Not Just A Mom: Money Saving Tips

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving! It's Thanksgiving Day here in Canada and I'm so thankful for all the good today. We're not doing anything special -- I'll bake buns, make some soup, and stay out of the rain. We don't ever do a big turkey dinner but on Saturday we had baked salmon and roasted fall vegetables (onions, peppers, carrots, potatoes, mushroom, and leeks) and this coming Saturday we'll hopefully have another special dinner with some special people -- my mom and dad -- who are coming to visit for a bit!

Until then, though, I'm going to link up with the "Not Just A Mom" bloggers (Sarah, Dara, Joanne, Adrienne, Lauren, and Jen) to talk about "money saving tips." (Click on each name to go their blogs.) Now, I am the first to admit that we, as a family, spend way too much money on eating out and I spend too much money on Coke and flowers! However, there are some ways in which we don't spend a lot of money. Some of these are deliberate choices and some of them are the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

I recognize not everyone has access to these circumstances (generous friends, local work and school opportunities, etc) so I want to explicitly recognize that not all of these "tips" are possible for everyone.

1) Neither Dave nor I care about "the latest item." Our car is 14 1/2 years old (and we only have one), neither of us ever buy a lot of new clothes, I still wear my FitBit One which I bought in July 2015 (no Apple Watch for me) -- we just don't care about these things, so that helps us save a lot of money.

2) We have been very fortunate to live in a generous community, and I had kids later than a lot of my friends, so that means that we received a hand me down trampoline, play centre, outdoor table, a ton of clothes for the kids, bikes, etc. We pass that on to others whenever we can. And I am so thankful for friends who hand down clothes to our kids. We aren't picky about used clothing or toys or items -- we're just grateful for anyone who wants to share.

Our amazing care group from church helped us with our play centre and then passed on a trampoline on to us as well. The play centre has gone to our across the street neighbour but the trampoline is still going strong.

 
3) We don't really spend money on subscriptions/membership. We did subscribe to Disney+ during Covid (and haven't cancelled it yet). Again, our friends let us use their cable subscription to watch baseball and Hallmark movies, but they've recently cancelled it. We'll likely pay $20 a month to watch baseball games during baseball season, and we're trying to figure out how to watch Hallmark movies for a few months, but we don't generally watch things. This means I'm never up on the latest shows (which if you read my "What's Up Wednesday" posts, you already know) but again, we don't care about these things.

Sam and I share a phone plan and we don't have data. We tried to get Rachel onto our plan, but it wasn't possible. This means I'm limited as to what I can access when I'm away from free Wifi but again, I don't care. We are also fortunate because Dave has a work phone with unlimited data in the US & Canada so we aren't completely out of luck.

And we don't have gym memberships, Prime memberships, anything like that. We do have a Costco membership we pay for but I think that's the only one.

4) We read books from the library. Now that I have a Kobo, I do buy a few more books, but again, we rarely spend money on this habit. I'm so grateful that the library has so many books and it's all free. This is such a valuable service. I've often talked to friends about the fact that, if the library ever changed to a fee-based subscription service, it's one of the few I'd happily pay for.

If you remember the last 'Not Just A Mom' link up about hobbies, you will recall that many of my hobbies (like reading) are actually things I can do for free (except for baseball and finding fun things to do with my family). It is very helpful, in terms of saving money, that I just really enjoy the simpler things in life. (You can read my post here.)

5) We drink our morning coffee at home. We rarely buy coffee (or in my case, coffee-hot chocolate) at a coffee shop when we're starting our morning at home. I see coworkers coming into work every morning with Tim's or Starbucks and I recognize that this small habit adds up.

6) Again, we're fortunate in this regard, but we rarely drive our car, so we don't have to spend a lot on gas. Dave works from home and I walk to work (most of the time). Sam walks to school and Rachel is able to take the school bus, or walk, to school. We save a lot of money because we live so centrally in our city. We can walk to the library, our favourite ice cream spot, to our CSA to pick up vegetables, to the liquor store, and to many of the places we want to go. We probably put the most kilometres on our car driving Rachel to dance and getting groceries!

Many, many, many walks to do errands over the past year or so...

7) I like to bake so we rarely buy store bought treats, except for chips! And chocolate croissants :) I love baking cookies and muffins and so, when we want a sweet treat, I bake it. I love that Rachel also enjoys baking and is perfecting some recipes as well -- chocolate chip cookies and cake.

As I thought about this post, I have some other, quick ways in which we save money, which may not be things that you do: we eat mostly vegetarian so rarely buy meat (except in summer when we BBQ more); I hang my laundry out on the line (either indoors or outdoors) so we rarely use our dryer (except for towels and sheets in winter); we don't own any pets (except we've had fish in the past but they don't cost very much!); we don't go to a lot of movies in theatres; we don't buy a lot of music; and we buy a lot of store brand items at our grocery store (oj, canned and frozen vegetables, soups, hot chocolate, etc).

Many of the ways in which we save money are definitely a circumstance of where we live and work, and who we know, and I want to recognize again, that not everyone has those options.

And I want to end this post by saying that we do spend a lot of money on travel, baseball, and as I mentioned above, eating out! I think the easiest way we could save a lot more money is by not being lazy on nights when one of us is exhausted because that is the quickest way "small purchases" add up for us.

One thing I love about these link ups is that I read through the other posts and get so many great ideas. I'm excited to read through your posts and find other ways to save money -- ideas which might not have occurred to me before.

And I hope you've maybe found one or two ways that we do things, which will help inspire you.