"Feel like your family budget isn’t quite adding up this year? You’re not alone. Our old budgeting stand-bys, like automating our bill pay and monthly savings goals, buying in bulk, and avoiding eating out, aren’t cutting in anymore.
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A recent CNET Money survey found that 93 percent of U.S. adults are concerned about inflation, and nearly three in four polled have postponed their long-term financial goals or major purchases due to the rate of inflation and cost of goods. And it’s not just groceries. It seems like the cost of everything, from my kids’ extracurriculars to travel, has increased. Here’s how we’re coping as a family and adjusting our family budget during inflation.
Tracking our spending
It doesn’t matter how you do it. Tracking your spending almost always results in two things—figuring out just where all your money is going and getting a pretty good idea of where you might be overspending.
There are a ton of great apps that help you keep track of spending, like Mint and YNAB. I also love RocketMoney for keeping tabs on my bills and subscriptions—a surprisingly big budget line for us.
Grocery shopping biweekly
As a mom of two boys with a husband whose love language is food, our grocery bill has become truly obscene. Between our weekly grocery delivery, meal subscriptions, and the occasional auxiliary trip for a few forgotten items, we were spending close to $400 a week on food.
To save money on our groceries, I switched our grocery delivery to biweekly, which forces us to finish what’s left in our fridge, even if it’s not necessarily a favorite item. It’s also cut down on impulse and duplicate purchases, plus lessened our food waste, a pet peeve of mine. I also did the math and realized our meal delivery service rang in at $10/per person per meal, so that will be next to go.
Cutting back on extracurriculars
I’ve long been a proponent of limiting my kids to one sport or activity per season, and this fall, I stuck to it. My youngest wasn’t interested in a specific sport or activity this fall, so we’re skipping it altogether.
Where we live, sports like soccer or t-ball cost around $200 per season, plus the cost of equipment, clothing, and travel to and from the fields. Not to mention the cost of giving up your Saturdays from now until mid-November.
Limiting sports has saved us hundreds this fall, and it’s a money and sanity-saving measure I’m going to incorporate even when our budget improves.
Skipping a big trip this year
To me, summer means travel. But between hotels, flights, and care for our dog while we’re gone, plus spending for the actual trip, it just wasn’t in the budget this year. Instead, we visited my parents for a week, who live several states away.
We made a road trip out of it, staying at hotels on points both the way there and on the way back, which made it feel more like a getaway. We also took our dog with us, which saved money and was (mostly) a lot of fun.
Finding free family entertainment
I can blow through an entire book in a weekend; and I love getting my hands on a hardcover new release, turning its crisp pages with anticipation. These days, instead of buying new books, I use free resources like Libby, Amazon Kindle Unlimited, and yep, I even make the trek to my local library every few weeks.
I’ve done the same with my kids this summer. I mix up pricier outings with free entertainment, such as playgrounds, our community pool, and bike rides. If I know we’ll frequent a place more than once, I’ll spring for an annual pass. While it’s more upfront, it almost always saves you in the long run. And never underestimate the power of a hose in your backyard.
Rachel Morgan Cautero, Contributing Writer
Rachel is a full-time freelance writer based in Ponte Vedra, Florida. When she’s not busy wrangling a toddler, preschooler, and one very stubborn French bulldog, she’s writing on all things personal finance and parenting. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Forbes, Parents, Nerdwallet, The Balance, Yahoo Finance, Truly Mama, SmartAsset, HerMoney, and DailyWorth.