How to Afford Being a Stay At Home Mom

Want to be a stay at home mom, but worried about the financial implications of transitioning to one income? This post is full of practical advice and helpful encouragement on how to afford being a stay at home mom!

Guest post by Kristine of SurvivingMoms.com:

Giving up a full-time or part-time salary isn’t easy, but my sisters and I wanted to stay home with our kids.

To make it happen we knew we needed to get creative with lowering our monthly expenses.

Here are 19 things we did (and still do) to save money:

We Cut Hair Ourselves:

Even at Walmart a haircut for a child costs $12 — and that doesn’t include tip!

Instead of going to the hairdresser, we ordered some nice clippers off Amazon and now we cut everyone’s hair at home as often as we need to.

We Use Grocery Pick-Up:

We love using grocery pick-up! It is convenient and saves us money as it helps us avoid impulse shopping.

We also love that every time we add an item to our cart, we can see the total go up; this allows us to decide if we really need that item this week or if it can wait.

We save an average of $20 per week by using pick-up only!

We Don’t Eat Out:

Eating out can blow a monthly budget really quickly!

We plan a weekly or monthly menu for our family and stick to it. We try to cook our meals at home no matter how good take-out sounds.

We also try to get the whole family involved by giving each kid a job to do.

Dinner tastes so much better when you are proud of what you have made — and that goes for kids, too.

Psst! Check these extra tips to help you stop eating out!

We Buy Used Clothing:

We buy gently used clothes for our children.

Shops like Once Upon a Child, Goodwill, Facebook Marketplace, and garage sales are great places to start!

See if there is a friend or family member that you can swap clothes with. This has been a huge blessing to our family.

We Sell Outgrown Clothing:

We sell our outgrown clothes at a local kids’ consignment shop and then get store credit, which usually offers more money to buy the next size up for our kids.

We Use the Honey Extension:

We installed Honey on our computers and it will alert us when items get marked down and if it’s a good time to buy.

You are able to see the price trends and if there are available promo codes you can use.

We love using Honey!

We Watch for Christmas Deals Year-Round:

Rather than shopping for Christmas presents in November and December, we look for deals all year.

It is easy to get pulled into impulse buying with all the advertising during the Christmas season.

We Buy Used Items off Amazon:

When we find an item we want to purchase off Amazon, we check to see if they have the same item “Like New” or “Used, Very Good.”

These items were typically opened and returned. We have had great success finding brand new items marked down this way!

We Ask Before we Buy:

Shopping online is SO easy… maybe a little TOO easy!

To reduce impulse purchases, we wait and talk to our spouses before we purchase something. This makes us aware of what we are spending our money on, plus it allows us to say whether or not we think it is the right use of our money.

We Make Our Own Baby Food:

Baby food is expensive.

Pinterest has lots of recipes for making your own healthy baby food at a fraction of the cost of buying it from the store.

We Canceled Cable and DirectTV:

This is an expensive monthly bill that isn’t necessary.

We have used Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney Plus instead of cable, so we can still enjoy our favorite shows and movies while paying significantly less.

We Switched to an Off-Brand Cell Phone Service:

We have our cell phone bill down to $50 a month for two smartphones with 5 GB of data each.

Honestly, the service isn’t as good. We do drop calls frequently. We mostly text though, and it was worth the annoyance to lower our monthly bills.

{Psst! Looking for an inexpensive option? Twigby has phone plans that start as low as $9 per month!}

We Implement Meatless Monday:

Meat is one of the biggest expenses in a grocery budget. Having a meal once a week without any meat allows us to lower our grocery budget significantly.

If you need some inspiration, try one of these great meatless meal ideas!

We Share One Vehicle:

When possible, we share a vehicle with our spouse.

This cuts down on gas, car insurance, and other car-related expenses. It’s hard at first but worth it when we look at the savings.

We Always Look for Free Activities:

We take advantage of free classes/activities offered by our local libraries.

Hiking, visiting National Parks on free days, and bike trails are other activities we regularly have on our schedules.

We Make Coffee at Home:

We make coffee at home instead of buying one at the local coffee shop.

Even using a Keurig at home only costs 26 cents per cup compared to almost $2 per cup. This adds up when we start each day with six cups a cup of coffee. 😉

We Look for Coupons:

We compare ads and use coupons or store apps when grocery shopping.

We also plan our menus based around meat that is on sale that week.

We Use Groupon:

We shop Groupon in advance to buy tickets and get the best deals.

We used Groupon to get a great deal on tickets to Sky Zone for the whole family.

We Use Cashback Sites:

We use cashback sites like Rakuten to stretch our shopping budget by getting money back on online purchases.

These are just a few of the many ways we save money every single day.

These little (and big) savings all add up to allow my sisters and I to stay home with our children!

What are some of your favorite tips on how to afford being a stay at home mom?

Katie, Nicole, and Kristine are sister-in-laws with eight kids between them. They now blog at SurvivingMoms.com about mom survival tips, what is helping them get through their days with their kiddos, and how their true hope and encouragement comes from knowing their Savior, Jesus Christ.