February 2012 Moms
XP: Cutting Costs
In preparation for paying for child care, I'm trying to make a good budget/ spending plan. We are terrible at this 
. I need to cut back on our spending but I'm having a hard time figuring out how. Here's what I have so far:
-give each of us an "allowance" each week for any discretionary spending (eating out, shopping, movies, etc.)
-make a specific grocery budget and stick to it each week
Other than that, I don't know how else to cut costs. Do you have any suggestions? I'm open to anything (except DH would have a $h!t fit if I tried to take away our cable.) I'm stressing out about this so any tips at all will be helpful. Thanks!
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Re: XP: Cutting Costs
Take a look at the regular household bills, and see which could be made lower through some simple thriftiness. Here's what we started doing when I started to SAH:
The electric bill: This can be brought lower very easily if you or DH tend to leave the lights on in rooms you're not in, or if you have a tendency of leaving your computer on while you're at work.
The water bill: Don't let the water just run freely while you're brushing your teeth or hand-washing dishes -- turn it on when you actively need the water, turn it off again once you're done rinsing.
The heating bill: If you have a programmable thermostat, learn how to program it, and make sure that it's set to not turn on the heat or A/C when you're not home or asleep (Having it starting to warm/cool the house an hour before you return is fine; having it running all day while you're gone wastes energy.)
The cell phone bill: Double-check your usage versus what plan you have. Are you consistently going over your minutes? See if there's a plan that gives you more minutes to start with that you can save money on. Are you going under your minutes every month? See if there's a cheaper plan with fewer minutes on. Same thing for text messages and data!
Gas: Make sure your tires have the right amount of air pressure in 'em -- tires that are slightly under-pressure waste a lot of gas because the car has to work harder to turn 'em.
Groceries: There're whole blogs on how to grocery shop for cheaper, or how to coupon well. I don't have the attention span for it, so I did some comparison shopping and found out which stores in my area tend to be cheaper for which kinds of products -- as an example, the yogurt I like is $3.75 for a 32oz container at one store, and is $2 for the exact same size/brand at a different store!
♥ Married since June 2009 ♥
TW: Living children & Losses:
Pregnant after 4 losses via IVF/FET with daughter "Gamma" (EDD Oct 2, 2019)
This ALONE saved us hundreds of dollars when we moved into our house. The one we have has a 7 day schedule so we program M-F to be cooler when we are at work and we also make it cooler at night when we are cozy in bed. We saved about $150 the very first month we installed it.
In regards to grocery shopping my biggest money saving tip is to kick brand loyalty to the curb. I buy what is on sale, not based on name. You come to realize that many products taste or perform very similarly. Some will argue certain brands are preferable, if you find this to be the case, just price shop - sometimes going to 2 grocery stores is worth it.
We work from home so it sucks that we have our thermostat and can't often change it since we are here constantly. But I agree about the discretionary spending - but give it in cash would be my idea. Just because it's so easy to swipe that debit card and think oh I will take it out of my movie money to cover my eating out money or something.
If you have cash and that's your only option then it's much more likely that you follow it and won't overspend your allotted amount. My H would never give up our cable either, and I'm okay with that, but we just re-combined our cell phone plans so it will save about $45 a month or so, and we try to be smart about things because we want our credit cards and little stuff paid off in about 6 months.
We will do a menu each Sunday so we shop for our list - not just to shop. When we know specifically what we will eat, we are less likely to stand and stare at the fridge and decide to do drive-thru or take-out instead. This worked great for us and kept us organized, and completely eliminated the "what's for dinner" routine and dance and had us eating healthier and earlier since I had already planned it all the night before.
I don't have a ton of other options, but just ideas for now. Also - Christmas - instead of spending a lot on gifts (I don't know how many you have to buy for) maybe make some nice frames or something with fabric and embellishments if you are good at that - and give those to family members for when the baby comes? Like to your parents that says Grandparents or something? And to other family members, it might be nice to make those cookie jars - the ones with the dry ingredients for different cookies and a nice cookie cutter attached (with the directions for the cookies).
Hope some of this helps!
Since your DH doesn't want to cancel the cable, try calling the company. I have done this twice saying it's too expensive. They can give you alternative plans that cost less with fewer channels or in our case they gave us promotional rates that last for 12 months(we have Comcast).
The thermostat thing works so well as PP mentioned.
I also always pack my lunch. It is a pain but it saves so much money in the long run.
Good luck!
If you have a specific budget already done, you can post it on the money matters board on The Nest and the ladies there will give you lots of specific ideas.
ETA: That might not have been clear. You can post your current budget (gas, groceries, rent/mortgage, etc) and they will help you find areas that are too high and could be cut.