Since my husband and I have been married for two years, we have stopped our spending and have been cutting our debt. We are not there yet, but before we had lil’ Monkey we managed to cut our debt in half.
Since having the lil’ Monkey, relocating to a town where we have both doubled our daily commutes to work and shoving out $800 per month for day care, our debt snowball has slowed to a snowflake but we are still managing to pay off debts. We are finally down to four debts. The next one on this list is about $2500 and the final one (including the Las Vegas whirlwind wedding and honeymoon) is around $10,000.
I listen to Dave Ramsey daily. I will say I’m more of a fan than my hubby is but he is great sport of listening to me carry on about the “funny thing Dave said on the air today”. I love Debt Free Friday. I love hearing people call in that paid off *the same amount of debt we started with* making *the same amount of money we make*. I have decided that when we are debt free, I’m going to call in to the show.
Now, we are not great about writing out our budget every month. Usually, one of us spends over whats in a certain category without speaking with the other one first, I forget about my envelope system, and once a month I usually have a good cry about how “I’m going to be 30 soon and I’m going to be broke forever.” In reality though, when I’m being of rational mind, we are doing okay, and we are getting better each day with our money.
These are some of the little things we do each month that help us save a penny:
- My husband does almost all of the maintenance on our cars. This month we put about $300 in our car when we could have paid over $600 for someone else to do it for us.
- I’ve cooked from scratch more. The amount of bread I buy in a month, can buy enough ingredients to make bread for 5-6 months. Savings for delicious homemade bread instead of the junk loaded with preservatives $10/ month. More on the cooking later, as I improve on cooking from scratch and cooking/freezing in bulk.
- Anytime we order takeout online, my husband manages to find a coupon code to increase our savings.
- As of next week I will be cancelling our land line phone (don’t use it) and our cable (I have too many things I need to do other than watching TV). This will save us around $50 a month.
- As of next week we are downgrading in cell phones. No. More. iPhone. Ouch. I love my iPhone. I will need to find another way to listen to Dave, but this will save us $44 a month in data plans.
- I have stopped buying paper towels. I use old receiving blankets, tshirts that are too ratty to donate and some flat cloth diapers. I will have a a post on cutting your trash and Green Living so more on this later. Paper towels are expensive.
- For my lil’ Monkey, I use cloth wipes. I’ll have a post later about my Green Baby so I won’t elaborate here except for saying I save about $10 a month. For 36 months of a baby in diapers, that is $360.
- In addition to my cloth wipes, I make all of my own baby food. I buy very few snack foods with the label “Baby” on it. I can get 10x more Cheerios for the cost of Gerber Puffs. This probably saves me $20 month.
That’s it. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I am always finding a way to do more. The point of starting this blog wasn’t to tell anyone that I was perfect in the way I wanted to live my life. The first few posts are really going to be about where I’m starting and where I want to end up. I have room for improvement in all aspects of my life and I hope me and my readers can find a way to improve together.
I am going to start subscribing to the Sunday Paper and I am going to start couponing soon. I’ll let you know if its worth it. Meanwhile, check out Dave Ramsey and his baby steps.
“Live like no one else, so later on you can live like no one else” Dave Ramsey
Its easy being green 