lot, either way without a budget for your holiday spending you can overspend. In this episode of the Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m sharing a few tips to help you make your own intentional Christmas budget. I hope these tips will help you spread holiday cheer without having a debt hangover come the new year. Show Notes Control Your Holiday Spending with These Tips 1. Make a Christmas Wish List, Make a list of who you’d like to buy for and what you’d like to purchase. I know it seems like you should make a budget first but having a wish or gift list first can show you who and what you’ll be purchasing. You’ll need to revise this some but it’s a good place to start. 2. Determine How Much You Have to Spend, If you’ve been putting money aside for Christmas as the year went by you have a Christmas fund. If not you’ll need to determine how much money you have in your budget for Christmas gifts. See what else you can cut this month to help fund your Christmas spending. 3. Write a Budget, Now you know how much you have to spend and who you’ll be buying for, it’s time to write your budget. With your budget you’ll want to allot a certain amount of money for each person you’ll be buying for. This may limit your gift giving a little but it’s better to give less and stay out of debt. Be sure to track your spending as you are purchasing gifts too. 4. Don’t Be Tempted to Use Credit Cards, It’s easier to overspend when you are using credit cards. You might go into a store with a set amount to spend and end up spending more, especially when you’ll be paying with a credit card. If you can stick to cash to help stay on budget with your Christmas purchases. If you can’t use cash make sure to track your spending on your debit or credit cards to make sure you stay within your written budget. 5. Consider Homemade Gifts or Cards, If your Christmas budget is really tight, you’ll need to think outside the box for gift giving. A nice card with a personal note written inside of how much you value that person can be worth so much more than a store-bought item. Or make gifts to give, food gifts are easy to make and relatively inexpensive too. They are great to give when you want to make a special gift to someone but are short on funds. 6. Stretch your Christmas Dollars, During the holiday season, there are lots of good deals to be had. Be sure to shop around and look for the best buy on the items you want to purchase. A little extra time on the computer before you head to the store to shop can yield good savings. Also if you find a great deal online ask if the store will match it. It never hurts to ask. 7. Plan Ahead for Next Christmas Now, If your Christmas fund is a little lacking in cash this year you might not be able to do too much about it now, but you can plan ahead for next year. Start right now and set an amount you’ll save each month for your Christmas budget. When you put a little away each month it will add up and you’ll have a nice pile of cash to spend next Christmas. Easy Candy Recipes for Gift Giving

Inside: Find 5 tips to Simplify your Holiday Meal. With these tips you can spend less time in the kitchen and more time with your family. Does making a holiday dinner send shivers up your spine. Do you envision a disaster in your kitchen while your family is waiting to be fed? Holiday dinners can be stressful. But you can simplify them so you can actually enjoy the holiday too. In this episode of the Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m sharing a few tips to help simplify your Thanksgiving. Think of these tips as permission to let go of things that stress you out and call on others to help, whether that be the stores or other family members. Because holiday diners shouldn’t be about the stress it should be about spending time with family and friends thinking about all you have to be thankful for this year. Tips to Simplify Your Thanksgiving 1. Leave the guilt behind. Maybe your mom or grandma used to cook a full Thanksgiving dinner from scratch, but you don’t have to. I know growing up our Thanksgiving dinner was a family affair with my grandma, my mom and sometimes even my great-grandma in the kitchen all helping. So don’t feel like you have to do it all. 2. Make the main dish or turkey and ask others to bring the rest. When I’m hosting the holiday dinner I’m always asked what can I bring. If you have people ask, let them bring something. It will be one less thing for you to make and they will get to contribute their favorite dish to the meal. 3. Pre-Cook or Freezer Cook Part of the Meal, Make as much as you can ahead of time. Bake the rolls and freeze them. Make the mashed potatoes the night before and then reheat them. Assemble the stuffing and sweet potatoes so all you have to do is cook them. Make the turkey the day before. Do as much as you can before Thanksgiving, so the actually day your not stuck in the kitchen. 4. Feel Free to Skip Baking, If you don’t like to bake or don’t want to make one more thing, then bag the baking. Pick up your rolls and pies at the bakery at the store. Or from your favorite restaurant. It will save space in the oven and save your sanity too. 5. Simplify Your Meal, If making a turkey is too intimidating, make chicken breasts instead or a whole chicken. Make simple side dishes like a side salad and mashed potatoes. Don’t feel obligated to make complicated recipes. Put that energy into enjoying your friends and family instead. How do you simplify your holiday meals?

Inside: Find 10 tips for how to streamline your cooking process. In this episode of the Frugal Family Home podcast. Making dinner every night can be hard. It’s so easy to call for a pizza or pick up something in the drive through on a busy day, but the food isn’t that tasty and it’s not that great for you either. But if you streamline your cooking process you can get dinner on the table even on a busy day. In this Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m sharing a few tips that help to streamline my cooking process. There are little tricks you can do from start to finish to make cooking easier even if you don’t like to cook all that much. With a little preparation and a little planning, you can streamline your cooking process making it easier to prepare meals on days that are busy and avoid eating out. Which can save you quite a bit of money. Show Notes, 10 Tips to Streamline Your Cooking 1. Prepare to Cook, Pull back your hair, take off dangling jewelry, and put on an apron. Make sure to have comfortable shoes or slippers to cook in. 2. Get Familiar with Your Recipe, Read your recipe more than once so you know all the steps before you start. 3. Prepare Ahead of Time, Cut up vegetables, wash the fruit, get as much ready before you start cooking to make the process a little easier. If you have small dishes to put items in you can pre-measure the ingredients and have them ready to dump into the recipe at the right time. 4. Group Like Ingredients Together, when you keep items you normal use at the same time in one spot it can cut down on the amount of time it takes to cook. I keep all the baking items in the same cupboard above my mixer. All seasonings are in a cupboard too. 5. Clean as You Go, keep your counters wiped up and the counters cleared off. Place dirty dishes as you finished with them in the sink. Clean the dishes in the sink while you are waiting for items to cook or place them in the dishwasher. You’ll be happy when you’re done that you cleaned as you went along. 6. Prepare Simple Meals, Meals with simple whole ingredients can be really delicious. But they can also be easier to prepare. I try to keep most of our dinners simple. I might make the main dish of roasted chicken, add easy to make mashed potatoes and home canned green beans. It’s a delicious meal that doesn’t take much time or many ingredients. 7. Make a Good Plan, plan your meals for the week so you’ll be sure to have all the ingredients you need when it comes time to cook. There is nothing worst than having to run out for items when you are just getting ready to make dinner. 8. Batch Cook, After shopping prepare as much of the items as you can for the week. Cook the ground beef if you’ll need cooked ground beef for your recipes. Cut the chicken for the recipe and place it in marinade then freeze until needed. 9. Prep Sides Ahead, When you are looking over your menu plan look to see what sides you’ll need for the week. Prepare them ahead or make extra when you make a batch early in the week. 10. Get the Family to Help, Have the kids and/or your husband help with the cooking and planning process. The more they are involved the less complaining you’ll have when it comes time to eat, especially from picky eaters. They are less likely to complain about dinner if they helped prepare it. Related Articles to Help Streamline Your Cooking How to Make Cooking From Scratch Manageable 8 Chicken Freezer Meals for the Freezer in an Hour

Inside: Holidays don’t have to be stressful. I’m sharing my best tips for less holiday stress. It’s a few little things I do each year to beat holiday stress before the holiday season begins. Do you dread the busyness of the holidays? Do you always have too much to do and not enough time to get it all done? I know the holidays add so much more to do plus you have all the regular stuff you need to get done too. But what if you could have less holiday stress without all the holiday overwhelm? You can. In this episode of the Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m sharing my tips for how I get your tasks done around the holidays without feeling overwhelmed or the holiday stress. It comes down to one thing, having a plan. Tips for Reducing Holiday Stress I’m sharing how I plan for all the things I do around the holiday. The food, the budget, the shopping and how I get through the holiday season without feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Those are my tips for less holiday stress. I hope they are helpful to you and you have a more enjoyable holiday season this year. If you’d like to read more about how I get ready for the holidays check these other articles. The Holidays are Coming, Are You Ready? Time Management for the Holidays Getting Organized for the Holidays Setting a Budget for Holiday Gifts

Inside: a few time management tips for busy women who are trying to organize their day to use their time more effectively. Time, we all have a limited amount of time each day. We can’t bargain to get more or save up a few minutes to add to the next day. We need to make the most of the minutes we have each day. Do you think you are making the most of the limited time you have every day? I’ve used my referral links where appropriate. When you purchase through them I can make a little money at no extra cost to you. Thanks for the support in this way. If you feel like your days are running you and you just can’t get ahead, I’ve been there. There were so many days I would be running from the time my feet hit the floor in the morning to the time I went to bed. There was so much to do, but limited time to do it. I always felt like I was pushing things I really wanted to do, out to get the things I felt I had to do done. It started to feel like I was drifting from one day to another. Not really having any direction except for what was right in front of me. It was frustrating to go to bed each night knowing some important things had to get pushed to another day. I knew it had to change but how. I think the first step in my change in thinking was reading about others who had taken back their time. What changes they had made and how to do the same myself. I also read the book, Living Forward, which helps you make a life plan. It made me really stop and think about what in my day was really important. In today’s Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m sharing a few time management tips to help you use your day more effectively. These are a few things I do to make sure I’m running my day instead of my day running me. It’s hard when you have so many roles to fulfill, mom, wife, home manager, and if you work you might be a boss or worker. All of those roles can pull you in so many directions but once you know what your priorities are you can give each area of your life just the time it needs for how important that area is to you. More Time Management Related Posts Time Management Finding the Perfect Balance 5 Must Do’s to Save Time 5 Tips for Getting More Done

Inside: Find a few ways to save you money. It’s all the little things that really add up to save you a bundle. If you’re an average American you probably spend more than you make. You carry some sort of debt and you have little to no savings. Who wants to be average? Being different can be hard, making changes can be hard, ask anyone who has tried to diet. It’s hard. But you know things need to change. You can improve your bottom line and start to save money. Luckily, you can learn to save money and spend less with changing how you do things one thing at a time. It’s the little things that can add up to big savings over the year. When you combine 10 little changes that save you $10, that really can add up over time. In this week’s Frugal Family Home podcast, I’m sharing 5 things we do regularly that help us to save money. With the money, you save you can put it towards an emergency fund, pay off debt, or build up a splurge fund to do something fun every once in a while. It can all start with one little thing you change and snowball from there.   Just so you know some of the links in this post are my referral links. When you use them I might make a little money at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support in this way. You can read my disclosure policy for more information. Show Notes Does Where You Shop Really Matter? Rock Bottom Price List Learn to Save Money with Coupons and Grocery University Nest Smart Thermostat Honeywell Programable Thermostat What is one thing could you can change today to help you save money?

Budgets, I’ve found that most people either love budgeting and see the value in having one or they don’t. I was one in the group of “I don’t see the value in budgeting” early in my life. But I’ve changed my mind. I see the importance of a budget and I’m sharing why a budget is important in today’s podcast. When I was in college I wasn’t making much money and didn’t think I really needed a budget. I wasn’t making much but my expenses were low and I always had the money for the things I needed so why did I need to budget. Then after I was married, my husband and I made good money. We had enough to pay our bills and have extra. But then we found ourselves in debt. To get out of that debt we started budgeting, telling our money where to go each month, so our money wouldn’t go to things we didn’t really need or think were important. I’m hoping if you are on the fence about budgeting these 5 reasons will help to show why a budget is important. It changed our financial lives for the better and we were able to still include fun things even while we were digging out of debt. Links I Talked about in the Podcast Budgeting Series I would love to hear why you do or don’t budget in the comments below. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast too.

4 Steps for How to Declutter Your Closet - The Frugal Family Home Podcast