Finances

7 Awesome Frugal Blogs to Help You Save Money

by theminimalistmom |
Seven frugal mom blogs to help you save money and live well.

Do you consider yourself frugal?

I’m no maven of thrift myself but I do try. What’s helped me get on the bandwagon is finding ways that I enjoy saving money.

I’m not great at shopping sales at the grocery store but I am good about limiting food waste.

I’ve been turning the heat on this winter instead of putting on an extra sweater (it’s been cold) but I live in a small home that is relatively inexpensive to heat.

Instead of catching the 5:15am bus to the airport, I’ll let myself get an extra 30 minutes of sleep and get a cab. But I don’t have a car so my transportation costs are very low.

My other nod to being frugal: I’m always open to new ideas on how to save a buck and keeping an eye on my money management situation, while living well.

Here are some awesome women that can give you ideas for how to live well on fewer dollars.

Money Saving Mom Blogs

1. The Frugal Girl

I’ve mentioned Kirsten here before. She is a mom to four and has a wealth of ideas and inspiration for saving money at The Frugal Girl. You can learn about everything from making your own yogurt to getting a discount on beautiful boots with a few simple clicks. Her frugal family blog has been running for over a decade now (wow!) and is a boon for all the frugal moms out there.

2. Frugal Mama

Amy has lived in the most expensive city of them all: New York. Her tips on budgeting are especially helpful (same with her free downloadable worksheets) and I like her simple approach to cutting costs. Although she’s no longer blogging regularly there is a wealth of information in her archives. An especially good read for larger families and a great addition to the frugal mom blogs list.

3. Money Saving Mom

There is a lot to this website. A lot. Everything from coupons, money saving tips and a detailed series on blogging for business. Check out the Becoming a Work-At-Home Mom series. Even the best money saving moms can learn a lot from this one – like paying cash for your first house!

4. Penniless Parenting

This is a site my friend Vicki sent me to (thanks Vicki!). This family of four downsized from a 950 sq ft home to 525 sq ft to save $100 a month. WOW. Lots of the tips here are what I would consider in the extreme range. But they work. If I need a kick in the pants to save a few dollars I can read about cooking down 50 pounds of tomatoes and I’m motivated. Maybe not motivated to cook down all those tomatoes but definitely to skip takeout on the weekend and cook from scratch. Penniless Parenting has great ideas for living green and frugally.

5. Frugal Babe

Frugal Babe’s tag line is a rich life without a lot of money and she documents everything from nutritious (and frugal) homemade breakfast cereals to an inexpensive way for new moms to give back (loved this). Again, if you’re looking to start a home based business this post on how FB and her husband started an insurance company has a lot of good information. This frugal mama has a lot of tips for creating a low cost and simple lifestyle.

6. The Small Notebook

This is one of my favourite websites. Rachel simplifies home managing and those little details we bog ourselves down with. Her recent Clear the Clutter series is a good place to start if you want some prompts for tossing out expired medications and a reminder to switch in new dish scrubbers. While the focus isn’t on frugality, the tips are sure to save you some cash. She holds a ‘no spend July’ challenge every year that deserves mention in the money saving blogs category.

7. The Non-Consumer Advocate

Have you heard of The Compact? It’s a movement of people who commit to not buying anything new for a year. Katy Wolk-Stanley of The Non-Consumer Advocate is part of the movement and shares details of her frugal life on her blog. One thing I really appreciate about Katy’s writing is that she includes a lot of posts about the benefits of her frugality. She works part-time, her children have money for school trips overseas and she can easily host friends and out of town guests. Less work and more giving from a frugal lifestyle.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be as frugal as some of these writers but I do enjoy trying to save a few dollars. Dollars I can put in a savings account or towards a vacation or give to someone in need.

Anyone else have a money saving site that they find useful? I’m always on the look out for tips that work for my family and lifestyle.

 

  • We are an Australian family currently living in a sleepy fishing village in France where frugality is just a way of life. It has been the easiest of transitions. We live in a furnished home so all the obsession with decor etc has gone out the window – 2 sets of linen per bed is plenty. An outside washing line – if it’s not sunny you don’t do the laundry. I have no car (by choice), my husband does but when he’s back from business trips it sits in the garage, and the only shops within walking distance are the baker, the fish monger, the butcher, the fromagerie and a wine shop. Saturday is market day. Everything is shut all of Sunday and Monday which makes planning ahead essential or learning to use what you have in the cupboard until Tuesday. There are no clothes shops, no toy shops,no bank, a few very nice restaurants that have very limited opening hours. There is no cinema or bowling or any of the usual distractions. There is a beautiful library and a bookshop and there are kilometres of bicycle tracks, amazing natural history, beaches, marinas, beautiful playgrounds (which recently have been wrapped in children’s handmade knitted creations to protect them from the winter elements)…. I literally spend a 10th of what I did in Australia and it was not a conscious transition. It was just being exposed to a traditional way of life that made us do it. And we love it. What’s not to love without the pressure? I have a mobile phone but only give my best friends and the school my number so I’m not hounded by people or companies I have no interest in. Everyone else I direct to email and then immediately block who I don’t want to be contacted by , never sign up for newsletters etc. I am a lawyer by profession and do all my work online from a window in the attic and can walk to get my children from school and bring them home for lunch and spend the afternoons after school with them riding and swimming. Not bragging, just highlighting, how caught up I was in the spend spend spend mentality and yet if you take a breath, it means nothing. You can eat beautifully, dress beautifully, live beautifully without all the hoopla.
    I am very thankful for your blog.
    Sharon

    • Sharon – wonderful! I would love to hear more about your families transition to life in France. Any chance you’d like to write a guest post? If so please email me at the minimalist mom at gmail dot com. What a wonderful comment to read this morning. Many thanks, Rachel

  • I am totally late to this party, meaning you wrote this blog post a couple years ago… but hey it came up in my google search. I was looking for some new frugal mom blogs to follow. I live in LA and have a couple of groups I am involved in that help me promote a healthier happier relationship with my money. Thanks for sharing your favorite blogs. I am bookmarking your website too,

  • I love your humor and tell it like it is style! A girl after my own heart! I am new to the blogging game but am so inspired by all these women and you! I hope to have if only a piece of your success and engaging writing style! Love it! I love another blog I didn’t see mentioned called thefrugalgirls.com. I found all kinds of awesome free activities for my kids this summer! From free bowling passes to free lego building workshops at the Lego store! Thank you for all the great links! I have a lot of studying to do!

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  • Hi, I’m always interested in others who try to live a Frugal lifestyle – I hope you’ll be interested in taking a peek at my blog that I started for my daughter – I try to comment on each recipe on how to reach a great price using what I call my 12 strategies to Live Better while keeping Food Cost Low and Quality high.

    While it might look like a cooking blog and has all our favorite recipes, it’s really about shopping smart! Most of the meals are around $5.00…

  • It is so great to run into other bloggers who are passionate about spreading the message: You don’t have to spend a lot of money to live well! Check out my musings at frugaldesigngirl.com for some frugal interior design inspiration.

    Cheers –

    Frugal Design Girl (FDG)

  • Thank you, these are great blogs and I´ll make sure to read them. I already read (and love) Frugal Girl and Small notebook.

  • Like Frugal Babe, I’m thrilled to have made it to your list of good reads. 😀
    I just have one correction to make- we moved from our 950 sq foot apartment to our 454 square foot apartment iwth our family of 4 (which has now increased to 5), to save 275 dollars a month, because when your income is in the 1000-1500 a month range, 275 dollars is a big deal, and we’ve found that living in a smaller place saved us even more money, like on electricity, heating, etc… Now our rent might be going up, so we’re considering moving to a trailer in our same community (but a bit of a walk) that is the same size as our apartment, but 300 dollars cheaper than this apartment… But its up a big hill, so I’m not sure how manageable it’ll be without a car…

  • Have you read “Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping” by Judith Levine? The writing leaves something to be desired, but it’s an interesting story.

    • Thank you, Jennifer for recommending my blog! And this was a great post, Rachel. Now I have some great new blogs to read, in addition to yours, which I just stumbled upon because of my Statcounter. I’m looking forward to looking around more.

  • Dear Rachel,

    I am honored to be on this list! We frugal bloggers learn as much from you, Rachel, as you do from us. Just like the slow movement and the green movement, minimalism goes hand in hand with saving money and making life better. Thank you for all that you do to help people find peace and passion.

    Take care,
    Amy

  • Wonderful list! Many of these blogs I’m familiar with, but I found a few new ones to check out. I’m especially excited about Frugal Mama, because I don’t know of many blogs that focus on frugal living city-style.

  • I’ve seen quite a few of those, but am excited to check out the others! I was born frugal, but always love finding some new tips (as much as The Hubs is trying to teach me to NOT be so frugal lol).

  • I always enjoy your recommendations. Thank you! I really enjoy Frugal Mama Amy’s posts as well as Rachel’s from The Small Notebook.

  • The Frugal Girl is such a fantastic blog. I’ve been following Kristen for about 3 years, the writing is excellent quality , the photos are exquisite and the message behind it all is inspiring (she brings it all to life). I actually found FG via Non-Consumer Advocate, which was the 2nd blog I ever read (after Zen habits – of course! who didn’t/doesn’t read that? haha!). Katy’s sense of humour and writing style really ticks all the boxes. I need to check out the others in more depth (I was reading Amy’s but it’s odd, I don’t think I’m getting post updates to my inbox – will check that out!). Thanks for the heads up – note to self – read more and write less!

  • Thank you for sharing. I am a mother of 9 (6 at home). I was forced to become a frugal mom when my husband’s student loans came do and we lost a portion of our income at the same time. Within 6 months, we were done nearly $1700 a month! It was crunch time! I started a blog just this month about how we survived and are actually thriving now. The blog is healthyfrugalfamily.blogspot.com BTW, becoming a minimalist family was a HUGE part of our frugality. Thank you SO much for your blog.

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