A month of The Tightwad Gazette~

Last week, I mentioned that I would be reading through The Tightwad Gazette for inspiration and ideas as we try to live more frugally.  This past week, I spent my afternoons outside amidst playing children and reread the first section of The Tightwad Gazette (TG).  I had planned to find one tip to use in our home this past week.  Well, instead of that, I was inspired by other points that the author, Amy Dacyczyn, made.  Here area  few of the things that I took away with me:

• Living frugally is like losing weight, you all ready know what you need to do.  (This is so true.)
• In order to save money, you need to spend fewer dollars.  (Again, very true and yet sometimes quite a struggle.)
• Amy Dacyczyn lists three basic ways to save:
• Buy it cheaper
• Make it last longer
• Use it less

I completely agree with what she has said here.  I do know how to save money.  Honestly, we live very closely according to the three ways that she suggests to save.  Of course, she makes many suggestions as to how to save in the book too.  Some of these were things that we all ready do and some were not really feasible for us.  (So far at least…I still have much to read.)

 A garden helps save on the grocery budget

The greatest way for our family to save money right now is through our grocery budget.  We are a larger than normal family so we need more food than the average family.  I think we do an okay job with our food budget but I am always on a quest to see if I can spend less.  I honestly don’t have time to make coupons worth my time.  Some people do an awesome job with coupons but for me, they don’t make much of a difference. 

But one suggestion the author made that may work for us is a Price Book.  (To see more about price books, click the link.)    Often, I visit stores that have the best sales and a price book would help me to see if it is worth my money to buy other staple items there.   Sometimes, David and I will try to remember where we can get the cheapest milk, or eggs, etc.  A price book would help us to know that and plan our trips accordingly. 

There are other ways to save on the grocery budget but that’s a whole post in itself.

This week, we did save some money and it was not by us gleaning a new tip for the TG.  One of the biggest ways that we save money is this:

We do it ourselves.

On Monday, we had a pipe burst.  This is David under the house fixing the pipe.  (And one of his five little helpers.)  David doing this saved us a lot of money.  And we should know, two years ago, we had major plumbing work that we could not do and it costs us thousands of dollars.  No telling how much we saved with this job that David did.  Of course, if the job were too big we would have called the plumbers but I’m glad that Dave could handle it. 

I realize that I didn’t have any big tips to share from The Tightwad Gazette.  All the same, the book is very inspiring for living a frugal lifestyle. 

Next week, I hope to share some things from the Winter section especially as Christmas is approaching and that is the time of the year when it is easy to overspend and bust a budget.