Ways to Save Money on a Low Income, How We Bought Our First Home on a Low Income

After I published Low Income Stay At Home Mom Tips on my YouTube channel, multiple people had questions for me wanting more ways to save money on a low income. A couple other popular questions were how we bought our first home on a low income, how we bought a home at all on a low income, and how we bought our stove on a low income.

Today I’m answering these questions and sharing more Ways to Save Money on a Low Income, How We Bought Our First Home on a Low Income.

In this video I’m sharing how faith has helped me through some of our rough times, how to save money on groceries in 2025, where to buy cheap groceries (that are actually quality and healthy), I’ve got some frugal food tips, and a meal plan for the month of December! Towards the later half I’m sharing how we got our first home an a low income, and how to buy a stove on a budget, plus what to do if you cannot afford a stove.

Ways to Save Money on a Low Income

Below is a partial transcript from the video.

I recently did a video that went over quite well on low income living and I was asked to share more frugal living with the family tips so I thought we would do that today in this video.

I have filmed a homestead and homemaking day in the life, I’ve got some juicy frugal living grocery and food tips, I’m answering a very popular question from the last video on how we got our stove on a low income, and I’m going to answer the question of how we bought our first home on a low income. I’m also going to share a hard chapter from our family’s story and what always gets me through the hardest times. I hope you stick around to the end because if you’re low income I think you’ll get some use out of these frugal living with a family tips that I have for you in this video.

The Importance of Devotions when you are Low Income

If you’re low income, having a firm footing on Christ can really help you maintain positivity and perspective through the rough times. I don’t like turning a bunch of lights on first thing in the morning so that I can read, I like to do my devotions on my phone because it’s bright and I can read things on my phone without having to turn a bunch of lights on. You’re going to laugh about this, the current plan I’m working on is called “you are not behind,” and here’s the funny thing, it says I’ve got five missed days!

Things like that really make me laugh!

Anybody else out there love morning devotions? I went through whole seasons where when my babies were little the instant I would wake up they would wake up, and of course they would want food, they would cry if I didn’t feed them right away! I had to get really creative about doing devotions through those seasons and fit them in whenever I could through the day. I’ve heard so many preachers say “you need to do your devotions very first thing in the morning,” and I always want to say right back at them, “You don’t have little babies to take care of do you?”

Well, I am here to tell you, Mama, when you’re raising little kids if you are raising Christian children you are in the front lines of ministry. Never underestimate the fact that God is right there with you. It might not feel like it sometimes, but if you are a praying, faithful, mama He is! So you just get those devotions in when you can squeeze them in in the day and they will help sustain you through the hard work of raising children and financial stress.

Frugal living tip here, there are a lot of apps that are wonderful for devotions but a lot of them require you to pay for them. They might be wonderful, I would not know. I have the YouVersion app though, it is free, and I absolutely love it! It has so many plans. Whatever you’re struggling with in your- life let’s say you’re dealing with depression because you are very frugally living and it’s hard- there’s plans for that to help uplift your spirits and help you!

Save Money on Groceries

If you’re trying to do frugal living with a family, get one of those grocery apps. Put into your cart the pre-made stuff that you normally buy, and look and see how much that costs and what you’re spending. Then take it out of your cart and put everything in to see how much it would cost to make all of those things from scratch. Remember that when you’re cooking from scratch you’re not just getting the dish or whatever it is you’re buying one time, you’re getting it multiple times! I did this with bread and I found out that our family (which is, granted, larger) we save around $200 a month by me making my own bread! Some people- they don’t get it- they’re like “Well you sure have a lot of time on your hands.”

No, actually, I just know how to use my time! Growing up my stepdad used to have a saying, “time is money”. As a homemaker there are so many ways you can use your time wisely instead of foolishly to save so much money!

A frugal Living tip is to cook as much as you can from scratch, and it takes time to learn how to do this if you are just beginning or if you’re trying to do this and homeschool or work from home. I encourage you not to give up though, because eventually you do find a Rhythm. By the way see this ground turkey in these packages ? It tastes much better than the ground turkey in the rolls, like a thousand times better. It’s a great, more affordable substitute for ground beef.

Lately the Lord has reminded me how hard it is to balance homemaking, working from home, and homeschooling, all while learning how to cook from scratch. Talk about frugal living, our grocery bill just went up about $300 a month! One of our children was just diagnosed with multiple food allergies for the second time. This time he may not grow out of them they said. Thankfully they’re not life-threatening, but my goodness we have been having to learn a whole new way to cook. It sure has been a learning curve figuring out how to cook for him and teaching him how to cook for himself. He is a young adult and he has been doing his very best to pick up the load and learn how to cook meals for himself. Some of the things are kind of challenging to learn how to make, even for me as a seasoned cook, and the amount of label reading that is required is just quite time consuming!

It has reminded me to have empathy and sympathy for people that are just learning how to cook from scratch because there are a lot of things that we are having to learn how to make from scratch now that are a bit challenging. But I know from my past experience that this will pass. We will get into a rhythm we’ll get it figured out it’s going to be okay.

In the meantime, Azure Standard has been one of our go-to resources for the allergy-free items that he can have. I don’t know what we would do without Azure Standard speaking of which, they did give me a 15% off code for new members so if you are looking for an affordable place to get healthy groceries and home goods CLICK HERE.

End of transcript. Watch video for more.