I remember telling John last year, "There's no where in our budget to cut! We're saving as much as we can." Boy was I wrong. Here's a few ways we've saved money this year: 1) Changed our insurance policy for our two cars and our home. This alone will save us over $600 a year! 2) Canceled John's cell phone (he did get a pay as you go phone for $80 for the whole year, plus the cost of the phone) and we got the lowest minute plan for my phone. Our bill used to be $95 per month, now we spend $40 per month, that's: $660 per year. 3) Dropped cable for a savings of $45 per month, that's $540 per month We're up to $1800 per year so far and there's more! 4) I've made my own laundry soap for one year and my total cost has been $10!! Yes, $10 for the whole year. This doesn't include the Shout spray and dryer sheets. I don't know what I used to spend, but $10 for the whole year is a rather LARGE savings. (Click HERE for the recipe for the laundry soap) I'll guess I've saved at least $90 this year alone in laundry soap. 5) We "went green" on almost every light bulb. We noticed our electric bill decrease by $10 to $15 per month right away. That's about $140 a year in savings. 6) We always use our Marathon Gas credit card when buying gas. You earn a certian amount of "points" and Marathon mails you a $25 gift card for gas. We don't buy a lot of gas, but receive about 4 a year, that's $100 in FREE gas just for using their credit card. (We pay it off every month so we never pay interest). 7) We have a credit card that earns us points for free hotel nights. This summer alone we had three free hotel nights, a savings of: $270 (an average of $90 per night in the hotels). In the 6 1/2 years of our marriage we have NEVER paid for a hotel night. Like the gas card we earn points towards free hotel nights and also like the gas card we never carry a balance from month to month. We're up to $2400...and I thought we had no where on our budget to save money! 8) We set our heat at 67 in the day (sometimes on really cold days I turn it up to 68) and 65 at night. We have a budged plan for our gas, so we spent $71 per month on our heat. I have no way to know what we're saving by keeping it set low, but I think $71 per month is pretty good price on gas! 9) 90% of the times we eat out we have some sort of coupon. We've both signed up for the birthday clubs at our favorite restaurants (Red Robin and Lone Star), so around our birthdays we receive a free meal. We also keep our stash of restaurant coupons in the van, you can almost always find buy one meal get one free or a % off the cost of your whole meal. Again, I have no way of knowing how much this saves us, but we can save between $10 and $15 off our bill depending on the coupon! 10) This fall I realized I had very few clothes for the boys. They both grew so much this summer NOTHING from last winter fit. So we spent about $60 at the thrift store and got a TON of clothes. We also bought some sweatshirts and pants from Target and Wal-Mart on sale and spent maybe another $30 there. Not bad to dress two of them for under $100. (Normally Luke can use Miles clothes as hand me downs, but Luke is the same size as Miles this winter and so a lot of Miles' last year clothes don't fit Luke!) 11) For diapers I use Target Brand Up and Up. These diapers are 11 cents to 13 cents per diaper. Huggies is about 21 cents per diaper...that's a HUGE savings. I do use Huggies for night because they hold better for overnight. 12) My latest money saving endeavor is "super couponing". My friend Lori blogged about this and I was hooked! Super couponing, in a nut shell, is using coupons on sale items and on items that will generate another coupon for $$$$ off your next purchase. So your next purchase is on sale items that you have coupons for that will generate $$$$ off coupons for your next purchase...and so on and so on. There are some great website on this: Jill Cataldo and Mashupmom. Both of these website are for the Chicagoland area...but are helpful for others who want to learn the ropes of super couponing. Moneysavingmom.com is a nationwide website on getting deals! I am NOT an expert on this and have made some rookie mistakes, but tonight I walked out of Jewel with $20 worth of groceries (this is the sale price) for $1.90! Not bad and I lost a $1 coupon somewhere, so it should have been 90 cents! I can't wait to see how this saves us money in the year to come! I am unable to really put dollar amounts on 8 through 12, but the savings could push us in to the $3000 mark! Many families I know are making it work on one income and if you have some helpful tips you use please comment! I love hearing how others save money!! | 
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