This past year of budgeting

It has been a year since I stopped working at Federico's and now only work at the gym 7 hours a week. That means that I am bringing home half of what I was making a year ago. With the checks that I get from the gym, I cash them and that money is what we use for groceries, going out to eat, entertainment and gifts. When we run out of cash we have to find inventive ways of coming up with more money or just not spend any money until the next payday. Different ways we come up with extra cash have been: collecting cans and taking them in (extra $40.00), once a year we have a big yard sale (extra $300-500), taking kids items to the consignment store (made about $50.00), I do Inboxdollars.com and have a check coming for $30.00, Pinecone research ($3.00 per survey) and Swagbucks for free giftcards. You can see that even when money is tight, there are always ways to get more.

The biggest savings on our budget is using coupons and shopping around. I have been an avid coupon shopper since January and I have more in my cabinets then I have ever had. Since I have been making less money and now know where all of our money is going, I feel like we have more than before. Once a month I spend about $75.00 on groceries and that is my "big" shopping trip. Every Sunday hubby and I spend about an hour cutting coupons and looking for sales. I have a Target trip planned for tomorrow to get lots of food and when I added up what I am going to buy it will be under $15.00. When I do coupon shop, I make a list, have my coupons ready and only buy what is on my list unless there is a ridiculous sale on an item I did not know about.

Other ways we have cut back is by shopping around on car insurance, phone service and lowering our cell phone plans. Whatever area we think we can save in my hubby researches it and finds the best price. I leave that up to him since I am a impulse shopper, which brings me into another way that I save BIG. I DO NOT WINDOW SHOP! Since I am a impulse shopper and want to buy what I see, I just do not go shopping. I only go when I specifically need something. Doing this has saved us the question, "Where did all of our money go?"

I can honestly say that it has taken us 5 years to really get what budgeting is and how to stay on a budget. I think our thinking has changed and our bad habits with money have been fading away. I stopped working full-time 5 years ago and slowly I have been working less and less and it has really shown us how we can stretch a dollar and what is important to us. We still love taking trips, looking nice and having nice things, but we always do our research first before spending money in all of these areas.

I hope this motivates you in some way to look at what is important to you so you can save money and pay off that debt, or put money away for a rainy day. That is our goal and it feels good that we can see the finish line and know that what we are doing today will help us in the future. I feel more in control and I do not feel like I am missing out on anything. The biggest change for me was mentally and now it is okay not to have the newest and coolest thing (and you would know that if you saw my cell phone...LOL).