Money saving tips!

Since I don't work and stay home and home school lots of people ask how we do it.  Do you really want to know how a family of 4 does it?  It probably isn't as pretty as you may think.

First, we don't get to drive or buy new and fancy cars.  Brandon's car died back in February and he upgraded to another car that was already 7 years old.  Crazy, but it only had 55,000 miles on it and we got a 7 year warranty.  Deal?  Maybe, maybe not!

Next, we don't eat out very often and if we do its with coupons and we don't get soft drinks or drink drinks.  Most restaurants are now charging upwards of $3 per soda and only 1 refill.  I think for $12 we can stop as the gas station or the McDonald's for $1 large for a fraction of the price. 

I do cheap tricks at home.  We all love those single packages of 100 calorie snacks right?  Well, they are usually the same crackers you can buy in the big boxes.  I buy the big box and break it up right away when we get home and place the single packages back into the box.  This also works for kids as they are saved from eating 2 or 3 servings in a sitting.  What about the cost of bags?  Well those are pretty cheap at Aldis.

Aldis!  Yes, I shop at Aldis for almost everything.  Sadly they don't carry things like tofu or fresh herbs, but I can usually do one to two weeks of grocery shopping for $125.  That right there saves us tons of money.  We were spending $175 every week at WalMart or other grocery.  And now we prefer how quickly and easily we can shop at Aldis.

Aldis has so many advantages I can't even explain.  First, they take away choices.  You may like standing in the cereal aisle for 15 minutes letting your children pick out a box of cereal only to find out it's not part of the sale, but I have better things to do.  At Aldis I tell each of my kids to run ahead and pick on one box each and I know it's going to be less than $2 and I know what size box it is going to be (it's big enough to last exactly 1 week).  It takes 2 minutes and we are done.  I don't have to try and figure out which brand of milk is cheaper or which pancake mix we are buying.  There is only one choice and 95% of the time I prefer the Aldis brand.  Their chips leaving something to be desired.  Aldis also cuts down on the impulse spending.  Seriously, what is there to buy extra?  A can of beans?  And get this, check out is super fast!!!  They don't bag which means my grapes are not landing in a bag with my leaky chicken breasts.  We drive our cart to the back of the car and I have 2 or 3 small laundry baskets or boxes back there where we pack it all in while we sort it.  Cold with cold, pantry with pantry and so on.  We can leave our house and be back and two weeks of groceries can be put away in under an hour.  Talk about time saver. 

Maybe I should have called this Aldis tips!  LOL.