Right now with gas prices, grocery prices, and the cost of everything, saving money is more important than ever! If you are a family and are living on a fixed income, this can be challenging and downright stressful! It is a challenging time for moms to be able to provide everything our family needs, have a little fun money and still stay sane! Here are 12 easy money-saving tips for moms on a budget.
Updated 1/17/23
We have 3 growing kids and I am always looking for ways to save money or earn a little extra money to help pay for things we want or need.
My husband has a great full-time job and I work part-time, but it seems like sometimes, especially lately, that just isn’t enough. I have always been cognizant of how we spend our money. My husband and I have created a great budgeting system to make sure we can buy what we need, have a rainy day fund, save for retirement, etc.
I went from working full-time to part-time about 2 years ago because of health issues that one of our kiddos was having. Since then, I’ve been even more aware of our financial situation and started looking even harder for ways to save money.
I have tried several different things to either save money or earn extra money… some of them have worked and some of them did not work out so well. Here are ways that I have found that help us save money and other things I have tried that were NOT worth the time.
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Money Saving Tips for Moms:
- Swap babysitting/childcare with a friend.
- Childcare is expensive, especially for 3 kids! This helps us save money and gives our kids a chance to play with some friends.
- Basically, one day I will watch a friends kids and then another day when I need childcare, she will watch my kids. It works out great for both of us.
- If you can find someone that you trust to swap childcare with, this is a great option to save money! Plus sometimes I swear the kids behave better when there are other kids around.
2. Get rid of cable.
- This is something you see everywhere when you search the internet for ways to save money, but it is so true! And it is so easy to do!
- I thought I would miss having local channels, but honestly, after the first week or so, I didn’t even notice it!
- We have a Netflix subscription and we use free shows that are on the Roku! If you don’t have a smart TV, the Roku is a very affordable option to be able to stream services to your TV!
- Not only does getting rid of cable save money, but having more devices and more TV options, just makes it more tempting for the kids to watch TV. Getting rid of cable and unnecessary subscriptions also helped my kids play more instead of constantly asking to watch TV (just an FYI we do limit TV and they know that but that doesn’t stop them from asking about it).
- We actually only have 1 TV in our house and it is in the family room. We used to have 2 but one of our TVs stopped working and we just never replaced it. That’s another thing I thought I would miss, but I haven’t even noticed it was gone! Now that we don’t have as many options, the kids don’t ask as often. Out of sight out of mind type of thing I think.
3. Ibotta.
- For those of you that haven’t heard of it, it’s basically coupon clipping on an app.
- It’s a great app that is very easy to use!
- All you do, is create an account, and depending on how you shop and what stores you shop at, there are various ways to earn money.
- For example, I use Walmart grocery pick-up regularly. I connected the app to my Ibotta account and after I order my groceries, I go onto the app and add the coupons I want to use. I usually add the coupons while I am in the car waiting for them to load my groceries. The money I earn gets put into my online account. I believe the Target pickup works the same way, but we don’t have a Target close to where I live. So I don’t go there as often.
- For our local grocery store, I synced the accounts and when I check out, I put my account number in at the register and it automatically adds any money I earned into my Ibotta account.
- From other stores, you can take pictures of receipts.
- I earn about $100 a year from this. I honestly could probably earn a little more money if I used it for all purchases, but I mostly use it for Walmart, the grocery store, and Amazon.
- I think this is worth the little bit of setup time and the short amount of time it takes to “clip” coupons.
4. Fetch Rewards
- This is another great app to easily get money back on purchases you normally make. Once you download the app, all you have to do is connect accounts where you do online shopping.
- Once you make a purchase, you either take a picture of the receipt from the app (if it’s a hard copy of a receipt) or click “eReceipt” and it will scan your online accounts for rewards.
- This takes even less time than Ibotta. Usually, I don’t get as much of a reward back with Fetch as I do with Ibotta, but it only takes a few seconds to scan the receipts.
- One of my friends told me about this about 6 months ago and I have already earned over $40.
5. Purchase items in bulk
- I like to purchase bulk items from Sam’s club that are cheaper than other stores. I usually do a price check on Amazon and Walmart to double check that it’s actually cheaper before purchasing it.
- Items such as toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent, etc.
- If it is perishable items, I usually divide it into meal size portions and freeze the meal size portions individually.
- I like to do this for meat, cheese, and certain fruit.
- I also like to stock up on household items when I am pregnant. This not only saves me a trip to the store with an infant, but it also frees up a little money after baby is born for childcare, medical expenses, unexpected baby expenses, etc. Here is a list of items I stock up on prior to having a baby.
- Another thing I like to purchase in bulk are snacks. They are expensive and my kids love them. This is a great way to save money. Check out this list of snack ideas for kids.
6. Use less electricity.
- I’m going to be honest… this was hard for me at first. My husband really pushed us to try this over the last 3 months and we’ve saved quite a bit of money already.
- I try to hang dry more loads of laundry. This does take extra time and doesn’t work for all clothes, but it can help to save money.
- We have a clothesline outside.
- Inside I use this collapsible clothes drying rack, a closet rod (our laundry room isn’t very big) that is attached from one side of the room to the other, and this wall mounted drying rack.
- We also cut WAY back on our AC usage. I now only turn the AC on if it’s really hot and humid, especially at night. We live in MN and it can get pretty hot and humid. Our house is surrounded by a lot of trees. So, I think depending on your situation, this will work better for some than others. But I do try to make myself deal with the heat more vs turning the AC on right away.
- We have been reminding our kids regularly to shut off lights they don’t need on and unplug items they aren’t using.
- Not only does it save money, but it is better for the environment as well!
7. Ride share
- Our oldest is getting to the age where she is in more activities. We live about 5 miles from town. We have made friends with 2 families that live by us with kids about the same age. We have all been trying to ride share more to decrease the trips we have to make to town.
- It doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up over time.
- Plus it is a big time saver, and time is money!
- Check out this post for other great time saving tips for moms.
8. Combine trips to town and errands
- Before gas prices were well over $4 a gallon, we made multiple trips to town a day. Since gas prices have been higher, I’ve really been better at making a list of errands I need to run and doing them all on the same day.
- I’ve only been going into town 1-2 times a week lately! I’ve been proud of myself for this! This has also been a timesaver as well!
9. Use grocery pick up
- This has helped me to save money by avoiding impulse buys.
- I use this every other week for many of our groceries and household supplies.
- I also find that when I use grocery pick-up, I look at the total price and I tend to go through my cart and take out anything I don’t need.
- This is not only a money saver but also a time saver…. and as I said before, time is money my friends!
10. Go to garage sales!
- Not only does this help save money, but it’s so fun! You never know what you will find!
- I look for kids’ clothes and games at garage sales before I buy new.
- Now that my kids are getting a little bigger, it’s harder to find used clothes in good condition, especially boys’ clothes, but I still usually have good luck finding girls’ clothes and clothes for my youngest. Boys are much harder on clothes!
- I’ve also found household decorations, furniture that I’ve refinished, great books, and items for my camper at garage sales for a good price.
11. Have your own garage sale.
- This is a great way to declutter while also earning money.
- I wasn’t sure if this would be worth my time, but I was able to get rid of about 5 or 6 totes of kids clothes and I made over $400!
- Don’t get me wrong, it did take time, but I think it was worth both the money and the decluttering factor.
12. Upside
- This is another app that can help you to save money.
- It offers you cash back for certain purchases (the purchases are different depending on the stores that are near you).
- I personally think it works well for gas purchases. I haven’t ever used it for anything other than gas. I just started using it recently because several friends had recommended it on Facebook. So I thought I would give it a try.
- It’s easy to use and it’s something you need to purchase anyways.
- The only downfall is that I have only seen chain gas stations and restaurants on the app. I prefer to use ma and pop shops and restaurants to support local small businesses, but sometimes I just need to save some money too!
13. Side hustle
- This is always an option, but this isn’t an option that will work for everyone. It will definitely depend on your situation if this will work or not.
- Years ago, I did some house cleaning on the weekends to earn extra cash, but that hasn’t been something that works for our family at this time.
- I’ve also waitressed in the evenings and weekends for extra money, but depending on your schedule and with kids, this can be difficult. However, it is good money!
- Blogging, but just know that this is something you will have to put quite a bit of time into before you start earning any income. This is not a quick option to earn money.
- This in itself needs to be it’s own whole blog post… it’s more work and time than one would think, but it’s so much fun and so rewarding!
- If you want to start a blog, I HIGHLY suggest you do research before starting to make sure you set it up correctly and get everything you need.
- Also, using Pinterest, SEO, Grammarly, and Tailwind have all greatly helped grow my blog.
- Check out this great post for why I decided to start a blog.
- Until I started this blog, I didn’t have a side job for quite few years. The need and ability to have a side hustle is something that might vary throughout the years depending on many factors.
- This is something you have to consider if it works for your family and if you want to take the time away from your family. It’s a good option for some people and I wanted to throw it in there as I have had side jobs in the past to earn some extra money.
I have done several things over the years to both save money and earn extra money. I think we all have different times in our lives when we need to find ways to either earn money or save money.
When my youngest was an infant, I was really feeling the pressure of added bills, childcare costs, etc. I was trying everything I could find to earn money, save money, etc. Here are a few things that I tried that I did NOT think was worth the time and effort for the little money you get back.
- Online surveys. I tried several sites and honestly for the time you put in, you get VERY little money back for your time. There were a few sites where I would spend 20-30 minutes on a survey to earn $2-3. I would not recommend wasting your time.
- Trying to get free beauty products to review. I signed up for a site in hopes to try new beauty products. On the site I signed up for, you would fill out information about yourself and if you were selected to try certain products, you got to keep the product after you used it and gave a review. For some products, you also got an Amazon gift card for your time. I filled out SO MANY applications to try products and I NEVER got selected. Not once! Those applications were very time-consuming. After about 6 months, I gave up trying! This was something I also did not think was worth the time.
Hopefully these money saving tips can help other moms! Let me know if you have other great ways to save or earn extra money on the side!
If you enjoyed this post on Money Saving Tips For Moms, check out my post on How To Overcome Mom Guilt and How to decrease stress.
