Self-Care Tips for Frugal Moms

Being a mom can mean getting plenty of advice that sounds contradictory. You’re supposed to dedicate yourself to your children’s needs but also take time for yourself. You need to be smart about finances but also splurge on yourself now and again. You need to watch over your children and teach them to become independent. If this makes you feel as though you can’t do anything to the satisfaction of everyone, you’re not alone. 

The truth is that it’s a hard balance to get just right, and well-meaning people who make it sound easy can do as much harm as good. Practical tips can be more helpful than vague yet somehow intimidating commandments. It’s true that you need to prioritize your children, but it’s also true that you still need to do things for yourself sometimes. When you’ve got an eye on the budget but feel like you’re very much in need of some you time, try some of these self-care tips below.

Make it a Budget Item

This won’t be possible for everyone. If you’re paying off debts or on a very tight budget for other reasons, there might simply not be room. On the other hand, if you look at your spending, you might find a place where you can cut back to create a tiny self-care fund. You may be surprised to find subscriptions you aren’t using or little splurges that you’d rather direct elsewhere. In addition, don’t discount your own needs. As a mom, it can be easy to put yourself last. But if everyone else in the family gets a line item for frivolity, you do too.

If you don’t have any kind of formal budget but you feel like you’re always struggling to make ends meet, there are plenty of tools and apps that can help you create that budget, often by tracking your spending and doing most of the work for you. Your priorities will determine which tool is best for you, but in a world of apps that come and go, you can’t go wrong with Quicken for reliability. It’s been around for more than 40 years, since long before smartphones and apps even existed. Along similar lines, put the time on your calendar as well, just as you would with any important appointment. If you can’t find any room in the monetary budget for self-care, you still need to find the time, even if it’s only an hour in a busy week.

Kid Swaps

The cost of childcare can be one of the main reasons you’re not able to get out on your own from time to time, and you might be concerned as well about leaving your children with a caregiver you don’t know very well. One possible solution is a childcare swap. If you’re friends with another frugal family, you can take turn watching each other’s children. There’s even an app Carefully that helps you do this if you want to get more families involved. It allows you to build a network of trusted families to streamline the process of sharing babysitting duties.

To get the most out of this arrangement, you need a few ground rules for yourself. If you’ve set aside the time for self-care, it must be genuine self-care, not cleaning the house or a kid-free grocery store run. If going to the gym truly relaxes you, that’s allowed, but it’s also okay to sit and read a book for half an hour, meet a friend for coffee, or indulge in whatever it is that you genuinely enjoy.

Cosmetic Procedures

This is something you can feel like there isn’t the money for once you’ve had children, even if you regularly got filler injections or other work done in the pre-kid days. However, that’s not always the case. Providers are increasingly working to make their services more accessible to more people. You can ask your representative for a unique application link to Cherry payment plans or find it online. These allow you to get procedures done now and pay monthly, splitting big costs over many months if necessary. This payment plan is seamlessly integrated with Allē, the loyalty program for BOTOX® Cosmetic, JUVÉDERM® Collection of Fillers and more.

Look for Freebies

There are times when even that special drink at Starbucks won’t do the trick, or maybe you’re just searching for satisfaction that doesn’t come from spending money. Put on your favorite music and have a solo dance party in the privacy of your own home. A walk, a free yoga video online or an hour with a book won’t cost you a dime. Speaking of books, check your local library. In addition to movies, books and audiobooks, they may have passes to local attractions, such as the zoo, that you can check out just as you would other items. You might be surprised at how relaxing wandering past the monkeys and elephants can be when you aren’t wrangling overexcited children.

What’s unfortunate about this approach is that it can also put some hobbies out of reach. Some activities may require an investment up front to get started. For example, knitting, crocheting, or other types of crafts can seem like the perfect no-spend self-care activity until you look at the price of supplies. Gardening might conjure up visions of self-sufficiency and an abundance of food, but it can be surprisingly expensive to get started. You might consider applying the kid-swapping approach to self-care as well. Maybe a mom you know has some yarn she needs to unload and you’re strictly a shower person who is never going to use the fancy bubble bath someone gave you.

This is also an approach that can put you in touch with what might be one of the most important self-care tips of all, connecting with others. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, it’s easy to feel isolated. If you work outside the home, you may feel like all you ever do is put out fires at work and at home. Taking time to build friendships outside of both of those contexts can provide more value than anything you might spend money on.