We’re lucky to be sending our D24 to UGA on the lottery-funded scholarship, but I’d also like to save significantly for retirement over the next years. Does anyone have any tips for “being cheap” during the college years (not in terms of how you support your child at college, but in terms of life for parents at home). I’m not talking about cutting out big vacations and such–those are the easy moves. Thanks!
Eat at home. Do things that are inexpensive - hikes on a local trail or state park, town fairs, festivals etc. cancel streaming if not needed.
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Schedule an evening for a complete financial review. Every credit card, auto-pay, all of your insurance policies.
We discovered a completely paid up whole life policy- but the company was still billing us the annual premium, and we were still paying. That money went directly to a more efficient retirement savings plan.
We found three channels we were paying for that we never watched. I think we bought a sports package when the kids were in HS, they got tired of it, we never remembered to cancel.
We found TWO digital subscriptions to the WSJ. One almost twice as expensive as the other.
We realized we were still paying collision on a 7 year old car. And the deductible on our homeowners policy was WAY TOO LOW.
It will pay off. Even if you watch these recurring expenses like a hawk, stuff creeps up on you, and with autopay you don’t always realize what you are paying for!
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I love the first two! We narrowed down our streaming services last year to save money, so I think what we have left is “needed” in the sense that it will save us from spending more on entertainment elsewhere 
Who knows, though? Maybe her departure will turn us into paragons who only read and hike.
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Our college years started in 2014 and will hope end in 2026, with several years of 2 and 3 in at once (it’s been 3 for 3 years now, 1 more to go to get down to 1). Not many changes, we eat out maybe 10 times a year, takeout twice a month, vacation once a year (expensive house rental but no meals out), old cars, kids work.
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We cut out cable altogether. That saved us well over $100 a month.
Before our kids headed off to college, we had our house all paid for, and our cars were relatively new and also paid for. So…low overhead.
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House all paid for–not gonna happen here! 
We did get small raises though–thanks, election year in state government!
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Seems like many of these household finance checks can be done at any time, not just when having kids in college.
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Of course! We try to do it periodically now even though our major cash crunch years are behind us. But nothing says “Let’s free up a few extra hundred dollars a month if we can” like staring into the belly of the beast aka tuition!
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Consider a cheaper cell phone plan. We’re planning to leave Verizon and go to Consumer Cellular – probably at the end of the summer. I expect we’ll save around $75 a month. Better in my pocket than Verizon’s.
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Switch to cheaper mobile phone company the whole family. Go for cheaper plan.
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A lot depends on what’s important to you, and how draconian you want to be. When we were really poor, we didn’t buy anything we didn’t have to absolutely have to. Even if it was $5, we would go home and think about it and decide if we really needed to have it. You don’t have to have that cute pair of shoes, or purse, or whatever.
Drop alcohol - easy for me. Drink water, tap if your source is clean enough. Especially if you do eat out, drinking water saves a lot.
Raise your thermostat 1* in the summer and lower it in the winter. See if you adjust after a week. If it’s good, try another degree. Keep going until you can’t stand it anymore.
Make sure you use the proper amounts of detergent, toothpaste, toiletries. It’s easy to over do it, especially if you buy the giant containers.
I’d second and third a lot of other things that have been said. Review financials and see what can be cut, look for free activities, etc.
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Buy generic in things that don’t count to you- tissue paper, etc. Put more money aside in savings.
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But make sure, if you are using generic, that you don’t use more than you would if you used the brand name.
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When we’ve wanted to ‘super charge’ our savings, we’ve chosen a top down process.
We decide how much we want to save, add some more to the number to make it hurt a bit and then we automate putting those savings away (and make getting the money out as sticky as possible to prevent reach backs).
We are then left with a reasonable but low budget that we make work. No need to worry about should we buy x or y or z - we’ve created the environment where we the money we want to save isn’t available to spend.
P.S. This has an added benefit of revealing any waste in a budget. Any automated subscription becomes really evident when you don’t have give in the budget to just cover it and move on.
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So, here’s where I’ll put in a plug for doing a monthly budget, if you don’t already. It’s just a great birds-eye view of where your dollars are going (and also requires you to do that deep dive audit to make sure you have a handle on what you’re really spending). Then, you can make a plan for how much you want to save, and just dedicate a line item in your budget to that, and work with tweaking the discretionary spending items to get it balanced.
The first thing that always comes off of our budget when we need to tighten our belt is eating out. That’s an easy one that generally puts a few hundred dollars back in the budget each month.
If we need to go leaner, I can usually trim a bit off of the grocery budget…opting for more non-meat meals (eggs, lentils and beans, tofu, pasta, rice dishes are all super affordable).
Digging further, I will stretch out my hair appointments from 8-12 weeks…these days I wear it in a lower-maintenance style and no longer color it, so I can do this easily.
After that, if the budget is still not balanced, I will look at the charitable donation line item and reduce accordingly.
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We have a tight budget, and there’s not a lot of room for us to cut. But we do still try to cut. We fix darn near everything ourselves, so it’s a good thing we’re handy. That saves a TON of money.
A huge savings for us is cars. We’ve managed with 1 car for most of our adult lives. Not everyone can do this, I understand. But if you can, it saves SO MUCH money.
We’ve always prioritized living close enough to important stuff that walking / biking / transit is viable if necessary. We’ve only had a car payment long enough to get us out of a tight spot briefly twice.
We used to drive exclusively cheap cars. Once we had kids, we inherited one nicer car. During the times we’ve had a second car, it’s cheap and we just use it to drive around town when the nice car is in use.
Now that the kids drive, we currently have one “nice” minivan (12 yrs old but meticulously maintained), a truck (paid $1500), and the kids’ car (paid $1000). You’d be amazed how often our friends with much nicer cars ask to borrow the van and the truck.
So a good creative thinking-through of transport needs can be a helpful exercise. Our kids are used to not being reliant on cars so I’ll be interested to see how that influences their decisions as they move into adulthood.
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I’m going to catalogue our expenditures for June after it’s over. I do this every few years. I’m sure our grocery bills will be shocking–my daughter is just emerged from a three year period of having special and expensive dietary needs. I’m looking forward to saving there!
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I think the last large pack of Bounty we bought was almost $40 and its all we used FOR EVERYTHING because it was there, easy to grab. We are making the effort to stick to reusable/cloth.
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