Our income is going down 1,500 a month and with 4 new kids??

Question

hello, here is my question. we are adopting 4 children and once we do our monthly income will be down 1,500 a month. we will for sure fill that. i know the basics on saving money. turning off lights, i already buy the kids clothes at consignment stores, and i try not to waste food ect. does anyone have any great ideas for budgeting. please be nice people, we make enough to survive so dont say dont adopt them then, we are fine i just cant work a full time job with 4 kids and would love to save and budget better.

Answer 1

The best advice anyone can give you is to create a budget.  Put on paper everything you are going to spend on that month and if its not on the list do not buy it.  Go here www.DaveRamsey.com and search for budget. You'll be glad you did.

Answer 2

I've been trying to answer your question, but Yahoo Answers isn't letting me post it here.  I answered another question with success, so I can't figure out what is going on with this one.  I'm going to try to post this, since it's a lot shorter than what I have in mind, but will edit if it finally does get through this way. yahoo.  gotta love it.

EDIT:

I recently re-vamped our budget because we seemed to be losing a lot of money. Food expenses usually are the most flexible, so most of my personal experience relates to that.

I cut my shopping down to once a week. To help me do that, I planned meals and set up a menu. I used the local grocery store's sales flier to decide what we would eat. We love fresh produce, but it can get expensive, so snacks for the week are produce that has been reduced for the week. By buying only food that was on sale, we saved over $50 a week just on food.

(By the way, I don't know if you have any farmer's markets in your area, but I came across an idea you might find useful: the site suggested going to farmer's markets at that day's closing time and asking for the produce they are about to throw away. Some may charge a tiny bit for it, but more likely they'll give it to you for free since you're saving them time and effort. It's all going to be thrown away, anyway, so why not bring it home? It's worth a shot, especially if you don't mind freezing the fruits and veggies for later. Just prepare them as you would for cooking and freeze in Ziploc type freezer bags. Label with the name of the food and the date so you can rotate the fresh food you freeze.)

I buy meat in bulk. You can get the family-sized meat packs and freeze them in portions suitable for your family. And don't be ashamed to get the meat marked "reduced for quick sale". Freeze it in family-sized portions as soon as you get home, and it should be OK. You can even skip meat for a day each week. Meat is notoriously expensive. By eating beans and rice or something else in the place of meat, you'll be saving quite a bit of money.

Toiletries like shampoo and soap can get expensive. You don't need the latest salon-type shampoos and such. Just buy the cheapest that works for you. My mom takes it one step further: she uses Suave clarifying shampoo to wash her hair and to bathe. At less than $1 a bottle, that's some cheap body wash!

Avoid going to the movies. Yeah, it can be an experience, but the ticket cost alone is prohibitive. It's a lot cheaper to get a Netflix membership, pop your own popcorn, and just have a family night once a week. You can also spend time outdoors, doing things with the kids rather than purchasing game systems - new games can break anyone's budget.

Also, look online for a freecycle club in your area. Members give stuff away (all you have to do is go pick it up) and you can also give stuff to other people. My daughter's clothes are 100% free.

These are just a few of the things we've done. I'm going to link you to a couple of sites I've used for inspiration. Hopefully they can give you some new ideas that you can try.

Congratulations on becoming a mom!!

Answer 3

First congratulations on the new additions to your family, your children are blessed to have parents who will love and care for them. Now as to some ways to stretch the budget.  

Morph meals.  This one I got from Robin Miller on HGTV and have been doing it all year saving a lot on my grocery budget.  Make a meal and prepare extras to morph into another meal later in the week.  This not only saves ingredients, but energy as well.  So when you go to the grocery, look at each major ingredient you purchase for a meal, buy in bulk to make certain you get at least 2-3 other meals from those same main ingredients.  

Second, keep a budget book tracking your actual payments for bills and padding it by 10% every month over what you paid last year.  That way you won't be surprised with rate hikes or useage that exceeds what you thought.  I write out the checks with the payee and put the budgeted amount in pencil in the checkbook at the beginning of the month before I get the bill.  As I receive them, I put in the actual amount and keep a running total of the excess.  Then at the end of the month, I actually take the excess for each bill, get a total, and put that money into savings.  It is a good way to live beneath your means and accumulate emergency savings in the mean time.

You will be doing a lot of laundry and dishes, but use both machines to your advantage by only running full loads.  It takes just as much energy and water to run a full load as it does a partial, so make every dime count.

Start your own veggie and herb garden.  It is much cheaper to grow your own than to buy.  Freeze overproduction or can.

Use cheaper, homemade cleaning products.  I have found vinegar, baking soda and hydrogen peroxide are a great cleaning arsenol for almost everything and are much cheaper than buying commercially prepared.

Reuse.  Look at everything you would throw either into recycle or the trash to see if there is another purpose for them.  I save candle jars which I use to light my way around the house at night.  They make wonderful containers to put homemade goodies as gifts during the holidays and the kids will have fun decorating them, too.  It is amazing how many bottles can be reused to store things in from pasta to oils.  Long necked bottles with the addition of liquor pouring spouts can be used to keep everything from dish soap to extra virgin oil oil to hand soap to bath oil.