The Thrifty Mum

There was once a time that I considered getting a 'No Junk Mail' sticker for our letter box. Everyday I would come home from work to an overstuffed letterbox of (usually soggy) catalogues and amateur flyers. I would grab the pile of paper mache and place it directly into the recycling bin before heading inside. I'm not sure when this changed, but the other day I spent an entire nap period (my son's that is) reading the local paper and various catalogues cover to cover. Yes, cover to cover. What was I looking for? A bargain. I have discovered that stay at home Mums don't like to pay full price.

My last pay before maternity leave was quite emotional. I had been in paid employment since I was fifteen years old. Suddenly I was completely dependent on my husband for money. Suddenly there was less money. I began to have dreams about my husband abandoning me. I began to feel guilty when withdrawing money at the ATM. I started actually reading our bills when they came in instead of leaving them unopened in the study where they would magically disappear.

After a few weeks in my new role, I began a spreadsheet to track our spending. I told my husband we had to record every single dollar we spent each day so that we could see exactly where money was going and how we could cut back. This is how I discovered my husband's Bounty Bar a day habit, but I won't digress. It didn't take long for me to realise that our spending wasn't overly irresponsible, life is just very expensive (we may have had a conversation about the $435 being spent on Bounty Bars each year). With my new found perspective, I began my mission (or possibly obsession) of reducing our overall cost of living to help ease the guilt I felt whenever I spent money.

There are some really easy ways to do this, but it takes discipline. For example, by simply switching to a generic brand of Milk, we save $41.60 per year. I figure that this milk does not come from inferior cows. I can't imagine a cow getting a little old or lame and subsequently being shipped off to the Coles Smartsaver dairy farm to live out its final days. I also figure that my husband will eventually stop feeling embarrassed by the label on our milk when making visitors a coffee. Once we started to switch to generic for a number of everyday items, the savings began to add up.

I also wasn't afraid to bulk buy items on special. Ask my husband how much toilet paper we have stashed away. The problem is that there is weekly specials on toilet paper and now each time we go past the big displays at the end of the aisle, my husband says "NO", before I even get a chance to ask the question. You also have to know what items are acceptable as 'bulk buys'. Tinned tomatoes, pasta and nappies are all great items to buy up big. Cadbury blocks, Neapolitan ice cream and Kettle chips just make for a week of binge eating rather than actually any savings. Snack food is actually our biggest demon. Its all good to pat yourselves on the back for saving $20 on groceries, but if you are going to then grab a couple of scrolls and a coffee as you head home, it was all for nothing. Do that weekly and that is $624 you are inhaling on the way to the car each year.

Being a thrifty mum is 50% common sense and 50% discipline. It's now part of the job description regardless of your household income. Mums interpret thrifty in many different ways, and I have to give a bigs hats off to the eBay Mums who are trotting off to the post office and sacrificing their small amount of free time listing various baby bits for often very minimal profit. Go team.