How to Spend Less Without Burning Yourself Out

Inside: how to adjust to a new budget without quietly absorbing all the extra work.

In almost every marriage, there comes a time when this conversation happens. Maybe it’s after a credit card bill, or a vacation, or Christmas. Somebody announces: We really need to start saving money.

It always sounds easy to the one proclaiming it, right? There’s a lot we can do:

We can stop buying lunches.
We can skip takeout.
Line-dry our clothes.
Get rid of the household help.
We can start going to the discount grocery store.

But for homemakers, “we” tends actually to mean “you.”

The hidden rule

Because the thing is, saving money always costs something. And quite often that something is time. When this announcement comes about saving money, all these little changes tend to filter down to the person in charge of keeping the house.

Typical budget advice does come down to spending your time instead. You’ll hear suggestions like washing out bags to reuse and, of course, drying them in the sun. Things like packing a cooler when you’re out for the day so you don’t have to stop for lunch. Making things homemade, like laundry detergent, a cold pitcher of lemon water to keep in the fridge, your own bread, and, of course, every dinner.

It means fewer conveniences, more things from scratch, more time spent.

Remember, this is a group effort to save money. Not everything needs to fall on you.

First, we make simple, big cuts

Before we take away things that make our lives easy and replace them with things that make our lives hard, we can simply eliminate things.

A truly unpopular suggestion: stop traveling until your everyday life feels like it has some stretch and margin. Grinding day in and day out and being miserable to afford a week away from home is no way to live. And “budget” vacations are often the worst of both worlds, because they still cost a lot of money and now require you to work even MORE: packing food to go, cooking in weird kitchens, dealing with children’s discomfort while on the go and in strange locations. When my kids were really small, and money was really tight, I wish we’d just skipped it, ordered pizza more often, and gone on day trips. Honest.

If that paragraph horrified you, I hope we are still friends. And don’t worry, there are other cuts you can make, first, without introducing more work into your life.

No vehicle upgrades for a while; repair
Scale back holidays: no adult gifts, limit the kids, no elaborate charades like Elf on the Shelf.
Subscriptions: can we have fewer streaming services/ no autoshipped vitamins, no Whiskey of the Month Club?
Parties: can we have friends over for a cupcake and a bonfire? Can it be simple?
Activities with lots of driving: can we stop? Maybe, maybe not.

Facing the facts

If you’re anything like me, everything on that list felt like a non-negotiable. Cancel the ELF? Stop having cute birthday parties? Drive my old car five more years? Absolutely not.

That reaction is fine and honest, and your husband might have a similar one. Certain things feel like you can’t do.

But that forces you to face the reality. If you need to save money and you’re not willing to give up these big-ticket items to make these simple cuts that will really move the needle, where does that leave you? Does that mean all the small luxuries and conveniences in your life have to go to afford these things? Think about it honestly. If it does, does all the work fall on you? Think about that honestly too, and make sure both parties understand it: you are putting in real labor to help your family afford all of these things. It is obviously your choice but everyone needs to see the truth of it.

Now we turn to little lifestyle shifts

This is not meant to be a long complaint about the way things are. We’re trying to find a practical answer to “What now? How do we accept this new challenge of frugality without getting exhausted?” It can be done!

So the budget constraint is real, but the freedom to work around it is yours. We need to build a budgeting plan and little techniques that don’t drain the life out of you. For all the extra labor you take on, schedule a break to balance it out. For free. Really.

Deciding what’s worth it

As you evaluate the “helpful” budgeting tips of the world, remember they won’t all work for you. Some are a recipe for annoying busywork, some will save you literally pennies, and some you may come to enjoy for the love of them. (Line-drying laundry somehow fits all three categories for me!)

Be discerning.

Frugal family food without the resentment

You’ll spend a lot of your time and energy on feeding people cheaply, and that is exhausting and literally a full-time job, so we’re going to spend a lot of time tackling that.

Double and freeze. I should probably get a T-shirt that says this because it’s the only practical way to do freezer meals—making rotisserie chicken? Well, now you’re making two: pulling the meat off the bones and freezing the second one. Making the lasagna? Now you’re making two: put the second one in a foil pan, label it, and freeze it for later. We do not, EVER, sacrifice a day to the kitchen making miserable casseroles!
Two or three leftover nights per week. It is madness to buy, cook, package, and clean up a meal just to THROW IT IN THE TRASH. We cannot have this. Eat every bit of leftovers. If you don’t use them up one night a week, bump it up to two. Cook just a LITTLE bit more of each dish.
Leftover nights are DIY. Are you used to asking everyone which dish they would like, how they would like it heated, and which sides should go with it? Time for everyone to rediscover the ancient art of plating their own food.
A rotating menu. You can, you know, make a monthly menu and repeat it for eternity—meal planning off your plate.
A cooler of simple things. Going to be out all day and need to have lunch ready? You can make a yummy pressed sandwich, pasta salad, fruit salad, and homemade cookies. (And sometimes I do!) Or you can get deli meat, sliced cheese, crackers, apples, and baby carrots. Don’t drive yourself crazy thinking everything has to be gourmet.

Remember, you don’t need to ask anyone’s permission or announce all this upfront by bitterly declaring there will be more leftovers from now on. Just… do it.

Cleaning and organizing gives back twice

First, a little bit of a mindset shift. A clean, organized house is a free gift you can give yourself. You can do it whenever you want. Everyone in the house enjoys it, but you’ll enjoy it most of all.

Loving your space. There’s a combined sense of pride in enjoying your hard work and being able to look around at a calm, peaceful, beautiful space that you get to enjoy. Does this sound cheesy? Try it. Say it to yourself until you believe it.

Being organized makes you happy. Being able to find things and not be disgusted by your surroundings gets rid of that low-level frustration you might feel at home. Have you ever walked into your kitchen and it’s a mess, and all you really want to do is get out of there? All that costs money. Try straightening it up, looking around, and seeing if you don’t feel better. Really.

Try reframing keeping a beautiful home not as something you do for your family (the way a maid would clean a stranger’s house), but as something you do for yourself.

You love having a pretty house, so you put the work in to make it happen. Right? Right

Children, activities, and schedules

When money is tight, there is less room for mistakes. Flexibility becomes hard. What do I mean by this? You can’t just rush out and drive your daughter anywhere at any time and let dinner figure itself out. Time has to be managed.

The good news? Your children are much (MUCH!) more capable than you think of helping you out. Let’s get the whole crew organized and contributing.

A shared family calendar. This is a simple matter of having everyone share a Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, and saving all events in to that specific “family” setting so everyone can see them. If someone needs to go somewhere, they need to put it here, not assume Mom will work it all out for them.
Everyone cleans up after themselves. This is not them doing chores. No one says thank you to YOU when you put your own shoes away, right?
But they should do chores. Trash, vacuuming, dishes, lawn care, and much, much more are 100% possible and reasonable.
Modeling what you want to see. Help them realize that they can set themselves up for success and rest by planning their own days intelligently, working ahead, etc.

Part of this is, again, a mindset shift. You are not their boss and not their servant. You are there to help them, and they are there to help you.

Seeing rest as a chore

I have children in competitive sports, and I always have this urge to do more training, more practice, more work. But something I learned perhaps is that a day or two of rest a week is part of the training. Recovery is part of the process. It’s not something that you grudgingly tolerate because they’ll start crying without it. They need it just as much as they need practice.

Guess what? As a fellow human being, it’s the same for you. You can’t, can’t, work every single day cooking, cleaning, organizing, prepping, driving, managing. It cannot be done.

Close the kitchen. After dinner, when everything is cleaned and put away, no one should be asking for snacks or rummaging around and making a mess. The kitchen is CLOSED.
A day off. Our week is divinely designed to give us one. You need it.
Pulling back the arrow. This is a mindset change more than anything else- just as an arrow needs to be pulled back to go as far as it can, you need to rest to be able to go far too. If you try to skip pulling back the arrow, you’ll never get far.

Make sure you take a day off and treat it as a must-do. Remember, you have set yourself up for this for free. You don’t need to go out to dinner or hire a house cleaner. Everyone’s done!

You’re your own boss, be a good one

Hold yourself to high standards, work ahead, take pride in your work, run a tight ship. But when things get tight, don’t assign everything to one person (yourself). Don’t bare the brunt of every change of plans. And don’t ever let yourself get lost in the process of saving money.