Tip Jar: Budgeting tips for 2025

Tis’ the season! This past weekend, my husband and I sat down to do the annual exam of our household budget and savings plan for the year ahead. We thoroughly look at our budget and realistically examine potential expenses and find ways to cut/save money for the upcoming year.

The cost of living increase does make it difficult when it comes to trying to save and budget. We have a firm understanding of our budget and update an excel doc we’ve been using for years to see what has changed. One of things I cannot believe is how much our grocery and food spend has increased over the years. It’s slightly sickening!

Having a detailed awareness of your budget can allow you to prepare for future expenses (i.e. school, home projects, home maintenance issues, etc.), reconsider what items are truly important and remove things that waste money all while challenging yourself to become a better saver.

Each year, we evaluate our current financial situation and take savings to pay off any debts that are outrageously high in interest and/or any items we could afford to remove completely from our monthly expenses. After that it’s saved, pushed aside into a college fund and invested.

Budgeting Tips

While I’m not finance/budgeting authority – here are some simple tips we are looking to implement in 2025:

Maintain emergency savings fund (3-6 months worth)
Put money aside for any unexpected home repairs that may come about. I’ve heard you can estimate a yearly spend of 1% of your home’s value
Eat dinner as a family! Home cooked meals are so special and that time spent is something we cherish. We’ve found a big cut in “eating out” spending by simply cooking at home and eating as a family
Set a firm grocery budget. Being a stickler on grocery spending will make it more difficult to just buy something. I’m going to work hard to use up what we already have in the kitchen
An extension of #4, I plan to go back to all cash spending on groceries. It’s an awesome challenge and it encourages me to “trim the fat” on my weekly grocery orders
Review subscriptions – Review monthly subscriptions and cancel those that are not essential. This can free up a lot of funds
Be realistic with your budget – you may think you are going to cut out your restaurant spending completely, but let’s be real, that’s not going to happen. Think, how many times a week will we be eating out? For us, eating out one weekday and one weekend day that’s realistic
Meal prepping – having lunches or snacks prepared can help you save a lot of money. I also LOVE leftovers and those serve as my lunches for the week
Keep auto savings transfer, transferring. Each month, 10% of monthly income gets automatically transferred into a savings account
Shop smarter – utilize being thrifty and patient when making bigger purchases, you can save a lot this way! I was able to get our outdoor pool patio furniture for cheap by patiently waiting for the post season sale! We saved a lot of money just by waiting a couple more months
Avoid unnecessary debt and pay off existing debts as quickly as possible. It’s hard not to want the latest and greatest, but how much would that purchase affect your long term financial goals and are you prepared for that
Utilize credit card points. I used to be SO against credit cards, until I learned if used right, they are a great asset! We have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, which has a great points program and has excellent benefits particularly for travel!