We have been struggling to save our money during this time where prices just keep going up. We are paying bills, buying groceries, and doing everything everyone else does to keep our families alive. We work, sure, but do we get paid enough? NO! What do we have to do? Get a new job or insist on getting a higher pay rate? NO! We need to SAVE our money up. Thanks to a long time of thinking, I have a plan.

Step 1: The Layout

First of all, what do we NEED? A new Macbook Air that costs $1500? No! We only NEED the essentials of life. Food, a home, and clothes, and a few other things. To be clearer, I WANT a new Macbook air. But I don't need it. I want it. We need to keep our savings up so that sometimes we can have things we want, but we don't always need new things.

Step 2: Shopping

We need our food and clothes, so I thought I would first go over requirements for shopping.

1. Food: We need our breakfast lunch and dinner, so we need a good plan for that.

Breakfast doesn't seem like it can change, but it really can. For those who usually eat cereal, we can replace that expensive stuff with these two cheaper items called Granola and Oatmeal. They don't cost nearly as much.

Lunch is usually good to be a sandwich or tortilla or something like that, but this can get into even more detail. If you cut down the price to making your own bread, it will be cheaper than buying bread. Plus, you can usually find a good online recipe on All Recipes or The Pioneer Woman, and i'm assuming you can get there because you are reading this.

Dinner is usually the largest meal of the day. It shouldn't be going to a restaurant meal but should be a family meal at the dinner table eating what you can afford and isn't too expensive and leftovers from other nights. Don't throw the extra food that wasn't eaten out, but put it in a container in the refrigerator.

Snacks should be something small and healthy like a few carrots or an apple. Not junk food. It costs too much.

Dessert is the yummy meal everyone likes but it shouldn't get eaten every night. Once or twice a week will do it. And don't go expensive with it, go cheap with a brownie mix or a few tubs of ice cream which should last a while.

2. Clothes: This isn't a meal type thing so it isn't as long as the food category. Clothes should only be bought when they are needed. Not when we ant new modern ones or just plain want new ones. When someone doesn't have enough (should be something like 7-10 sets) clothes. When this does happen, we should first check the hand me down and extras bucket. If there is no luck, Go shopping. We should only buy the ones that aren't very expensive and are a size they will be able to wear for a while.

If there are nice stores that sell cheap food and clothes, go there for the cheapest results.

Step 3: Energy

We use energy in our daily lives turning on lights, driving cars, running water, and going on computers. These take money for gas, water, and the electricity bills which cost so much. We can stop this usage from going too far.

Water: We can preserve our water by only using it when necessary , turning it off right after we use it , and turning it on low, not high.

Gas: This can be preserved by only using the car when absolutely necessary, and walking to places we can. Taking shortcuts may also help this, too.

House electricity: We can preserve the energy in our houses by keeping lights off when we can open windows to let the natural light in and turning off lights right when we leave rooms. We can turn off heaters, air conditioners, and fans when they aren't needed. We can also turn off laptops when we leave them so they don't drain the power and we don't have to

Step 4: Selling

We have so many things at home that we don't really need, or clothes that are too small for anyone, and even really old stuff! We can get rid of these and get money from it!

First of all, we can have a garage/yard sale. We can put things at reasonable prices and hope to get as much of it sold as possible. Then, we can take the stuff that didn't get sold and put it on things like eBay, Kregg's List, and Amazon. This will give it a good amount of money to put in our savings.