Friday, April 24, 2015

The Plan!

Hello friends!! So in the last post I  briefly talked about living on just my husband's (Eric) income. I have devised a plan to help us do just that. Let me say this, I do not make a lot of money at my job, I work part time. So it won't be a terrible adjustment, living on half our income (which we have not figured out how to do yet )will be harder. This is just our first baby step in that direction.

We have cut down a couple categories in our budget.

The first one being our pool. We have a 16x48 intex pool that we have used the past couple summers, we love it. It's expensive though.
Xander playing in the pool last year

At the end of last year the liner got a significant un-repairable rip. The new liner would cost us 200 dollars plus shipping. We started saving for it, but quickly realized there just wasn't enough room in the budget to save up for it by summer. We also realized the pool costs us an extra 50 dollars a month in chemicals, water, and electricity. If we didn't replace the liner and didn't put it up this year we could save ourselves about 400 dollars. So although we will be missing our pool very much this year, we will be closer to our goals. We will continue to save a little bit each month towards a new pool but it is probably 2 years away.

We are ditching Amazon Prime. We have loved this service a lot, but it just doesn't make financial sense to pay to have free shipping. I will just wait until my amazon purchase equals 35 and buy it then and get free shipping. I have heard people say they save money using their bulk purchasing options but I myself haven't been able to find anything with significant savings.I know there are other benefits like the prime video but honestly, it's almost exactly the same as Netflix with maybe a few more titles in it's library. I happen to like Netflix's selection a lot better. Then there is the kindle lending library which is great if you have a kindle, but we don't. That's fine by me I have a free lending library (the actual library) a couple blocks away and they have a lot more titles :)
 All in all I don't feel it's worth it to pay 99 dollars a year for prime. We also decided to get rid of Hulu plus. We just don't use it anymore. Together that saves us 17 dollars a month.

We cut our spending money a little. Not a lot. Five dollars each per week. No biggie to us but it adds up to 40 dollars a month.

We cut down the amount in our clothing category. We have 100 dollars in there right now and no one is using it. We are cutting it in half saving us 40 dollars a month.

We turned our date night envelope into a day trip envelope. We just haven't been using our date money. Though we love spending time just the two of us it's very easy to do for free. We have our daughter Hannah who loves her brother and offers to watch him a lot. She is 15 and a very good, sweet, patient sister. Yup, we know how blessed we are :)




So we opt for free date nights so we can put that money in the family fund to do some fun stuff with our kids over the summer. Thus eliminating the camping/day trip fund saving us 20 a month AND we still get to have a good time!

We will be doing a spending freeze in May when it comes to food. We will only be buying fresh produce, dairy and eggs (with the exception of Eric's Veggie sausage for breakfast). This will continue until we have used up all the stuff in our freezer because it is SO FULL. This won't be a reoccurring monthly decrease in spending however, it will give us an extra savings boost for our poor drained emergency fund and save for yet another car repair.


So that's that for now as we do more or think of more I will let you know!! Thanks for reading guys and thanks for being awesome.

4 comments:

  1. I watch your YT videos. You are doing such a great job. It's hard to give up the pool, I know. Do you have community pools in your area? I pay about $300 for a family of 10 to have unlimited access to the pool Memorial Day thru Labor Day. Plus it's in our school district so the kids meet up there. Just a thought. I nothing else, maybe swim lessons for the baby.

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    1. Thanks so much! We don't have a community pool in our area. There are splash pads for kids though. Swim lessons is a great idea! It's about time for him he's almost 2.

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  2. Thank you for sharing all your money saving ideas. I especially enjoy your YT vids on what you make for dinner. I get inspired watching your grocery hauls too! Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your posts. :)

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    1. Thank you very much!! That is so nice of you to let me know, you put a smile on my face!

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