What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

We are still living in DH parent's home and trying to save $$ for our new house in a few months....

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

save in bulk and save in the little things.

for one: put all your change in a bank every single day...do not even count it...if you can, get change of a dollar when you go to differnet stores. my mom and i saved for disney world this way years ago!

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

we have one of those water jugs and put our change in that...last time we had around $70 and it was only a few inches deep!!!

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

First we wrote down all of our expenses and decided on what percent of our salaries we need to pay for these expenses. Then we decided on what percentage we are going to save. For us we save over 60%. On the 15th of each month we deposit the money into our ING account and don't touch it! In 2 years we have enough for the wedding and enough left for a decept DP on a house.

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

Bring lunch to work

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

I try allure...but when MIL stands over me wathcing as I cook for the 2 of us with a cigarette....I kind of don't want to cook....

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

My company has an employee stock purchase plan. I put $300 out of each paycheck into it. Each quarter, I buy $1800 worth of our company's stock at a 15% discount.

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

Oh yeah - Stop eating out! I remember at the GTG you said you eat out alot. Eating at home can save you lots of money.

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

---

Posted by btrflygrl

I try allure...but when MIL stands over me wathcing as I cook for the 2 of us with a cigarette....I kind of don't want to cook....

---

Ugh... that sucks. You will have your new beautiful home in Georgia soon...

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

We've been cutting back, again it's hard to cook in that house. WE eat with his parents when we can to save money....

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

FH and I are great savers however its just natural, we are BAD at saying we are going to save more or planning how to save more!

What I can say is that I have set budgets for things like gifts because I found that without it my neice and nephew get way more than they need! I also try to cut back on clothes shopping, going out to bars with our friends, eating out (this is HUGE), bringing lunch is big (especially for those of us who work in NYC) most of hte time I just bring a sandwich and a fruit but its soooo much cheaper. Also anythign that goes in my savings acct stays there unless I have a big expense (car insurance or wedding expenses) at the end of each month I leave in my checking maybe $150 the excess goes into savings and as far as I am concerned no longer exists!!!

Good Luck!
Pin a picture of your dream home in your room, in your car, in your wallet, this way each time you get the urge to splurge you have a reminder of why you shouldnt!!!!

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

Hrm..
-Eat at home.. it's so much cheaper.
-Don't buy it on credit (anything) if you can't pay for it in cash, save for it then buy it.
-Don't buy what you really don't need. I double think every purchase, do we REALLY need new headsets for my ipod? or do we need an oil change for the car?
-Schedule your bills to your check and pay them first then set aside grocery, gas and 'living' money. The rest put away it's not yours. It's 'saving'.
-Buy the things you usually eat anyway in bulk when they go on sale. For us that's corn, soup, pasta sauce, pasta and soda.

Mostly thats our style for now.

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

I agree with the bringing lunch--we both do that now most of the time to save, and when we want to eat out we get takeout. Not quite so romantic, but it saves on tips and drinks, etc. With the nice weather we even bring takeout to the beach, etc. Can you cook at a time when the MIL is out, and then freeze or save the food? We added up how much we spent on eating out ($$$!), and now we cook home a lot. We both LOVE filet mignon, and you can cook that for two at home for around $10-15, when it would be over 50 eating out! We even take turns cooking. He enjoys it more than I thought, even though he thinks chicken tacos is a gourmet meal...

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

Hmmm.. We really try to save by not eating out all of the time.. We used to go out atleast 2x's a week pre- wedding saving, but now we avoid it as much as possible. I don't deprive myself of what I want, however, I do know my limits. We both live at home so saving is not hard for us to do.

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

What I do is pretty easy. Me and FI rent an apartment and have for 4 years. We never fight about money because we split EVERYTHING down the middle, that way there cant be an arguement. What I do is deposit my WHOLE paycheck every week into my savings account and then when he gives me half of the rent money in cash, I use that to live on every month. Then if I have extra at the end of the month, I either treat myself to something or carry it over to the next month, or deposit that too.

Re: What do you do to save money, not for the wedding, in general...

since we already have a house - for home remodeling, we deposit all of my paycheck each week into savings and live off hubby's.
we are very good with our $$ and only eat out once or twice a month.
but before the wedding, in order to afford the house we really wanted, we saved EVERY penny :)
and both of us lived at home until the wedding.
its not easy at first, and you are bothered that you can't go out and do fun thngs but when you are sitting in YOUR house, its TOTALLY worth the sacrafice :)