Real Teacher Talk with Gaspare Randazzo [episode 51]

Hey, welcome everybody to this ever important episode I mean as teachers were always wanting to save money and get the biggest bang for our buck with everything but as we all know at least as of the time I’m recording and releasing this episode The economy is a little crazy right now and. You know it can be a little scary to like know how to spend your money when things are unexpected grocery costs are rising gas prices are going up so today we’re going to get into lots of tips. So I’m glad you’re listening. I hope you get at least 1 new idea from today’s episode and also don’t forget that they have a lot of more fun episodes coming your way like on Friday the next episode, okay, make sure to edit some of that redundancy there. Also don’t forget that I have a lot more helpful episodes coming your way. Today you might have noticed that today is a Monday and I dropped an episode It’s not our usual day for an episode but I wanted to give you some more money saving tips today. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t yet. We have some great content coming your way and again the podcast is always absolutely free content.

Okay, so let’s get into these 10 ways to save money as a teacher. So the first one is 1 you probably know but is doing online grocery shopping now there are a few reasons I love this. So if you use Walmart plus it’s like not that expensive I’m trying to remember it wasn’t that much for the year but I actually save a lot more money than I pay for it because the thing about online grocery shopping is you can see everything adding up and like compare different options of what your cart total will come out to. Before you check out. So it’s not like you get to the checkout when you’re surprised by the number I feel like that happens all too often. And it helps to reduce those impulse buys like when you’re in the store or if you bring your children and they’re like I want this I want that I want that and then you give into like 1 little thing or whatever. But then that can add up too. So when you do the online grocery shopping. Not only can you either like do pickup or even have them deliver and it doesn’t cost very much it costs less than what those impulse buys would cost. So it saves you money and it saves you time which again time is also money so I would definitely recommend checking out. Different online grocery options that you have like I said I use Walmart plus not sponsored or anything I just have found that super helpful. Okay, so number 2 is knowing promo schedules for the brands that you like to shop at.

Now we all love deals. But if you can get familiar with the company and kind of their promo schedule of things that you typically buy. So. For example, I am a huge book lover and I know I could potentially save even more money by just getting my books like from the library or whatever but I am also a book collector which is another hobby. It itself kind of in like collecting and reading books like I like to do both. So I also want to make sure that I’m also not spending a ton of money as I build my book collection like it’s my dream to one day have a room that’s like my library of books. Definitely not there yet. I don’t even have that room at my house. But that said. I know that target every few months they do a buy to get one free deal and that is the best deal they do so I try to wait until they do that and then sometimes Amazon will even do it as well. They’ll kind of piggyback off of it and they’ll do it so I’m like okay I know that I can wait until this promo and that’s when I can buy the books that I need. Another example is the TPT sales you guys I have been doing teachers pay teachers since 2014 and basically the only sale that’s up in the air is their like quarter one sale the one that is sometimes in February Sunday of March. Other than that if you pay attention you can figure out kind of when those promos are going to be like. Cyber Monday and Tuesday they pretty much always do a sale except I will laugh if this is the first time in like the 17 years that this episode releases if they’re not doing a sale on cyber Monday but I cannot imagine that happening.

That is another one that you know okay TPT they do these sales at this time you might grab the resources you absolutely need at other times. But then you can know like okay I can stock up during this sale. Okay tip number 3 and this comes from. Aubrey be from our Facebook group wife teacher mommies unite definitely join that group if you haven’t a lot of times they try to get tips and feedback to share on the podcast from that group. So Aubrey says buying holiday things like pencils and erasers a week after the holiday for pennies like you get them super cheap store them for a year in the closet. Giving them as kid gifts the next year think Halloween, Valentine’s, Christmas etc okay, so that is such a great idea I’ve done things like that too both for classroom and even just for our home decor or other things I related to holidays. So I love that tip. Okay, tip number 4 and again this is not sponsored none of these are other than I guess my own stuff, but the Capital One shopping extension and I use this I have a capital one carb and then there was this extension that you can like have and a lot of times. It’ll like. Pull up Coupons when you’re shopping online so you’re like shopping and you’re doing the checkout and it’s hey hey I have this deal for you and I know there are lots of other extensions that do that as well. But it can be really nice because hey I got a 10% off coupon. Awesome.

I would definitely recommend downloading that or some other kind of extension like that for your web browser. Okay number 5 and this one I get to shout out to Heidi and Emily from second story window. They are good friends of mine. They also have an amazing podcast called teacher approved and they were at our summer educate and rejuvenate event. Also did episodes where we interviewed each other. So if you scroll back. You may have listened to those too if you’ve been listening for a while. But anyways their tip is to use Scribd for audiobooks and I because of them I signed up for Scribd. And now before I use an audible credit like we get 1 audible credit per month but I can listen to way more than one audio book in a month and with Scribd a lot of books are already available there and it’s $11 a month and you have unlimited books and so many titles are available there like I could potentially cancel my audible membership. And still have plenty to listen to and for now I’ve actually put my audible on pause because they have enough credits because so many are covered on Scribd that I really I’m good for now. So I definitely recommend Scribd if you like listening to audiobooks. It is a great subscription. I love subscriptions that actually save you money like I know in your head it might be like oh this is a recurring payment I don’t want to pay for this but I’m like this saves me money and it’s something I love and it helps me and it makes my life better. So Scribd is definitely one of those for me. Okay, number 6 is a teacher resource membership.

And kind of like I was just saying you might think well that’s another recurring payment I don’t want another recurring payment. But when you think about it these recurring payments they can potentially save you money because you’re just paying one fee. It’s predictable. You’re not like oh now there’s this bundle and I I really need it. But it’s going to cost me $70 and then you also buy other little things throughout the month. One of our members put this in a really good way. Jennifer B she put it perfectly. She said look at your TPT invoice. How much should you spend on random unrelated items on teachers pay teachers compare them to the cost of the membership and it’s true. This can actually save you money pus in our membership. Ours wife teacher mommy club. I don’t know but any other ones that do this but you get access to 2 to 3 life coaching workshops every single month now wipe coaching is usually super spendy, but we added it to the club and no additional costs. So both the coaching and the resources alone are worth more than what we’re charging. Plus we have a big. Summer conference and mini winter break conference that we’re doing and we provide certificates for every single coaching call. We provide them for both conferences so you may even be able to get pd credit. It’s the most fun and affordable conferences coaching and resources all in one that you’ll find anywhere. You can learn more about that at wifeteachermommy.com okay number 7 is teacher freebies. So while freebies don’t come to the same level as like full on resources or having access to tons of them and a teacher membership like wife teacher mommy club. You can always find so many great freebies out there.

Teachers pay teachers is a great spot to find freebies. But we also have a ton of our own too. So if you go to our shop at Wife Teacher Mommy Dot Com Slash Shop and go to the freebie category. We have quite a few for you there and if you’re on our email list. We are doing twelve days of freebies coming up. It’s going to be so fun. We have a new freebie for you each day some of them are usually paid products. So definitely check it out if you are on our email list watch your inbox if you’re not, go to wife teacher momy.com/subscribe to sign up and you’ll be able to get on that list.  Okay tip number 8 is and from another member of our wife teacher mommies unite Facebook group and again that is a free Facebook group come and join us and wife teacher mommies unite. And she says save all the marker lids and glue caps you find on the floor, old and dried up supplies and use them when you lose another so this will save you from having to buy new supplies from when people lose the lid or whatever when your children people.

So this will save you tons of money because when you have tons of glue sticks that don’t have their lit or whatever and markers. Instead you can replace them with another random stray lid that you found and you won’t have to replace as many items. So that is a great tip. There. Thank you Julie for that one I love sharing tips from our Wife Teacher Mommy’s Unite Facebook groups make sure to join that okay number 9 is a. App I guess or a website that a lot of people around me have been using to buy clothes every time I’m like oh that’s so cute. Where did you get it and they see it’s from shine or Sheen or whatever it’s called and I actually I’ve looked at the app and I haven’t actually purchased anything yet. But I’m like oh my goodness this stuff is so cheap I really need to  They have really cute I was looking for clothes for my daughter and they have just the cutest outfit. So much fun and then they have them for you too I’ve seen like you know they have like sweaters or basically anything you you could probably even find clothes for when you’re teaching there too.

Okay, and number 10 is thrift stores. Oh my goodness thrift stores are the best and you can always find so much stuff there and I feel like there are times where like my husband Randy and I were kind of on a thrift store kick where we’re like oh we’re going to go. Thrifting. We’re gonna go sleep. We can find my husband’s definitely even more into it than me, but other times we just kind of forget about it. It’s like oh like I didn’t even think of checking there first and a lot of times you can save a lot on furniture or books or clothes for your children who are going to outgrow them super fast or anything. So. I would definitely recommend checking out thrift stores and just keeping that on your list and remembering that I know it’s a very basic 1 and you’re probably like yeah I know that but I feel like it’s a good reminder because a lot of times we forget about checking the thrift store. So yeah, definitely remember thrift stores for things. Okay, so that is our 10 tips. So I’m going to go over them again. The 10 different ways you can save money so we talked first about online grocery and how that helps with seeing how much you’re going to spend before you check out or reduces the impulse spies especially if you have to bring your little ones with you when you go shopping number 2 is kind of knowing the promo schedule for places that you like to shop.

And when you can holding off until then number 3 is 1 of our tips from our members of the  wife teacher mommy unite group member Aubrey and that was buying holiday things after the holiday and saving them for the next year sorry Baby Number 4 is the capital 1 shopping extension or other extensions like that on your browser that can help you to find Coupons when you’re checking out online number 5 is Scribbd for audiobooks you get unlimited audiobooks for less than an audible subscription. Number 6 is teacher resource memberships and of course I would highly recommend wife teacher mommy club because you get access to so many of our resources and life coaching and 2 conferences a year the most affordable fun all in 1 teacher membership that you can get. Number 7 is teacher freebies. Don’t forget that we have our twelve days of freebies coming up too. But there are so many great freebies you can find on tbt and on our shop number 7 oh wait. No that was number number 8 is Julie Julie’s tip from our Wife Teacher Mommys Unite free Facebook group. And she said to save your marker lens and glue cap so you can then use them on other ones when they lose their cap so you can save money on supplies number 9 is the clothing online boutique she in and a lot of people are loving the clothes that they get there.

Number 10 is don’t forget about thrift stores. They are pretty awesome. Okay, and then another kind of bonus one is podcasts. They are a great way to get free support so make sure to hit subscribe button for this show if you found this episode helpful and also I would love if you left a review to they mean so much to podcasters. Can help when someone stumbles on our show to know that others are getting value from it so that would just mean a lot to me and then make sure to stay tuned for Friday’ll talk to you then.