Strategies to Fight Inflation

I don't know about you, but I for one have been feeling the cost of inflation. Mostly I see it around our grocery bill, but even when it comes to our mortgage, our property taxes have gone up exponentially since we bought our house in 2020. By 50% to be exact! So that gets calculated into our monthly mortgage payment, and property taxes along with insurance has increased out mortgage payment by another 16% a month! That is insane, I mean how are we able to keep up when wages on average, only increase about 3% a year?!

Well, I will show you how! With a little bit of budgeting, a little bit of finagling, and a whole lot of discipline, you, too can navigate the inflation in our economy today!

Check out 2020 vs 2023's tax bills below so you know I'm not exaggerating! You can see my total for 2020 was $2,761.11 and my total for 2023 was $4,135.10. My actual total for 2023 was $4,247.61 because I got a revised bill for the last half of 2023. Either way, you can see they went up about 50% and that really hurts the purse strings!

Anyway, let's get to how my family and I are trying to combat inflation in other ways. Obviously we can't do anything about our property taxes (other than move!) and our mortgage payment is far from being paid off! So.. here are the ways we fight it and you can, too!

Budgeting

There are so many things to budget for. You can budget for your groceries, you can budget for a car, a new camper (that's on our list!), the list is endless. One thing we take advantage of is our grocery rewards.

Grocery Rewards

All of us need to eat, right?! So why not take advantage of grocery rewards at one of your local grocery stores? We have Albertson's and Safeway where we live, which are now one and the same; however we do have both. So whenever we go shopping at either of these stores, the dollars we spend add up to a free item at some point.

I'm not saying you will get rich off grocery rewards--far from it! But my rewards have gotten me a free loaf of bread, a couple free cans of vegetables, or best of all, $5 off a round of groceries because it allows me to save up rewards and then use them to get money off the next trip.

Shop Around For Deals

The other way we combat inflation with groceries are to shop around for deals. We are lucky where we live and we have several different stores to choose from. We don't have an Aldi and I have heard so much about Aldi and how good they are and I wish we did have one! I digress. So, we have your typical stores like Walmart and Target (not a super Target) and then we have our local stores as well. Meat is our biggest expense, so that is what I try to get on sale whenever I can.

My suggestion to you is to buy in bulk, if you can. Typically you will end up spending so much less than buying it piece-meal at the store, but there is that up-front expense, so I completely understand if you can't do that! If not, do what I do and watch the sales like a hawk. Even sales at other stores that you might not go to regularly. Most all stores have an app now, download it for future use!

Shop Generic

I remember growing up, my parents would almost never get name-brand items. We always bought generic, so that was just the norm for me. Now don't yell at me, but I'm telling you, most name-brand food tastes the same as generic! I will give you one exception: Peanut Butter. Generic Peanut Butter is just not happening with me.

If you look at the prices when you're out shopping, generic usually costs about 20-30 cents less than name-brand, if not more! That can really add up when you're talking about whole meals!

There's other things my husband won't budge on either and we have to get name-brand, but I'm slowly converting him 😆. The other day he wanted me to get two cans of no-bean chili. Usually we get Hormel, but Hormel was about $1.25 more than generic! That's insane. So we compromised and got one of each, and guess what, he couldn't tell a difference 😂!

Gas Rewards at the Gas Station

I remember when the only place to get a "deal" on gas was going to Costco, which happened to be in the town next to us and unfortunately not the town we live in! So much has changed since gas stations have figured out a way to get in on the reward game. I would highly recommend taking advantage of this if your local gas station has it. We get 5 cents off per gallon, and that sure adds up when you fill up your vehicle once a week!

Look at Current Debt

Look at your current debt, is any of it high-interest or variable rate interest? If you have any type of credit card, then you will have debt that is a variable rate of interest. One of the ways to combat inflation is to get your high-interest debt paid off.

What To Do With High-Interest Debt

I am not a proponent of going out and getting more debt to replace your current debt, so you won't find that here. What I do recommend is making a plan for your money (AKA Budget) and attacking the high-interest debt. I have several other posts on making a budget but this one talks about how to become debt-free by using the debt snowball or debt avalanche.

Shopping Needs

Everyone needs stuff. We need clothing, shoes, food, shelter, etc. Your needs will differ than my needs, but ultimately, as long as we have food, shelter, and clothing, we should be good!

Clothing

We hit up our thrift stores where I live whenever we need clothing. I almost never buy new for my kiddos because, WHY? They grow out of it so quick and most of the stuff I find at thrift stores are like-new anyway!

My son had grown out of his pants, so, to the local thrift store I went. I got 5 pairs of pants for him for about $2.50. None of these had any rips or tears in them and one of them was even brand-new with the tags still on! If you like this kind of shopping, you really can find good deals!

Shoes

Shoes are so hard. My son had a growth spurt (hello new pants earlier) and the other thing he busted out of (quite literally) was his shoes! Unfortunately I was unable to find him any good ones at the thrift store. Most of them had been used to the point where it looked like he would bust through them in the matter of days (if not hours) and I also couldn't find his size. So, I went to Walmart for him instead!

Walmart has always been my go-to for shoes because they are typically less expensive than other retail stores and I usually can't wait to get them shipped from Amazon!

Cash System

Using cash is something my family does to stop us from overspending. Read on for ways that we use cash!

Groceries

As noted above, groceries can get expensive! So one way to not overspend and therefore tap into the precious cash we have leftover, we pay for all of our groceries in cash! This include personal care items as well, like toiletries, shampoo, paper towels, etc. This keeps us to our $700/month grocery budget!

You could use cash for a lot of things to keep you from overspending! Whatever you want to put into your budget!

Budgeting

You knew I would have a section on budgeting! Creating a budget is essential if you want to stay on top of your expenses and combat inflation. If you aren't sure where to start with your budget, check out this post here.

>>>>>I also have a freebie I made especially for you!<<<<<

Telling your money where it goes instead of wondering where it went is the best way to combat inflation! You'll end up with more money at the end of the month to roll over to the next. This extra money will go into your savings accounts, or sinking funds to save for other major expenses down the road. You won't get rich off your savings, because typically these are paying only around 3% right now (which is really good compared to what we used to get!) but that's barely keeping up with inflation.

You can diversify your money as well by putting it into an IRA to save for retirement or invest somewhere and possibly get more interest that way, but do your research before you do that!

Retirement Savings

Saving for retirement is essential when you're young. You will have more time to save and therefore can take advantage of compound interest over the years. You can do this in many ways -- the most popular way is taking advantage of 401k offered through your employer. If they don't offer that, seek something out so you can save. This will help you when you're older because the money that goes in is pre-tax, and then you are getting interest on that money for 40 or more years.

It is very important to make sure you have a good retirement plan otherwise inflation will eat away at your savings! Make sure you're saving enough and you have it in a good plan to make high enough interest so inflation doesn't slowly eat it away over time.

Let me know what else you do to combat inflation!