Challenge 1: Get ready. You’ll never be the same again.
- Zillow (Provides a Zestimate for the value of your house)
- Kelly Blue Book value (Provides a value on the vehicle you own)
- Simple Debt Thermometer (Budget tracking app)
- Join our private Facebook group
- How should I keep track of my budget once I have completed the challenge? Use this Monthly Maintenance Pack.
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Challenge 2: Create a budget.
- Need a password tracker: We love Last Pass
- How to track irregular income (When you don’t receive a steady paycheck from a typical 9-5 job)
- There are a million different ways to track your budget
- 15-minute convenience meals
- To create a home stockroom inventory and price list
- Join our private Facebook group
- How should I keep track of my budget once I have completed the challenge? Use this Monthly Maintenance Pack.
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Bill Tracker
Weekly/Irregular pay check (page #1)
Weekly/Irregular pay check (page #2)
Challenge 3: The secret to actually sticking to your budget.
- So… How in the world did I transform our family’s finances, pay off debt, and reduce our spending by over $23,000?
- SUPER simple 15 minute meals
- Check out: Polyvore to create an idea board of the things you want to put in a redecorated room
- A 40 hanger closet is a great way to save money and keep only what you need.
- Join our private Facebook group
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Challenge 4: Putting out the fire.
- Living Well Planner review (Need a schedule book? Here is my favorite!)
- The easiest routine to wash dishes, never get behind again. (Catch up on your dishes and never get behind again)
- The secret to catching up on your laundry. (Struggling with Laundry? Here is the system that will get you caught up)
- Join our private Facebook group
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Challenge 5: Tackling the dishes.
- The easiest routine to wash dishes, never get behind again. (Catch up on your dishes and never get behind again)
- The secret to catching up on your laundry. (Struggling with Laundry? Here is the system that will get you caught up)
- My favorite trick: Use lunch containers. (packing your lunch is way less stressful when the containers are disposable)
- Join our private Facebook group.
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Bonus Challenge: What happens when you can’t pay your bills?
- If you need encouragement on the three things to tell yourself when you feel like your family doesn’t have enough, you can find that here.
- Free Website calendarbudget.com (Can help you track your budget.)
- Have a few nights of Santa Fe rice and beans or homemade mac n cheese (it’s not even a sacrifice- both are delicious!)
- Sell things in your home on Craigslist, Close 5, Ebay or Facebook yardsale groups to make extra money.
- Get a working budget. You can find out more here.
- Join our private Facebook group
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What to do when you cant pay your bills…
Challenge 6: Adjust as you go.
- I am totally telling you to start a budget, so I want to make sure to cover what happens if you go over the budget. (Because it will happen!)
- I can walk you step by step through how to “trick yourself” into having will power by planning ahead in this post.
- Reduce your grocery spending as much as possible. Think Santa Fe Rice and Beans, $5 Dinners’ Mac and Cheese (Actually $5 Dinners’ anything!), and the good old peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
- User Testing pays $10 for a 15-minute test and pays you via PayPal 7 days after your test
- Join our private Facebook group
- Need Ideas for making more money? Email us for more information.
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What to do when you go over budget
Challenge 7: Get in the kitchen.
- Grab a meal planning sheet with the days of the week on it. (You can print my free one by clicking here).
- You can’t beat a slow cooker when you want to make dinner as easy as possible with little or no work for you.
- We even invested in slow cooker bags so we don’t even have to clean out the slow cooker.
- You can see our favorite planning pack “20 Freezer to Slow Cooker Meals” here (it’s a steal for $5!)
- Freezer Cooking: You’ll need two hours to make 10 meals.
- You can find the program we use to freezer cook here.
- You can grab a PDF copy of my meal plan printable by clicking here.
- Join our private Facebook group
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Challenge 8: Combine your forces.
- Your potential for wild success skyrockets when you get your partner on board. If he’s reluctant, go through the steps found in this article first.
- Follow the instructions found in this article to create your budget.
- If this isn’t your first budget meeting, make sure that your budget is “up to date” with actual spending, so you know what you spent versus what you planned to spend. (You can find instructions on how to do that in our creating a basic budget instructions).
- You can track your budget in a planner (my favorite way to do it), or even a piece of paper.
- Living Well Planner review (Need a schedule book? Here is my favorite!)
- If you have some experience in budgeting, you can look into my recommendations for tracking a budget here
- Here’s a good example of a budget binder.
- Have your partner review the budget and suggest changes. This is a partnership, not a dictatorship. If you struggle with that, this article may help you.
- Decide if your spouse is reluctant… if he is, read this first and then come back.
- Head here if you don’t already have an established budget. Create your first budget based on those instructions.
- Track your spending at minimum weekly, but daily makes it really easy to stay on top of it in just a minute or two. (Not sure how to track your spending? Read this).
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Challenge 9: Substitute without sacrifice.
- Click here for more information on my home stock room and here for my free inventory workbook to keep track of it. This helped us to save: $1,357.43 per year.
- Cancel cable and use hulu plus for TV exclusively. You can read more about that here.
- Increase your savings significantly with Ibotta.
- $10.00 Christmas Tradition…Click here to learn more.
- Another big savings was when I began renting all of my CD’s from the library (which can be turned into MP3’s by hooking them up to your computer.) Learn my tricks for that here.
- I implemented a Spending Freeze for two weeks and saved a ton of money.
- Check out: The Ultimate Money Savings Workbook which you can get for free here (Note this can be found in the back of the workbook).
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Challenge 10: Build your Dreams.
- Write out what your perfect life looks like. I actually made my list public last year, you can see it here.
- If your perfect life involves you working at home or for yourself), then look at this post for inspiration.
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Challenge 11: Crush your grocery budget.
- Start by packing easy lunches for work. Invest in an insulated cooler, a few cooler packs, and a water bottle (Fun fact: This is the only water bottle I recommend– All of ours have lasted more than 4 years).
- Pancakes: Make 40 or even 80 with an electric griddle (you buy these as low as $38 on Amazon) and almost no extra effort.
- Things like baby back ribs, stew, chili, chicken dishes etc. We use these planning packs to make these and super easy freezer meals.
- Check out my “Super Easy Freezer Cooking” Pinterest board here for more easy ideas.
- You can read my review here of once a month freezer cooking.
- I’ve used “Once a Month Meals” and loved their program.
- If you want to freezer cook the easy way, then Freezeasy does the same thing but every meal is cheap and easy.
- You can read more about Ibotta here which is easy and adds a few hundred dollars a year back into your budget.
- If you really want to try couponing, you can head here for Couponing 101.
- You can find out if you have an Aldi close to you here… They’re all over the east coast but are expanding rapidly.
- Check out what I call “back up pantry meals”.
- The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook is a great resource, and likely your library has it stocked.
- Interested in making your own snacks?
- Try yogurt, bought in a large tub or make it yourself
- chocolate chip cookies
- trail mix that you mix yourself
- pita and homemade hummus
- Sign up and use Ibotta (this is a cash rebate on groceries).
- Aim for simple cooking like the Freezeasy plans.
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Crush your Grocery Budget (Stockroom Checklist)
Easy Meals- Crush your Grocery Budget
Challenge 12: Make more money.
- Asking for a raise takes a little knowledge and preplanning, but this is a good guideline for how to approach that.
- Want to start a blog? This article will walk you through it.
- Click here to see my income reports, I currently make over $20,000/month running a blog (not a typo).
- You can start your own website for only $3.49 a month with Bluehost. (We love them because they have amazing customer service.)
- Proofread Anywhere is currently the best course for learning how to proofread.
- You don’t need to have perfect grammar, but you should be able to learn it. They have a test on their site to help you weed out if this is a good option for you. You can find that here.
- Voiceover Acting: Most of my friends took this voiceover course to get started and highly recommend it.
- Freelance Writing: The stand-out class for freelance writing is 30 Days or Less to Freelance Writing Success.
- Online Tutor: Check out this article from The Penny Hoarder for more information about earning money as an online tutor.
- Photography: Creative Live has the most comprehensive photography classes available right now and they’re highly recommended.
- The photography starter class which is super cheap and perfect if you need to learn the basics of photography to work up to specialize in an area, but they have comprehensive classes in everything from portraits to landscaping.
- Have a hobby that can make you money? Look into opening an Etsy shop to supplement your income. This book walks you through how to do that.
- Planner stickers (like Planner Kate’s shop) on etsy seem to have a cult like following and have low overhead.
- Virtual Assistant: 30 Days to Virtual Assistant Success is the course you’ll want to take to get started.
- Graphic design artist: Graphic design artists create things like websites, social media graphics, book covers, advertisements and more. You can get started here.
- Blogging: We already covered this above. You can learn how to start a blog here.
- Sell on eBay: You can grab an eBay account here and take a tutorial on how to sell.
- While there are tons of money making apps reviewed here, I’ll hit the highlights for you…
- Ibotta: This is a crazy easy way to make a few dollars every time you go to the grocery store, It’s like couponing, but without actually having to coupon or buy name brand products.
- Ebates: The other app that’s worth it to use is Ebates which gives you cashback on all of your online purchases, just go through Ebates before you make the purchase.
- Sign up for both Ibotta and Ebates and leave notes in your schedule book so that your remember to use them.
- Join our private Facebook group
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Map Out the Steps to Get There
Challenge 13: Start an emergency fund.
- If you’re new to this, you will go over budget frequently. You need to be prepared and know exactly what to do when that happens. BEFORE it happens. You can find your game plan for that here.
- Set up a hard to access bank account (that’s FDIC insured) like Aspiration Summit with a minimum starting deposit of $10.
- User Testing (they pay $10 for a 15 minute test).
- Email me if you’re not sure what constitutes an emergency
- Join our private Facebook group.
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Challenge 14: Have a Spending Freeze.
- Transfer the money to a separate hard to reach account (we like Aspiration Checking since we use it for our emergency fund).
- Join our private Facebook group
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You finished! What’s next…
- Remember you can print out the money saving workbook to help you go through the list.
- Reply to any of my emails, and let me know how you’re doing.
- How should I keep track of my budget once I have completed the challenge? Use this Monthly Maintenance Pack.
