A recent study showed that Aldi and Lidl are the cheapest grocery stores. Costco and BJ’s are cheap too as long as you’re ok buying in bulk. But Aldi and Lidl came in even less expensive overall than Walmart.

Shop around for auto insurance especially if your cars are already paid off. I change insurance companies about every 2 years. They get you with a good rate and then jack it up, figuring you won’t want to go through the hassle of switching. But with everything being online these days, you can switch in a few hours.

Fast food is very expensive these days but weirdly enough, chain sit down restaurants are pretty much the same price they’ve always been. If you get food out for lunch when they do lunch specials, you can get better food for the same price by ordering from, say, Chili’s or Applebees to go and picking it up vs. hitting the McDonalds or Wendy’s drive through.

Use receipt scanning apps to get a little bit of cash back. Upside works for both gas and some groceries and food stores. Ibotta has some deals too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Basically just minimized eating out since this is an area where I tend to spend the most money $$ since I do not like to cook.

+1 we moved away from DC and don’t have convenient, delicious, expensive restaurants close by, so it’s been easy to eat at home! We have 1 car that’s a paid off hybrid; I take the bus and walk a lot. We still take short trips occasionally but they aren’t extravagant. Our overhead is thankfully low.

Curious what state did you move to?

Anonymous wrote:Don’t defer car or house maintenance
Programmable thermostat- set to a lower temperature in winter and higher in summer
Mow your own lawn, trim your own bushes
Brown bag lunches
Go vegetarian 2-3 times a week beans and eggs are cheaper proteins
Only buy fruit when it is in season. No berries in the winter. Frozen veggies and fruits can be economical too.
Clean your own house. Make it a daily/weekly family activity
Use municipal summer camps
Downsize your house
Visit family/friends and have them visit you instead of vacations

If you have a good mortgage rate, you're extremely unlikely to save money downsizing your house. Maybe if you are going from a large SFH to a condo that is not close in, such that you could buy the condo outright or nearly so.

No more spontaneous mall trips
Eating at home more
Using smaller car for commute
Staying at home more
Set a savings goal and working really hard on keeping up

Anonymous wrote:I don't really find the economy too bad? Inflation has come down. Restaurants are always going to cost more than cooking at home. And gas prices always go up and down.

Sure, if you say so. Enjoy that bubble of ignorance while you can.

This should be in the money forum; you’d get more responses there.

Anonymous wrote:I don't really find the economy too bad? Inflation has come down. Restaurants are always going to cost more than cooking at home. And gas prices always go up and down.

😂🤣

Anonymous wrote:Darn socks and sweaters
Wash and reuse ziplocks
Pickle fruits and vegetables when they are cheap
Water glassing eggs when price is low
Built addition ourselves
Use home remedies rather than cvs/modern medicine
Set up events in our neighborhood like cock fighting/wrestling rather than HBO subscription.

Water glassing eggs only works on fresh eggs. Also affects the taste.

Regarding new cars, lightly-used certified used vehicles are a better deal in most cases. That doesn't really apply to inexpensive import cars like Honda Civics. But it applies for a large chunk of the car market. Any segments that have a large percent of sales that are actually 3-year leases.

I don't really find the economy too bad? Inflation has come down. Restaurants are always going to cost more than cooking at home. And gas prices always go up and down.

Anonymous wrote:Buckle up, it’s about to get worse. Energy costs will continue to rise for some time due to war.
This will raise the price of gas, groceries, clothing, shipping, everything.
It is a global concern, not just USA.

It’s going to get very, very bad. Between energy costs, already high food prices and AI job losses, we are in for a doozy of a recession. It will be a blood bath. Our inert politicians will do nothing. We are in for 1929 style Great Depression. Hang on to your hats folks. And save, save, save.

Anonymous wrote:Darn socks and sweaters
Wash and reuse ziplocks
Pickle fruits and vegetables when they are cheap
Water glassing eggs when price is low
Built addition ourselves
Use home remedies rather than cvs/modern medicine
Set up events in our neighborhood like cock fighting/wrestling rather than HBO subscription.

Hello, Depression-era grandparents!

OP here. Thank you for all these amazing suggestions (especially the feet on OF, why didn’t I think of that?) but seriously, this was helpful just to know that we’re not alone. I agree with so much of this in terms of YOLO with teenagers. I feel stretched because we love traveling with them but that has gotten so insanely expensive. I don’t want to give that up so have had to figure out where to cut. A few thoughts:

- The alcohol thing is real. DH stopped cold turkey at the end of last summer to get back in shape. It was a game changer. We have now slowly reintroduced but we never order drinks at restaurants anymore. Big, big savings as a result.

- a few folks said packing lunch which I need to get better at. We pack lunch for the kids but I’m so harried in the morning that I usually leave without packing my own. Tbh, I feel so tired and stretched most days that getting lunch out a few times a week was my “me” time at the office. But I paid $22 for a grilled chicken salad a few weeks ago and that was it for me. I’m really having trouble adding this prep step to our routine but we probably just need to bite the bullet.

- Car: we have a 2013 Acura with 120K miles on it and have been thinking about buying another car for the past two years. Everytime we look, we just can’t bring ourselves to shell out $50K minimum for a worse car. I’m amazed at how many people drive their cars to 200K and beyond. I didnt grow up rich and we always drive our cars into the ground but when I was a kid, “the ground” was 100K 😂

Glad to know it’s not just us or something we’re doing wrong. Again, I didn’t grow up rich and have never been a spendthrift. I think the 1-2 punch of kids becoming teenagers right when everything becoming more expensive and salaries went stagnant…just hit us hard. I won’t give up the travel and family time though so onwards we march.

Good luck to everyone trying to raise kids in this!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Would love to get ideas for what else we could be doing as everything just gets more and more unaffordable. I really didn’t used to think about it this much for the last two years have been brutal. I’ll start:

- Used to eat out twice a week, now we eat out twice a month (take out only). Cook 7 nights a week but meals have gotten less complicated because who can realistically cook that much?

- started buying frozen afterschool snacks (tater tots, chicken tenders) and don’t let the kids stop at Starbucks or Boba place or whatever more than 2-3x per month

- Decided to drive our car until the wheels fall off. New cars are insane. When did that happen?

- started buying all basics (socks, underwear, basic tees) on Amazon.

- only shop for clothes off season and on sale. Have bought some basics from Target and Uniqlo. Saw a fairly basic sweater at J.Crew for $350 and almost laughed out loud.

- only reading books from the library

- no more sporting events for entertainment (we used to enjoy basketball games)


I would not have considered us to be in a difficult financial situation even two years ago. Our jobs are thankfully stable. But neither of us got pay increases this year because of cost cutting. It just doesn’t feel sustainable.

It happened under Biden, I had to pay $12,000 over the manufacturer price to get the vehicle and had to wait for it for 4.5 months.

You're insinuating it was Biden's fault. I'm sure you didn't mean to do that. Right? Because if that was your intention, it would make you a goddamn idiot.

COVID disrupted supply chains. Higher prices were the effect. Trump made things exponentially worse with his stupid unconstitutional tariffs. But then again, Trump hates America and everything it stands for, as does anyone who voted for him.

+1
And now the war is bringing high energy prices to the whole world

I keep my house much hotter in the summer than I would like and much colder in the winter than seems normal. It sounds vaguely Soviet, but the truth is, doing this saves me $200 to $300 every month.

(I set the air conditioning to 80° in the summer and the heat is 60 or 59 in the winter)