I always say that saving money is a life style, so today I want to share a few of the ways we are saving and/or earning money this month.

I had decided several months ago that I wanted to have the kids with matching Christmas clothes this year. In November, Kmart offered a sale on the dresses the girls are wearing. I was able to purchase the dresses for $8 each. Before ordering, I did check to make sure we had both girls a long shrug or sweater to wear with these as they are short sleeves. Their tights were purchased on a 40% off sale in addition to 5 coupon from e The Children’s Place for a total of $5. The most expensive part of the girls outfits were their shoes. We did find them on sale but still spent around $45 for both pair. Total for both girls outfits were $60- the average cost of one dress. Zach has had his red tie for several years now so all I needed to purchase for him was a black shirt. I found it at Walmart for $8.  I really do love dressing all three for less than $100.

Our biggest expense is by far groceries. For this reason, we definitely try to use all the food we have and not waste or let any go bad. Last Saturday, we spent baking Christmas goodies in addition to make a 7-layer salad, deviled eggs and Mandarin Orange salad. We have used these as our sides for Saturday lunch, Monday dinner and plan to use again on Friday. Today, we had what the kids call a “leftover buffet” pick what you want to eat from the leftovers and enjoy.  Matt and Lily have been able to make wraps and nachos at lunch with some leftovers as well. The tomatoes, we harvested from the garden are finally ripe.  I decided to go ahead and cook these for use in soups later on.  Finally, we purchased a bunch of bananas last Thursday, that are now really ripe. The kids decided that we would use them in a smoothie in the morning for breakfast.

Saving money means know what items you need in addition to recognizing the best deal on an item. The best example of this, is our purchase of razors from Amazon. Matt has a “favorite” razor that when it goes on sale I grab. He also is open to trying others as well. We did try the dollar shave club but simply were not impressed and after doing the math, it really is cheap for me to buy razors at CVS. Last night I noticed that Amazon had his favorite razor refills on sale. We grabbed a year supply for $20. This was definitely a case of know a good price and grabbing it.