ONE DOLLAR AT A TIME
Budget Cuts January
These are cuts that we have made this past month to help trim down our budget. Some are small and some are large but all help to trim down our monthly expenses as we save toward our debt free future.
All month I was trying to make mental notes of the items we were cutting back on and quite honestly I have nothing specific to share with you. I think the reason for that is because, after the holidays, we really decided to not spend a thing this month. We just put a lot of purchases on the back burner. We just said …we don’t have the money so we just won’t spend it.
We did take the time this month to evaluate our financial plan for the year and give a rough plan of our budget. My husband and I sat down a few times discussing it and tweaking it to the point that we feel pretty good about where we are headed.
Usually around this time is when we plan out trips or mini vacations that we would like to take. Our trips usually revolve around one of our kids sporting events and this year will not be any different. The only difference with this year, however, is that we will be limiting the number that we go to.
In years past, we just booked a flight, rented a car and a hotel and enjoyed our weekend or week watching our kids play games all around the country. Well this year we are carefully selecting which ones we will attend based on how much it will cost.
This happens to be our daughter Megan’s final year playing softball for Pitt, so we would like to see as many games as we can. We have been saving up our airline miles and hotel points for a while in order to use them specifically to attend her games. So we are hoping to go for next to nothing. And, we will travel individually so as not to spend as much money. We are very lucky because most of her games are broadcast on the internet so if we are unable to go we can still watch it and not feel like we are missing out.
When I think of the money we spent on things like this in the past I just cringe. We used to have the attitude of, we’ll figure out how to pay for it later. Now, before we do it, we figure out how to pay for it. And if we can’t, we just won’t spend it.
Do you have things that you are really cutting back on this year? A vacation, an activity? Did you give up something that you really loved to do but just don’t want to spend the money anymore?