Cutting Back During the Hard Times
We get so used to having all of the modern conveniences that we start to believe that we need them and can’t possibly live without them. My husband and I ran into some financial difficulties a few years back due to some unexpected and very costly medical bills. Fortunately, we have always had good credit so we were able to bounce back pretty well. But it did take some strategizing and some cutting back in order to pay off the major expense. Here are some things that we cut back on:
Create a Budget
I sat down and figured out every single expense we had, what we were paying and created a limit to what we could spend on each category per month for those items that weren’t fixed amounts. I then created an Excel spreadsheet where I tracked every single receipt and every dollar we spent. I found out we spent a lot less when I was tracking spending.
Eating In Restaurants
I would always cook during the week but we liked to eat out on Friday & Saturday night both. We cut back our restaurant visits to just Saturday nights.
No Extras - At All
We cut out purchasing all extras. We would ask ourselves when we were tempted to purchase an item, “Do I really need this or do I want it?” If we determined that the item was not a necessity, it didn’t go in the cart.
Phones
If you have both a cell phone and a home phone, can you do away with one or the other? Figure out whether it would be cheaper for you to keep your home phone or your cell phone and ditch one whole bill per month.
Bent & Dent
Find a local bent & dent grocery store to purchase some of your groceries. You can save a lot of money through these types of stores. Just make sure you check over dates and don’t purchase any items that are too dented.
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