military military life

5 ways for military families to save money

Today’s post is sponsored by T-Mobile. As always, all opinions are my own. 

My husband joined the military in the fall of 2010, right around the same time we met. We got married a few months later and shortly after, he deployed to Afghanistan. At the time, we were a one income family and learning how to budget our money as a newly married couple. It can be A LOT to handle, especially if you’ve gone from a two income to one income family and thrown in a deployment.

Our family was active duty for 7 years and during that time, I learned a lot about budgeting and saving money. And while it’s sometimes tough to live on a military income, today I wanted to share a few ways we made it work and how you can too!

As most of you know, I’m partnering with T-Mobile this year to share all of the amazing things they do for the military community so I wanted to start by sharing some of the ways they specifically help military families save money.

T-Mobile’s Magenta Military Plan: Did you know that T-Mobile offers 50% off Magenta family lines for all active duty military, veterans and their families with the Magenta Military plan? In addition to offering the best prices, taxes and fees are included in the Magenta Military plan so the price you see is the price you get – no surprises. Which is super important when you’re budgeting.

But that’s not all! T-Mobile’s Magenta Military family plan also currently comes with free Netflix or Quibi, which are sometimes the first things to get eliminated when you’re working on saving money or cutting back. I love that these benefits come with the phone plan at no extra charge!

In addition to these benefits, they also offer high quality phone accessories without the high price point and have the best customer care in wireless. They truly care about the military community and giving back, from helping them save money to assisting spouses in their careers and so much more.

Here are a few other ways we found helpful when budgeting and saving money when my husband was active duty: 

Weigh the pros and cons for living on post: I say this for a few reasons; BAH (basic allowance for housing) depends on your pay grade, duty station and dependent status. So depending on these factors, it may be more cost effective to live on post housing instead of finding somewhere to rent off post and within your budget constraints. Utilities are also included in your BAH so you don’t have to worry about budgeting for those. But if you can find a more affordable place off post, you’re able to use the difference from BAH towards utilities and other things you need.

Plan your grocery trip: First things first, the cardinal rule, NEVER shop on payday! Everyone seems to end up at the Commissary on payday so 1.) it’s insanely crowded and 2.) they often raise prices that day. Things are also picked over so if you can, plan to go a few days before payday. I also recommend making a list and sticking to that list so that you don’t make any frivolous purchases.

Shop on post: You can literally get everything you need between the The Exchange and the commissary; prices are usually cheaper and they’re tax free. So it’s always best to shop on post if possible.

Ask about military discounts: A lot of businesses and companies offer military discounts but it would be impossible to memorize all of them! It doesn’t hurt to ask before checking out if they offer a military discount. You’d be surprised at some of the places that do.

Saving money as a military family can be a challenge but it can be done! We just had to learn things we could and couldn’t do, save where we could, and take advantage of all of the amazing military discounts out there.

If you’re interested in learning more about T-Mobile’s Magenta Military plan for military families, contact T-Mobile’s Team of Experts for more info! Xo

 

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