Tifton Moms

It’s officially 2026, and if you’re looking to get your budget in order this year, this article is for you! Most of us are definitely feeling a little stretched thin, and when you add in trying to recover from Christmas, things can feel even more tight. In this article, I’ve put together a list of tips on how our family saves money, and I tried not to include tips you may have heard before.

Create a budget.

One of the biggest things you can do to help you and your family get back on track this year is to create a budget and track your money. Don’t just set a number for groceries and assume that’s how much you actually spent. There were many years where my husband and I didn’t have a budget at all, and I know we wasted so much money because of it. Then we “had a budget,” but we never kept up with how much we were actually spending in the different categories and whether it matched up with the numbers we had originally set. Take some time this week to sit down with your partner and talk about a realistic budget and what that looks like for your family.

Keep groceries as low as you can.

Groceries are where so many of us are feeling the strain. As a family of now five people, we usually spend around $800-$1000 a month (or sometimes more) on groceries. While there’s only so much you can do in this category to lower it, the things we consistently do to try and keep our costs lower are:

• Buying discounted meat at Aldi and Food Lion and keeping it in our deep freezer.
• Buying fruits and vegetables in season.
• Shopping as much as we can at Aldi.
• Limiting lots of snacks (and this if from a family who homeschools) and pre-packaged items when possible.
• Not wasting food—eating leftovers and trying to take stock of what we have in the fridge or pantry (especially things that are going to go bad soon) when planning meals.
• Stretching meat out with things like beans, lentils, or lots of veggies.
• Buying off brand items the majority of the time.
• Making our own bread and other snacks when possible.
• Asking a family member to kill a deer for us and just paying for the processing.
• Buying things like berries, tomatoes, etc. locally when in season at good prices and canning or freezing them.

Budget for Christmas and other out of the ordinary expenses.

I know we just finished Christmas, and you’re probably looking to put the bills behind you, but it’s important to think about and budget for Christmas next year, as well as out of the ordinary expenses like birthdays, annual bills, annual events, school supplies/clothes, and even Halloween. I created a list of all of these types of expenses that come up through the year that tended to really wreck our monthly budget. We used to use our tax return to budget out for these categories, but now I use some side income to keep up with it. Those are both options on how to account for that money, but you can also include setting aside money for this rolling fund in your monthly budget too if that works better for your family.

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Using StraightTalk.

It sounds simple, but one of the ways my husband and I have saved a lot of money over the years is just through our phone carrier, StraightTalk. We have used it the whole time we’ve been married, and it really saves money in two ways the way I see it. First, you have to pay for your phone up front, which keeps you from wanting to upgrade until you really need it. Second, because you have paid for your phone up front, you are only paying for your service each month, not the phone plus interest, so our combined bill is only about $70 a month. We did just get our oldest child a Gabb phone, so we do have that added expense now, but once we feel she’s ready for a traditional smart phone, we’ll switch over to StraightTalk for her too.

Driving an older paid off car.

This is probably one you’ve heard of before, but it bears repeating. We save so much money every month by not having a car payment. Sure our cars are not perfect or that nice, but they get us where we need to go and don’t cost us money every month outside of gas and insurance (and the occasional repair or maintenance).

Keep birthdays simple.

Another way we save money is by keeping birthdays relatively simple and low-cost, and this is fresh in my mind because we just celebrated my daughter’s fourth birthday this weekend and my son’s first birthday is coming up next month. We decided several years we wanted to put the emphasis on something fun to do rather than a material item when it came to our “gift” for our children. That has looked like a trip to the trampoline park, going to Wild Adventures, a trip to the Zoo, a trip to an indoor playground for younger kids, etc. When my daughter turned four this weekend, we took her to get her ears pierced and to the indoor playground at the mall. While these experiences are not always super cheap, our emphasis is on a fun family memory rather than a material item or huge party. Our kids still get plenty of gifts from friends and family, so it’s never really been an issue there. Our oldest daughter has sort of phased out of big parties and usually does a sleepover with friends instead, but when she was younger and for our younger children, we usually do a nice party at home or somewhere relatively free or cheap like the park or once at our church’s social hall. I do all the food, even the cake, myself. Depending on what theme they want, I may buy a few decorations, but I make a lot of things on Canva or find free files online and print things out myself. For example, for my daughter’s birthday this weekend, she wanted a Peppa Pig party. We hosted it at Fulwood Park for free, and I had some fruits and vegetables, chips, cookies, tea, juice, and a cake and cupcakes made by me. I used a plastic tablecloth and some posterboard to make a background that looked like the opening of Peppa Pig with her house and got some balloons from Publix for each side. Then I had some colorful tablecloths I thrifted (unopened) that I put on the other tables along with a simple flower arrangement in jars I already had with Peppa Pig toys we either already had or that we borrowed from a friend. Even if you can’t do all of the things I did yourself, I challenge you to find one thing you can do instead of buying it for your child’s birthdays this year. If they’re older and are used to having their birthday somewhere, it might be hard to transition them to a simpler venue, but if you have little kids, just keep it simple from the beginning. My daughter still had a great birthday despite our venue being completely free!

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Embracing secondhand.

Another way we save money is buy embracing secondhand items. We have had lots of friends gift us hand-me-downs for both of our youngest children, which I happily accept and organize so I hardly ever have to buy clothes. When we want a specific décor piece, I try my best to find it secondhand. When we were giving my daughter her own little space, I took her to the thrift store to pick out some art she liked and I scored later with a beautiful princess bedding set (which I immediately washed as soon as we got home). For this past Christmas, we even used secondhand items for some of our gifts. I found an unopened herb garden starter kit with a heat lamp for my husband new in the box on marketplace. I found one of the modular kids’ couches for all three of our children on marketplace, blocks for my son at a thrift store, books for all the kids at a thrift store or from thriftbooks.com, a new in box Melissa & Doug Ice Cream Counter for my daughter, a Noah’s Ark shape sorter toy for my son in great shape, and even more from either marketplace, H&C Consignment, a local thrift store, or Mercari. There can be a big stigma around secondhand items, but this always allows me to stretch my money farther. My younger kids don’t care, and once they start to understand, you can explain that buying secondhand allows them to get more with the same money.

Ditch reusables.

Another way we save money is by ditching common reusables that most people buy without even thinking about it like paper towels, paper plates, and even diapers. A lot of this started out from a motivation to be more environmentally friendly, but it also helps us keep costs down. Instead of paper towels, we just have lots of rags and towels that are readily available, and we thrifted lots of cloth napkins. For messes that you really don’t want to use a reusable rag for, we keep a stack of napkins from fast food trips or will keep 1-2 rolls of paper towels in a place that’s harder to access. That way we have them if we need them, but we can’t grab them as easily for everyday messes. For plates, we use some thrifted Correlle ones that are very hard to break, and I unload the dishwasher in the morning (we try to start it every night) and leave it open throughout the day so dishes can go straight in. And then diapers has definitely been more recent and we don’t do it one hundred percent of the time. I thrifted a big stash of cloth diapers in late summer, and we use them during the day. At night and when we travel or are out and about a lot during the day, we use disposables still. Because I don’t work full time, I know that is a big reason why I’m able to do this, but even just challenging yourself to put towels where you usually keep the paper towels or eating one less meal with paper plates can be a great way to start this gradually.  

Eat good food at home.

So we definitely eat the majority of our meals at home to save money because eating out as a family of five is just crazy. However, I don’t do this by eating rice and beans every day, and I think if I tried to eat super cheap meals, I would just want to ditch it and go out to eat. I try to plan meals that almost feel like restaurant food. I need to get excited about what we’re eating to not be tempted to eat out. If you’re looked for help or inspiration in this category, check out our new weekly meal plan section. Now, sometimes these meals are a little bit more labor intensive and things happen, you can’t always cook what you planned. I do try to keep freezer meals that I’ve made (but you could also do a frozen pizza or frozen lasagna) as well as super easy to throw together meals like spaghetti sauce, noodles, and ground beef that I can cook without being completely thawed out.

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Limit subscriptions.

Now, I don’t want to be one of those people who tells you to cancel unused subscriptions because I feel like if you’re reading this, you probably already know that tip. What I will tell you is that our family usually only has 1-2 subscriptions running at a time. If there’s something we really want to watch on another one, we will cancel one of the ones we have to get the other subscription and then cancel that one after we’ve watched what we want to.

Use your local library.

Another way we can keep subscriptions lower is by using our local library. They have physical audiobooks as well as audiobooks you can access through the Libby app just with your library card. They also have DVDs we can check out if there’s a one-off movie we want to watch that we don’t have the streaming service for. Additionally, I save so much money by checking out books there instead of buying them for myself and my kids. We also attend a lot of library programs, which is a great way to find something fun for your kids (or yourself) to do without spending any money.

Living in a smaller home.

Another way we have saved money throughout our relationship is by living in a smaller (and usually older) home. The first house we bought was less than 1000 square feet and only had two bedrooms and one bath. It was nearly a hundred years old, but it had had a lot of updates like a new HVAC, a new hot water heater, etc. We lived in it with two kids for nearly two years. The house we live in now is only about 1300 square feet and is only slightly newer. We have three kids now and are not ruling out the possibility of another one just yet, but I still don’t see us moving unless a really great opportunity presented itself.

Use reward programs for groceries and eating out.

This tip is not going to save you tons of money, but it can save you a little bit. For restaurants we eat at more often (Chick-fil-A and Surchero’s in our family’s case), it’s worth it to download the app and scan our receipts in there to get points towards a free meal. For those same receipts and really any other receipt, I scan it into Fetch to get points there. Usually I save up all my points until the end of the year and then will cash them in for a gift card to use for Christmas. If you sign up for Fetch using my referral code, we will both get bonus points. You can do that here.  

Tifton Moms is a resource dedicated to the moms and families of Tifton, Georgia and beyond to help them find the information they need about events in Tifton and Southwest Georgia, resources in Tifton and beyond, educational tips, and so much more. We are passionate about all things parenting and our community, and we want to connect you to relevant resources, local businesses, can’t miss events, and each other! Find more helpful articles at https://tiftonmoms.com/blog/.