What Are Your Best Family Money Saving Tips?

Because travel is a priority for our family, we’re always searching for ways to minimise costs and save money. Before setting out on our travels this year we made a huge effort to downsize our life and get rid of all the junk. Even though we’re going back to “normal” life in NZ for a bit while we have our second baby I’m determined not to re-accumulate all that crap and keep my focus on saving as much money as we can for travel.

Here are some of the things we do to save money as a family:

• Downsize to one car – This saves us a tonne of money yearly on insurance, registration and warrants but also each week on petrol. We’re much more conscious of when and how we use our car and try to plan our journeys with greater care. For example, I’ll visit my sister or get groceries while Lee is at Kung Fu so we cut two trips down to one.
• Never pay full price – We rarely need to pay full price for anything. If we go out to eat, it’s always somewhere we have a voucher for. We shop for clothes in sales. We buy whatever brand of nappies, milk etc is on special that week.
• Get rid of cable – We ditched cable TV long ago in favour of watching everything online. We bought an HDMI cable so we can plug our laptops straight into the TV so it doesn’t feel like we’re huddled around a tiny computer screen.

Here are some other great money saving tips for families:

• Shop for groceries online so you don’t impulse buy
• Sell clothes and toys your kids have outgrown
• Do surveys online to earn extra money
• Hunt down vouchers for anything you need to buy online
• Pack a lunch before heading on an outing with your kids
• Plan a meal for each day of the week so you’re not tempted by expensive takeaways.