With gas prices, inflation, and cost of living rising, being a stay at home mom is becoming more difficult for a lot of families. As a stay at home mom myself, I know the importance of financial security in a marriage. Some of the most stressful periods of our relationship were because we had more days at the end of the month than we did money. With five kids, and one income, I have discovered some great stay at home mom budget tips.
My husband is really good at making money, but he is also really great at spending it. Because of that, I assumed the role of money manager in our household and as the years go on, I’m getting pretty good at it. Some months are better than others but for the most part, my system works really well.
So, let’s dive right into these budget tips!
Track Your Expenses
I remember skating by until pay day, quickly breathing a sigh of relief, and then watching that week’s paycheck vaporize before it barely even hit the account. It’s one thing to THINK you know where your money is going and then a completely different thing to sit down and stare at the paper that SHOWS where your money is actually going.
The first thing you need to do is print one month of bank statements and categorize each of those transactions. Don’t leave anything uncategorized! My categories include: groceries, bills, gas, fast food, clothing, gifts, and family activities. I use a different color pen for each category. For example, blue for gas, red for fast food, yellow for gifts, etc. Then, I go down the list and mark every blue transaction before moving to the next category/color. When you have marked every transaction, add up each of the colors to get your total for each category.
The first time I did this, I was actually feeling a little bit of guilt and shame while looking at our numbers. The truth most certainly hurts sometimes!
Set a Budget and Stick to it
I call this the first aid of our money management. This is where we help make the bleeding stop with our expenses.
My husband has a terrible habit of stopping at gas stations to grab an energy drink or a snack while at work. His thought process was that it wasn’t that big of a deal spending a few dollars here and there. But a few dollars here and there was actually turning into a couple hundred bucks a month.
Another shock was the amount we were spending in subscriptions. Do we really need Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Peacock, Disney Plus, and Discovery Plus? We already don’t have a lot of opportunities to watch TV so we decided to keep a few of our most watched services and ditch the rest.
Remember all of those free trials you signed up for and forgot to cancel at the end of your free trial? Now is time to cancel those too.
Make More Meals at Home
A typical fast food run for our family usually costs around $40-$50. I have a hard time justifying paying that much for food that doesn’t taste great and isn’t good for you anyway. But I love the convenience of it! So much so that we were spending nearly 3x what I thought we were. Now, I limit fast food runs to once a week. Chef Mom needs a break, too!
They say if you fail to plan then you can also plan to fail. To help keep our fast food budget on track, I spend about an hour a week planning a week’s worth of meals. Then, I create a grocery list and order all of my groceries for curbside pickup. I save so much money by not entering the store with kids that often forget to leave their “can we get these?” in the car.
I am always prepared with a few family favorite recipes that are quick and easy for days I know we are going to be busy. Better yet, they are all instant pot recipes. That way, I can’t even convince myself that drive thru would be more convenient. You can check out these recipes on my blog post, Quick and Easy Instant Pot Recipes That Picky Eaters Love.
Find a Good Bill Tracker
As moms, we have way too much other stuff that takes up valuable brain power. So when it came to paying bills on time, I was always forgetting! It is hard to budget money when you are constantly paying late fees.
In my desperate search, I found the Prism App to help manage our bills and their due dates. I love getting reminders of when bills are due right on my phone, which is how I pay majority of my bills anyway! Nothing comes as a surprise anymore.
If you consider yourself a little old fashioned, there are also paper bill trackers on Amazon. Anything that can be ruined by getting wet or colored on is not safe in this house. Find what works best for you!
Try to DIY
I joked that my husband has a spending problem but I am also super proud of him for becoming a self taught handyman around the house. He has saved us a lot of money by learning simple home fixes on Youtube. So far he has fixed leaky pipes in the basement, replaced bathtub drains, clear clogged pipes and got our washing machine working again after the water wouldn’t drain, just to name a few.
We live in the Information Age so I encourage you to take full advantage of it!
Practice Being Grateful and Content
Of all the budget tips I have for you, this is the most important one: be grateful for what you do have.
In a book I’m reading about human emotion, I found this article on gratitude by Robert Emmons. He wrote, “Research on emotions shows that positive emotions wear off quickly. Our emotional systems like newness. They like novelty. They like change. We adapt to positive life circumstances so that before too long, the new car, the new spouse, the new house-they don’t feel so new and exciting anymore. But gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and when we appreciate the value of something, we extract more benefits from it; we’re less likely to take it for granted.”
It is so easy to get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses that we often forget the things we have now are the same things we were praying about months ago. Like the famous quote from Aesop says, “gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
I hope this list has given you a few ideas on how to better manage your finances. If there is anything you think I should add to this list, please let me know in the comments below!
