I support a family of five on my paycheck alone – and my paycheck isn’t that big. I’ve been poor almost my whole life, but I was still totally unprepared when I found myself supporting five people on less than $500 every two weeks, and yet, somehow I didn’t qualify for assistance. I became tired of living paycheck to paycheck with barely adequate furniture, like the mattresses and box springs I’ve only recently gotten off of the floor.
I’m sure my story is not unlike the millions of Americans across the country as we struggle to recover our economy from recession, war and a severe reduction of America-based jobs as companies send the jobs overseas to cut costs. My story has a happy ending and I want to share the techniques of that ending with you, so that with a few clicks, a little bit of money and some typing, your story can have a happy ending too.
After many hours of Web surfing, I have found sites where you can get what you need to survive, and sometimes what you want, for free, or extremely cheap. Sometimes you can even clean out some clutter and make a few bucks. Now granted, it can take a while, but with a little bit of patience, it can be done.
My food bill, with two growing boys and a toddler used to be $500 or $600 a month (to include pullups). With coupons, another of the kids in school, and potty training in effect, I’ve managed to make my food bill look more like $450 a month, which is a much nicer figure. That figure is bound to get smaller as I implement more and more of the measures that I’ve discovered.
I read about a family that lives on a farm and became almost completely self-sufficient, save a whole grain swap, having refused to buy from a grocery store for a year, who saved thousands of dollars and lost a lot of weight. Read about them here: http://shine.yahoo.com/green/no-groceries-for-a-year-how-one-family-saved-money-lost-weight-and-lived-well-2582457.html. I decided to use them as my model.
I started off learning how to bake my own bread. The best website I’ve found for flexible, I-don’t-have-a-lot-of-ingredients-that-most-bread-recipes-ask-for-or-any-money-to-buy-them recipes is www.hillbillyhousewife.com. Right now, I’m only using it for dinner rolls, but I’m planning on expanding that to hoagies (for subs) and sandwich bread. (Did you know that buying a whole ham and cutting it up for lunch meat can be cheaper than buying the lunch meat already cut and in containers? It can also be healthier, too, read about it here: http://www.caring.com/articles/5-foods-that-can-trigger-stroke.) You can also save a lot of money by making your own noodles. Here’s a recipe: http://gourmetfood.about.com/od/cookingtechniques/ss/freshpasta.htm. If you don’t have a pasta machine, that’s OK. Just push the dough through a spaghetti strainer, and voila, you’ve got pasta! Noodles made this way will be ready in a matter of minutes (like five minutes in boiling water) having dinner on the table in a matter of seconds!
I’m also working very hard to gather up seeds for gardening for free. I’ve found www.listia.com to be very useful for that, but as the competition is high there for the seeds, I’m also looking into seed swap sites, local and Web-based. The only thing I might have to worry about is postage, if that. Also, I know a way to get the gardening supplies for free. Read about it here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Garden-With-Free-Supplies/. Need free potting soil? I’ve got you covered: http://doorgarden.com/12/potting-soil-from-compost. There are also millions of other homemade potting soil recipes on the Internet, so if the one I provided isn’t quite a perfect fit, a Web search should be very helpful in helping you find the perfect potting soil recipe for you.
I’ve managed to get tons of stuff for free, or extremely cheap, through the following websites, www.listia.com (look for free shipping), wwww.yardsellr.com (also look for free shipping, and be aware that yardsellr does ask for a cut, which is generally about a dollar), www.freecycle.org (check out Yahoo! groups and online for a freecycle group near you), www.craigslist.org and www.oodle.com. The oodle and Craigslist websites have postings for free. You just have to look for them (generally the word free is clickable on their websites). You can also find a lot of great deals on either website, but be careful, wary of not only frauds, but going to someone’s house – make sure someone knows where you are going. Also, try looking on Facebook and online, like www.meetup.com, for local swap meets.
If you love the taste of high end, but hate the price, www.budget101.com, along with millions of other money saving tips and recipes, has numerous “copycat recipes.” Another great resource for money saving recipes is YouTube.com, to incldue the Great Depression Cooking with Clara Channel: http://www.youtube.com/show?p=1lVxGiRwvU0&tracker=show0. I don’t know about you, but a meal sure tastes a lot better to me when there’s a story behind it. You can also get free samples of just about anything, to include foods, from www.shop4freebies.com.
Other money saving tips? Reduce the chemicals you clean with and go green with lemons and vinegar, or use one of the cleaning recipes from www.budget101.com. Replace some of your meat meals with beans a couple of times a month, which is healthier and can help with weight loss.
Whew! It’s a long list and sometimes it can involve some elbow grease, but in the end? With the cost of living on the rise, it will be nice to have a larger sum in your wallet, which makes it well worth it! Happy saving!