When Brett was laid off we took action to make sure we would not go into debt during this time. We stopped some of our monthly payments (Netflix, support of two charities, our monthly savings). In addition we were just about to start a monthly contribution to our retirement funds, and put that on hold. We pared it down to the essential things.
I am sad to say in the past we have spent TOO MUCH on food and misc. things each month. So in order to get that under control we have switched to the cash system for these two categories.
Each week Brett gets cash for groceries and cash for our "fun money". Brett and I get an equal amount of "fun money" each week. We can choose how to spend that money. It can be on eating out for lunch, buying something we want, or saving for a larger purchase. In addition if you get birthday money or such you can keep that and add it to your fun money.
At the end of each month we evaluate the situation and make a decision on how much we can put into savings. It will vary each month because of emergencies that might come up. We are trying very hard to add to savings each month because we don't know how long Brett's unemployment will last. We want to be ready for the time when it will end.
2 comments:
Thanks for your honesty about life. Will be praying for you. I am sure you will use your wonderful, positive attitude to make lemonade out of this lemon of a situation. I look forward to seeing what all God will do.
Good luck with your new budgeting! Some ideas we used to trim our food budget were to incorporate some of these things into our weekly menu: soup night, stuffed baked potato night, vegetarian night. I also have a friend who said that uses www.e-mealz.com and says it has really saved them money and time.
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