Hellobee Boards

What do you do for a living? Is it something you can channel into a side hustle? If this is a temporary cut, you may be able to just tighten your belt for a while, but if its not, then you will probably need to look for another job or explore more side-gig options. If you are looking to work 30 hours, can you condense those hours to 4 days a week and not be in the office for one them? That might help from a childcare expense standpoint OR free you to do a gig for one day a week. If not, I'd fight to adjust hours so that you are missing peak commute times and can get home to cook dinner so that you can save money by eating homecooked food.

Firstly, you definitely need to look at your expenses and figure out where you are "leaking" money and where you can cut down on your expenses.

For most families, food is the largest varying expenditure. The USDA offers a monthly report on the average cost for feeding a family of 4 nationwide based on 3 price points - thrifty, moderate, and liberal. Its useful to see how much it should cost to feed your family. And don't get sucked into the cost of living argument for food prices. Aside from maybe Boston and NYC, it doesn't vary that much and in high COLA places like CA, we actually pay less for food than my in-laws in the Midwest because we actually grow the stuff here. I stock up during sales for meat and staples, we eat a lot of frozen vegetables, and eat mostly in-season fruit. This means that our menu is generally very repetitive, but whatever, it gets it done.

https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/CostofFoodJan2018.pdf

Obviously, you can go on a spending freeze on things like clothing and shoes and makeup for yourself and your husband and make do with what you have. DH and I have worn "work uniforms" for years. Each season I usually have like 5-7 work outfits I rotate. No one cares. And neither of us wear anything that requires dry cleaning.

We have found amazing deals on toys for our kids at our local Goodwill like Lakeshore Learning, Melissa and Doug, etc. and they get new stuff at holidays and birthdays, or when I just find a screaming good deal. And learn to love the library and local free events for stuff to do with the kids on the weekends. I wouldn't have an issue with cutting extracurricular for the kids for a while unless its something really important. For example, I could easily cut a swim class, but keep my kids in Korean class.

Cutting cable and just using Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video saved our family $150 a month at least. You can also price shop your cellphone plans to bring that down too. Personally, I can deal with cutting a gym membership, getting my hair/nails done, and DH and I don't drink very much, so its not a big part of our budget. We can share a little wine at home and I can workout in my living room.

We always re-shop our insurance rates at least once a year to bring down our costs. We bundled our home, car, and personal item policies with our credit union and got the best deal by far. We bid out our life insurance, long term disability, and my husband's malpractice every year to either save money or get better coverage for the same amount of money out.

Try to move as many of your expenses into pre-tax categories, like childcare and healthcare FSAs.

If you do not have any savings, stash away a small amount now - say like $2000-3000 as a cushion should a major repair or car breakdown happen.

If you have credit card debt, see if you can move the balances to a lower APR card and bring down your monthly payment.

See if your car is a money leach. We had a paid off car that cost us a fortune because it had terrible mileage, had horribly expensive maintenance and repairs, etc. We actually got a plug-in hybrid Prius for a 3 year lease. We got $1750 back from our state on a cash rebate, paid $2500 at lease-signing, had a $270 lease payment for 3 years, they covered maintenance on it for most of the lease, it took $20 in gas a week to run, and it got us an HOV lane pass so it cut our commute costs. At the end of the lease, we just bought the car outright because we loved it so much and because the HOV lane access cut our commute TIME so much. And it cost us FAR less each month than our old car. Additionally, you might look into public transportation options. My employer pays for bus, train, and lightrail passes. If I took those methods, I could save parking costs, gas costs, and I could do stuff like read or other tasks while sitting on the bus. I prefer to drive, but if I needed to cut an extra $300 a month from my budget, that's where it would come from.

DH and I switched to lunch dates. Its cheaper and we can usually try to fit one in during a day we are both working. For a long time I did a weekly dessert as part of our meal plan and that was our treat instead of going out for ice cream or boba or whatever. And no Starbucks! Even if you buy the fanciest coffee and brew it at home, its cheaper than Starbucks.

Stop doing mindless Target or Costco runs. Meal plan and if necessary, make a grocery list and hand it to your husband. He might not price compare or pay attention like you would, but sticking to the list actually saves you money even if you're paying full price. When I was on unpaid maternity leave, I would scan the weekly grocery ads, pick the store with the best overall deals, write a list of things I wanted and direct DH to the specific store I wanted him to go to and write out the exact brand if I knew that item was on sale. It was mind-boggling how much money we saved when DH did the shopping because he bought only what was on the list.

Also, get rid of Amazon Prime or just go on a moratorium on Amazon. It is a huge money leach because of the convenience factor.

Sell everything you can get rid of. Just Between Friends consignment sales are a great way to get rid of all your kid stuff and then you can take the earnings to buy more clothes or whatever for your kids.

Use the dollar store for any needs you have with regards to holidays, cards, giftwrap, and candy. Every daycare party or whatever, I just go in and grab stuff for the next upcoming holiday and stash it. I buy all my birthday cards or whatever there for 2 for $1 and its SO much cheaper than buying a regular card. Keep it simple and just give a children's book for kid presents for any friend parties and do simple useful gifts for relatives/holidays. A $20 present is plenty.

DH and I for many years declined to gift anything extravagant to each other and did "joint" gifts of a practical item we needed at home, like a vacuum. But we're not huge gift people, so whatever.

I think for an average mid-to-upper class family, cutting $1,000 is very doable.

@gotkimchi: I can't remember if this is a job/place you really wanted to work at or if you are looking for something better. Are there other opportunities out there now or is it a tough market?
My husband was earning enough to pay the daycare bills and that was helpful even though he was not happy with the salary.
For specific ways to save money I think @gingerbebe: covers it so well. If your kids are in daycare you can ask for a bigger discount - let them know what is happening and they may help you or give you an alternative idea.

Oh, and assuming healthcare plans are available for both you and your husband, it might be cheaper if you each go on your respective employer plans and add the kids to one of them. Depending on how they are priced, many employers will cover most or all of the insurance for the employee, and then it goes up from there. Switch the kids to the parent with the insurance coverage that is better or cheaper. That could bring down your costs too. Some people I know have each kid on a different parent's coverage because employee + 1 dependent was so much cheaper than employee + family. Unless you have dental issues, you can usually get by with the cheapest dental and vision coverage. We just use the one that's free with my employer and it covers cleanings and routine cavities and annual eye exams. That's plenty.

I've shared this on another thread, but at the peak of our budgeting years, we used a menu template. It was where each day had a type of meal assigned so it was easy to meal plan. Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday, Pizza Wednesday, Pasta Thursday, Asian Friday, etc. That way you can scan the weekly grocery ads, look at the sales, and plug in whatever worked into the template. It was way less time consuming but still got us different meals every week. If you have different pizza toppings each week, a different pasta, or a different soup or curry, you don't realize you're "eating the same thing" or whatever. I carried leftovers to lunch every day and DH ate sandwiches. I made a weekly dessert and I made a weekly batch of steel cut oatmeal or bought a box of cereal for DH for breakfast (I drank coffee for breakfast). I kept 1-2 snacks like baby carrots + hummus plus granola bars or chips around for snacks and we easily fed the two of us on $50-100 a week.

Not much to add to the great advice above, but... do you have any leeway about how you spread out that time? Could you turn it into a four-day week? Time is money too. If I had an extra day, I'd cut day care hours, bargain shop for food, cook more, and start a small business - I've got it planned out, but my day job leaves no time for it. The day care thing would save $200 a month, and better meal planning would probably net another $400 a month at least, without much of a sacrifice on nutrition.

I love all the fabulous advice above. I'll chime in that the budgeting software YNAB (You Need A Budget) literally changed my life. It helped me find every extra dollar that I could move to debt reduction, and it can help you find those extra dollars for your household! It is different from other budgeting programs, took some time to get used to but the time was well spent. Also it isn't free but in our case it more than paid for itself within just a couple of months. I can't recommend it highly enough.

It sounds to me like looking for a new job or side hustle is the way to go. Can you moonlight somewhere like Target where you would also get an employee discount?

Another thing to consider might be renting out a basement room or, if you have the skill set, picking up a few hours doing companion care for an elderly or disabled person. My mom has early onset Alzheimer’s and we have hired people to just sit with her and make sure she’s okay while my Dad goes to meetings, etc. It doesn’t require a specific skill set and can have very flexible hours and it can pay pretty well, plus you might be able to bring at least one kid. You could make a care.com profile and see if you get any interest.