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saving money?
The medical bills are rolling in from my labor, delivery, recovery, and the baby's care in the hospital - all of which are a surprise to me since we were told by insurance that my insurance would cover at 100% thru L&D... Luckily, we finally caught a break of sorts and the $1000 repair job needed on my not-even-3 year old car is at least partially covered by the extended warranty! 
Tell me your top money-saving strategy. DH and I are frugal to a decent degree - MIL calls us cheap - but we need to get even more serious about it. Unfortunately, I'm willing to make more sacrifices than he is (for example: I could live without all the cable channels, but he isn't willing to since buying two flat screen TVs in the past several years. We really only have the lowest package that's still got some HD channels, but it's stupid expensive.)
Re: saving money?
I love money saving posts! We will have to start paying for daycare sometime around Feb so we'll really need to be better about saving. Here are some things we're doing/hope to do.
I think I finally talked dh into getting rid of Netflix. We already pay a lot for cable with DVR and we can get new movies from the library. Any that our library doesn't have we can order form through the inter-library loan.
We have some credit card debt. We had a lot of cards with small balances and VERY high interest rates from when we were young and stupid. So we just consolodated a few of the highest ones with our credit union. We have not put any new debt on our cards for about 2 years, and we'll continue to work on paying the cards off using the debt snowball method. By consolidating we're saving a few hundred dollars in interest rates. Plus it helps me keep better track of bills because now I have 1 instead of 3 bills to send out each month for those cards! Which means less chance of me messing up and having a late payment.
Not really saving money as making more money but, dh has been doing some freelance web design work which has been bringing in some extra cash and has been helping with the big expenses that come up such as car repairs, taxes (we were surprised we had to pay taxes this year for the first time ever). This has also been a nice way for us to put extra in savings or towards debt. I plan on helping him more with this soon too.
Menu planning and using Hannaford.com to make my grocery list so that I can see the prices and total of our grocery bill before we go to the store. It's pretty cool.
I would like to be better about making and freezing meals ahead of time so we save on getting take out or extra trips to the grocery stores. I'd also love to put more effort into a garden next year and maybe learn canning.
Most of our budget is spent on gas and car payments. I spend a lot in gas to go to work, so once the baby comes I'm really going to have to rethink my commute.
I would like to start using more thing's like Jes P's reusable sandwich bags, stop using paper towels, etc. Better for the environment and the budget. We plan on attempting to at least cloth diaper most of the time and I will breast feed, both which will save money.
I always check yardsales, consignment shops and Craigslist before buying many things new. We've gotten so much baby stuff so far CHEAP just by buying used from friends. We've also gotten a bunch of plants for our yard for free from people giving them away.
TimeBanking. I don't do this anymore and I'm not sure there is one in NH, but if you're interested I can help you find one. The one in Portland is awesome!! It's basically an exchange of your time for services and sometimes goods (there is no money exchanged at all). I baked for people and did house cleaning. Each hour I worked I got to spend my hour on something else. So for the hours I earned I used to "hire" someone to sew table runners for my wedding, fix a wooden cutting board, "buy" used lawnchairs, get hair cuts, come take care of my cat (when I had one) while I was away, and more. It's really a cool program.
Coupons! Although the "buy 10 because they are on sale and you have a coupon" method isn't working for me! meaning, I'm just buying it because it's on sale and I have a coupon, not necessarily because we need it (like the 7, half gallons of Edy's Ice Cream in the freezer....). My Yahoo account is strictly used for when I need to create an account (like with lane bryant, osh kosh, carter's, etc) and they require an email address.
We cloth diaper, and bought formula from Sam's Club. Buy what you can in bulk and use a food saver to freeze smaller portions.
I'm not very useful tonight...hopefully some of this helps
Great suggestions ladies! I feel your pain, Mel. Somehow our INS policy changed last year from being 100% to 90% coverage. They only gave the new books out upon request. Ugh. That was a huge difference and a LOT of money. York Hospital has an online account where you can see what's been billed and what portion I will be responsible for. That helped me with planning. If you don't have a flexible spending account, you should do that. You can change allocation after a major life event...which having a baby counts. That saved us a bunch paying tax free.
I'm the queen of saving money. First and foremost, I recommend Dave Ramsey's the Total Money Makeover. Get a budget and pay cash for everything. We've been on his plan for 4 years, are debt free now (except our 15 year mortgage), have an emergency fund, own our cars and just paid cash for our garage. We were not that organized before, but we are now. We're not rich. We made modest incomes. But we make our money work for us. We don't have cell phones, cable tv, fancy cars, go out to eat, spend any money on entertainment (inter library loan rocks for magazines and movies too...we go to the beach all the time), but we'll be able to do that once we own our house with no mortgage (in just a few more years).
Even though we're doing well, I still look for new ways to save money all the time. Especially since I'm not working so much (I went down to part time). Just shopping around for home/car INS saved us $500/ year. Making our own yogurt saves us $500/year. Making our own laundry detergent saves us over $100/year. We likely save a few hundred making our own bread. and granola bars. I made a bunch of reusable bags, only use cloth napkins and cloth papertowels. I have a clothes line, cloth diaper, make most of Adrian's toys. You can see my blog for all of those ideas. I also make all of our food in huge batches, freezing half (sometimes in individual lunch portions...homemade frozen dinners). I also buy just about everything used from thrift stores or craigslist. I make just about all of the gifts I give. I know my co workers say I'm overwhelming, but I didn't do all this overnight. Every couple months, I set a new goal for myself. Once that's accomplished, I move on to the next. (Such as cloth napkins. Once we were only using those, I tackled making reusable bags...etc). It's just accumulated over the years. I'm also pretty good thinking wants vs. needs. As in...would I rather have stuff or be better financially long term for our baby.
I am so glad you posted this! I seriously need to rein in my food budget ... what a helpful idea!
Chayer - ugh, I feel you, I need to cut way back as well but I'm pretty much down to bare bones already. I'm getting rid of cable next month and am going to see how long I can go without internet at home before I want to jump out a window.
I found out that it's much easier to start slow and work on one goal at a time. So far the big ones I can think of are meal planning, basic cable/internet package/no house phone, and homemade laundry products. We also are working on a few smaller things like starting our own garden/composting, DH installed a dual-flush toilet thing to save a little bit of water, and we don't use an air conditioner. A lot of little changes add up, but I'm still working on finding some bigger ways to save.
I can't get over how much I save just by making my own laundry detergent (Mesa's recipe, thanks!), and using Jess P's dryer balls. I'd estimate my spending on laundry supplies went from $20 a month to about $40 a year.
Has anyone figured out how to make student loans disappear?
Pay them off or die.
Probably not the answer you wanted!
Or move somewhere remote and let an organization or state pay them off for you in return for your good deeds towards a remote town :P
We've been cutting the fat since we moved from our first house. We were so busy building and me baking a baby that it was pretty easy. I still can't get DH to lower our cable bill, but we've done well other ways. We don't eat out as often as we used to, baby helps with that, and I've had less time to experiment in the kitchen using pricey ingredients. Again, baby helps with that
Like some of the others suggested, start with one or two things. When you get a handle on that, do a few more things. Overtime it will all add up!