Living on a Dental Floss Budget: You know, one that is smaller than a shoe string!

Yesterday I finished up talking about our story of becoming debt free.  Today I'll discuss some of my favorite tips when living on a shoe string dental floss budget!

Here are my top 5 picks for building and sticking to a budget:

1)  Record Every Penny- If you are just beginning to budget and have never had to keep track of anything, this could be really hard.  It's so worth it though!  The insight that it provides is invaluable. You suddenly see, that you spent $15 on coffee this week!  Or that you spend $80 taking the family out to eat this month.  Wow!  What insight!

2)  Determine a Budget- Finding a budget that works for your family is key!  Emphasis on working for your family!  If you look at another family and try to determine what you should be spending you will not stick to it.  It has to work for your lifestyle and paycheck.

3)  Stick to that Budget- Once that budget is in place, you may need to make some tweaks every so often.  I suggest giving yourselves a few months before you really nail it down and put it in stone. Even now for us, we need to adjust it every so often.  Recently we had to up our grocery budget, because apparently these boys of mine like to eat!

4)  Bargain Shop-  I know you have heard this before but I'll say it again!  Shop thrift stores, ask around to friends, clearance sales, off season sales, and garage sales are your best friend!  There are somethings I refuse to buy second hand, like shoes and fabric covered furniture, but that is just me! We have found some great things by just asking our friends if they have it to get rid of.  Sometimes they might not even think they want to sell it, but when you ask they are more than willing to get rid of it!

5)  Use It Up, Wear It Out, Make it Last or Do Without- One year that was my motto!  I had to just keep repeating it to myself.  Along with "we are going to live like our grandparent did", meaning we were not going to waste and we were going to get creative about saving money.  This little motto took us a LONG way!  It took us to giving up paper towels, napkins, clorox wipes, and paper plates.  When I realized how much I spent on just paper towels and napkins, I was really shocked!  And we buy generic!  So we switched to cloth napkins and pieces of scrap fabric from my husbands old sock and t-shirts for paper towel use.  That shaved at least $20 a month off of our budget.

There you have it my 5 tips for living on a budget!  I know there are so many other things that could be added but I wanted to give a precise and easy list to get you started!

Do you have any other tips that have worked for you?  I'd love to hear them!