Biting the Budget Bullet
Gas prices and grocery prices are killing me.
Actually, it’s really that the consumer debt I’ve racked up over the years eats a lot of the paycheck. So I don’t have the wiggle room to adjust for a $40 fill-up. Or apples at $1 apiece.
I had made a good-sized hole in paying off the debt before the wreck in July 2005. But I didn’t have the money to pay for all the prescriptions and doctors’ visits … so I charged ’em. So now I’m back in over my head. Darnit all.
BUT I’m working really hard to cut back and pay down. I’ve locked all the credit cards in the safe. I’m paying at least double the minimum payments on each card every month, to knock down interest and principal in large whacks. And I’ve cut way back on the little luxuries that make life more fun … but more expensive.
The one thing I’m not going to cut back on is my twice-monthly Sunday lunch at Houston’s. I need that break when the kids are with their dad and I can sit with a Perrier, a French dip sandwich, and a pile of couscous. And just be a grown-up.
But we’re making fewer trips to Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A. Fewer trips to the zoo (20 minutes away), the Golf ‘n’ Games (also 20 minutes away), and Chuck E. Cheese (15 minutes away and expensive!). Sigh. We’re doing more of the local park (five minute walk), casseroles and home cooking (which I enjoy, thank goodness), and backyard games (break out the Yard Darts, yeah!).
We’re learning (though I seem to learn it faster than the kids) that we turn off the shower while we soap up, and turn it back on to rinse off. We turn off the water when we’re brushing our teeth, and turn it back on to rinse our brush, mouth, and sink. And we turn off the light when we leave the room. Any room. For any length of time.
I had switched to compact fluorescent bulbs, but I may have to switch back, as I’ve noticed an up-tick in migraines for both me and Number One Son, and recent research shows a link between CF bulbs and migraines. We’re also going to bed earlier so we don’t have to burn the lights so much.
These are some of the places I can cut back. We don’t have a lot of them. We don’t have cable. My cell phone is pay-as-you-go. All the prescriptions that can be changed to generics have been. We print on both sides of our paper, and then use it for drawing or craft projects before tossing it (in the recycle bin).
I just sold my old washer and bought a new, more energy-efficient Fisher-Paykel set (yay! no more running the towels through two cycles to get them dry). In the remodel last summer, we changed some of the windows for new, double glazed, more energy efficient windows.
So we’re trying to bite the bullet and cut back.