If you are a parent and have had to provide less for your kids than you know they deserve, it can be downright heartbreaking for you, even if they do not seem to have any serious problems with not having nice things. If you are almost to the level where you might have to choose between keeping your car and continuing to live in your current home, you do still have some options besides selling your internal organs (and hopefully you were not seriously considering that, in the first place). There are a lot of ways to save money, if you are willing to do some work for them. And the money that you save can be put into the really important things in life — not just stuff, but experiences.
For one thing, you can start couponing. Couponing is a practice by which very studious people collect all the coupons they can, and then start to monitor the sales cycle at their local stores. When an item comes up for sale, you can then use a coupon (which may even be doubled or tripled, as well) to make the item even cheaper. Master couponers may end up spending five hours in the grocery store, and walking out with a full cart of groceries for next to nothing (completely legally, and often to a round of applause from the other shoppers). This is especially fun if you like sticking it to “the man.”
But of course, before you go out to do all of that work in couponing, you should make sure that your bills at home are reasonable. For instance, if you have decent credit, you might consider home and auto refinance loans, which can lower your payments by getting you more preferential rates and/or terms on your car note and mortgage. When you work to negotiate your rates, you can change your payment significantly. Just make sure every penny counts.
