Saving Money is My Biggest New Year's Resolution This Year

Saving money is on everyone's mind these days. With a hard hitting recession and less money flowing into most of our pockets, we're all looking for ways to save.

Although I am already frugal, my biggest New Year's Resolution this year is to save more money by cutting corners and changing my outlook.

Here are my five ways I plan to save money in the coming year.

I'm going retro. I am going back to some of the tried and true ways that our mothers and grandmothers saved money back in the day. It isn't as hard as that might sound and it is actually going to be a good thing.

One of the ways I'm going back to basics is that I am going to stop buying pre-baked, pre-packaged cookies and instead dust off the cookbooks and make my own. Our family can have a big cookie bake-off each weekend and bake enough for all week long. We can bake 'em and freeze them, supplying homemade baked goodness for those brown bag lunches, afterschool snacks, and the occasional dessert.

Another way is to cook more home made, from scratch foods. Forget the high priced, frozen entree meals, the meal kits, and the boxed dinners. They cost too much these days and have too much added things that aren't good for us anyway. Most are laden with too much sodium and sugar not to mention chemicals I can't even pronounce. So, again, I'm going back to the good old cookbooks and finding recipes that offer budget ways to make home cooked meals on the cheap. I have some older cookbooks handed down through the family with easy recipes using basic ingredients. Slow cookers are another way to make good wholesome meals yourself.

When I go grocery shopping, I'm going for the basics. I'll buy bags of rice instead of packaged and flavored rice dinners. I can season rice myself and it will be tastier as well as healthier. I'll buy fresh potatoes instead of bagged frozen fries or instant mashed potatoes. Fresh 'taters cost less, taste better, and it's really simple to make them part of a balanced family supper.

Soda pop will become a treat, not a daily stipend. It costs pennies to brew tea at home or make a pitcher of Kool-Aid for the kids. These drinks will cost less and be much better for us than those sugar laden pops or chemically flavored diet drinks ever were!

I know how to sew, both with my fancy sewing machine and by hand. So, back to basics, and no more tossing out those jeans with a hole in the knee. I can patch them for pennies and get a longer life out of that denim. I can sew buttons back on, repair falling hems, and much more. Instead of discarding clothing because of a minor rip, we'll fix them up and they will be as good as new, maybe even better.

These are just five simple and painless ways to save money, my biggest New Year's Resolution in the coming year. I plan to do them and you can too....saving up all that money.

One more tip that we already do in our family is to toss our change (coins) into a coffee can. When the can is full, we take it out to the nearest Coin Star and get real folding money in exchange. If you don't want to pay the minimal fee for using Coin Star, you can buy coin wrappers, roll the coins yourself and deliver them to the bank.

Happy saving money!