Jennifer from Saving and Giving has written us a very timely article about maintaining balance in our lives. With the hectic holiday season upon us, it is a great reminder to prioritize.
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Maintaining Balance
Oh how I love a good deal! In fact, I can get totally wrapped up in finding a good deal and lose my perspective on what’s important. So I speak from experience on this topic!
Saving money is a truly important task, one that benefits every member of our families. Our family members get to try new products, and the money we save can be used to fund other family activities or purchases. It’s a lot more fun to partially fund a vacation than a trip to the grocery store. Plus, if I can save us money on the basics of life, we have more left to help others. And, let’s face it, getting a good deal is just plain fun!
But saving money can be time consuming. There are blogs to read, sale ads to scour, coupons to clip, lists to make, and actual shopping to do. It’s enough to wear anyone out!
The key is balance. Granted, you will need to do a little planning in order to get the best deals. However, it doesn’t need to consume you. I’ve found that allowing myself a little time each day to see what I can find deal-wise is fun, and for me it’s relaxing. But I can easily be drawn into reading blog sites and printing coupons, only to realize that an hour and a half has passed without me realizing it.
One trick that I’ve found is using blog-reading and deal-seeking as a reward for myself. I happen to be an online teacher, and there are times when I’d rather be blogging than grading. So I make myself a deal….. Grade 5 lessons, and then I can read one blog site that I like to visit. Grade another 5 lessons, and I can do a quick blog post. Going back and forth between what I need to get done and what I’d rather be doing is a good way to break up the work. It also motivates me to get those 5 lessons graded! (I just graded 5 more before I finished this!) I’m sure that most of you aren’t online teachers, but you can apply the same idea to any task that you need to accomplish. Do you need to dust, vacuum, and unload the dishwasher? Challenge yourself to get the dusting done, and then reward yourself with some time visiting your favorite frugal site. Then jump back up and get the sweeper run. Once that’s done, allow yourself time to clip last week’s coupons.
Another effective way for me to keep myself from getting too wrapped up in deal-hunting is to occasionally take a week off from shopping. This might mean sending my husband to the store, or it might mean cooking from whatever we have on-hand. Either way, I give myself a bargain-hunting break, and I focus on other things that may have been neglected while I was getting my deals. I used to read other bloggers’ sites and just be astonished by the fact that they skipped a whole week of bargain shopping. How could they possibly pass up the deals??? What would they do if they ran out of toothpaste this week? Now that I’ve been living frugally for a while, I see how they did it. I now have a nice supply of personal care and food items in my little stockpile. I don’t feel a desperate need to run out to CVS every single week. My bargain shopping has paid off! From time to time, I can kick back, relax, and not go shopping.
If you’re new to bargain shopping, you may feel like you have to get to every single store every week. You may feel like missing a good deal this week means that you’ll never find that great of a deal again. Trust me, all sales run on cycles. If you happen to miss the sale cycle this time, you can catch it next time. It’s much more important to have a balanced life. Striving to get every deal will throw life out of balance very quickly!
If you start working now to find a balance between saving money and doing what’s most important – like spending time with family, keeping up with friends, and maintaining your own sanity! – it’s going to pay off. This is especially true with the holidays approaching. There will be more sales, can’t-miss deals, and early bird specials than any of us can keep up with! My head is swimming just thinking about it! My plan is to be very picky this Christmas shopping season. I won’t jump in my car for one deal that will save me a few bucks. Instead, I plan to consolidate trips and just catch the sales that match up with what I already know I need to buy. If I let myself get drawn into the flurry of excitement (especially on Black Friday!), I’m sure I’ll find myself short on cash and patience.
If you find yourself getting out of balance and devoting too much time to your bargain hunting and coupon clipping, you may want to enlist the help of a spouse, friend, or family member. Being accountable to someone else is a great way to keep things in check.
Jennifer is the wife of a wonderful man and mom to a beautiful almost-five-year-old daughter. Jennifer blogs at Saving and Giving, a site dedicated to ways to spend less, save more, and give generously.
