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While turning to coupons for everyday family grocery shopping isn’t obviously a new tact for saving money at home, especially during these difficult economic times, it can come in especially helpful as a time management and supplementary income feature of your career and home management balancing act. And you can save 50% or more.
And it’s an especially fun challenge to, each week, “trip the brakes” of the grocery store’s financial management systems!
The system I’ve been using this past year is part online “Grocery Game“, and part home coupon management – and it adds up to BIG savings, especially when supermarket prices are rapidly declining (see today’s Washington Post) and coupon values are increasing.
In the past few weeks, every time I’ve been to the store with my coupons at-the-ready, I’ve caused problems – the “discount threshold” after the coupons are run is evidently exceeded, and the store manager has to come and approve my order. For example, my bill is $280, with discounts reduced to $130 – it’s usually a savings of more than 50% that trips ‘em up and sounds the alarms, and this is becoming a regular occurrence, and mission.
That extra $150 every 2 weeks or so goes directly to the purchase of things like printer toner, ISP charges, paper and other home office supplies – though sometimes get diverted (way to much, actually) to children’s birthday party expenses.
Let me know if you need more details and tips on reducing your food bill, consistently, by 50% or more.
Heading into Labor Day weekend, it seemed appropriate to query, via my community business Blog “Gateway to Loudoun County”, the Virginia Gubernatorial candidates (Creigh Deeds (D) and Robert McDonnell (R)) about their views concerning Virginia women in business. In disclosure, “Gateway to Loudoun County” is maintained by my company KME Internet Marketing, a woman-owned small business in Loudoun County, VA.
We asked: “What can be done to further encourage, support and maintain the rapid growth of women-owned businesses in this region’s business tax districts, in a manner that also supports work-life balance for dual income families?”
This question regarding working women is especially apropos here at the Fulcrumpoint, which is all about transitioning from full-time Mom to having a full-fledged Career at Home.
Read more about the question, and a great answer from Creigh Deeds…specifically for working women in Virginia, but equally enlightening for CAHMs or WAHMs in any state.
This week, all 4 of my children are now safely ensconsed in their new learning environments, happily at the same school – for the first time in the last 12 years. I’ve anticipated this for many years, while transitioning from corporate work, to stay-at-home, to WAHM and now to CAHM, with my own business. Summers have been exceedingly difficult, balancing the home corporate office with increasing demands by the kids for entertainment, outings, continuing education (i.e. summer reading) and food. Nonstop food – it’s really time someone else fed them!
Examining the new lockers first day at school!
Now I’ve got 7 and 1/2 pure working hours a day in front of me – a clear, broad horizon of endless business growth possibilities and professional growth to look forward to. Maybe even a trip to the Hair Cuttery. Already I’ve indulged in the luxury of mid-day client meetings (offsite!), straightening up the accounting process, buying a new printer, twittering with intent – i.e. all the basic home office block-and-tackling that typically wilts under the onslaught of daily childcare.
It’s really unbelievable, looking back, how much didn’t get gone while I actually had hours and hours each day to myself – before the kids. Now I’ve got this very focused window of entrepreneurial opportunity every single day, all to myself – that’s a transition I’m truly looking forward to.
As a Career-at-Home-Mom (albeit now with a lot of extra “work” time, now the kids are out of my hair and safely back in school!), the balance between work, family and healthy self-maintenance typically doesn’t favor the latter. The pile of plates and cups around my computer attests to that, and what used to be on those plates didn’t necessarily reflect “nature’s bounty”. However, it’s utterly essential to maintain some movement, exercise on a routine basis, especially for WAHMs and CAHMs. Here’s something totally up our alley – SqueezeItIn.com.
This is a DC-are based business started recently that promotes home exercise techniques, videos and community targeted at Moms, Women and stay-at-home parents…and it’s especially helpful for those of us returning to career work at home (typically a very sedentary activity, working mostly on the computer, phone, blackberry). The trick is to work exercise routines into your daily patterns of housework, cleaning, home chores, etc. It’s actually very surprising how little effort, but how much benefit, comes from a few squats, press-ups and leg lifts – in between the laundry and emails.
Brigette and Jenny have totally cornered the market with their idea, expertise and attitude – it’s up to us CAHM/WAHMs to now put these exercise routines to use, and ramp up our collective working at home energy burn!
One other point, this type of consistent, incremental and integrated exercise during the day is especially useful if you’re training for some kind of race (like a triathlon or road race) – I’ve found it really difficult to maintain a consistent training schedule with the very hard-to-plan and competing demands of family plus work. When the training regiment simply isn’t possible – a few in-home exercise and tuning techniques combined with the rapid-fire, “good-enough” housework that goes on, can really help maintain flexibility and muscle tone. SqueezeItIn.com is a very important addition to my weekly exercise choices – as it should be for most other WAHM/CAHMs.
