Thursday, April 24, 2008

What Will You Do?

Crystal over at Money Saving Mom was talking today about how long you'll wait to turn on the AC and it prompted me to think about the ways our family is lowering our expenses.

For one, we're planning on not turning on our AC until May 10th...we'd really like to hold out till June, but we're starting with a small goal and then we'll take it a day at a time from there. 16 days to go!! I'm hoping this will be a significant boost in our savings.

Another thing we've done is disconnect our home phone (actually did this today...been talking about it for months!). We rarely used the house phone and I honestly can't remember the last time I actually talked on our "land line." We all four have cell phones and most people we talk to are in our network of free mobile-to-mobile. This one step is going to save us $65 a month...woo hoo!!

We've been eating at home and have only ate out twice this month. Huge improvement! Even at McDonald's, our bill is around $20, so another big way to save...and I'm actually enjoying cooking and planning meals frugally. Baseball season has started, so it's a little challenging on game days to get supper on the table and get to the game on time...but so far we've done pretty well. I've also been taking snacks from home to work. Another way I'm saving on our food expense is byalso taking part in Krystal's May Grocery Budget Challenge. My goal is $100/week for a $400 total for the month of May spent on groceries. That's about a $50/week cut from what I normally spend and a savings of $200 for the month of May.

A few small "changes" equals a little more "change" in the pocket! So, how about you? Are you feeling the economic crunch? What are you doing to "save for the rainy day" or just make it to the next month?

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