Cutting Back

As much as I hate to say it, we have been living the very typical American life of living beyond our means. Faced with the state of the real estate market and our income level stagnating, it is time to make some much needed adjustments to our budgeting, spending, and thinking in general.

Yesterday I called our cable company and cut our services. About 6 months ago I bundled our services with Comcast. We received digital phone, high speed internet and cable for $99 a month. Of course after taxes it came to about $128 month. R really enjoys having cable. I quit watching TV for the most part around June, so it hasn't meant much to me. Yesterday I cut our cable to the basic limited service for $14.99. This gives us very few channels, but one of them is Discovery Channel, and accounts for the majority of our TV viewing. Keeping cable saves us $10/month on our internet. Why do we NEED high speed internet? I'll get to that in a minute. So total we will be paying more like $70 instead of $128/month. We both have cell phones, with long distance and voicemail, so we are planning on using those for our phone needs. Total savings = $58.

We then decided that I am going to work from home 2 days a week. Currently I am going into work every morning to do the administrative work for our real estate business. We let our assistant go in September, saving us approximately $1500/month. I have been paying $400 for daycare each month. By staying home 2 days we can cut that to $160. Total savings = $240. By working at home I will absolutely need high speed internet. I will also need a fax line which will cost me $11.00 a month. By switching back to Qwest I also get 3 free months. Total savings = $39.

I have also been having Winder Dairy deliver our milk each week. It's local, it's fresh and sooo convenient! I called yesterday to cut service. Turns out Z can't really drink milk so we only need 1 gallon of milk each week for M and R. I'm already drinking soy. So I've cut our milk bill from $11 each week to $2.50 a week. Soy bring that bill to $5.00 week. Total savings= $6 / wk.

I have decided to keep our Netflix subscription for now. It is $8.99/month. But it can always go to.

I've started keeping my price book again. I'm going to do my dangdest to buy things at rock bottom prices, effectively giving ourselves a raise. I've stocked up on canned goods, rice, potatoes, squash, onions and frozen vegetables. I'm trying to cook economical, healthy meals from home. My weakness is lunch. I hate making lunch so I end up eating out a few days a week. I am planning to cut out fast food for the next little while. This should save us around $15/wk, or $60/month.

We've gotten a home equity loan and put our high interest credit cards on it, lowering our interest rate and giving us a tax break.

And as a last resort we are talking about moving. We love our neighborhood and would really like to stay. We have one of the larger homes in the area with the most incredible view. We are looking into downsizing. The question will be what we can sell ours for and finding one that we are happy with. There would be some updating we would need to do to maximize our sale. It all sounds so tiring, however, I wouldn't mind the end result. I'd rather be totally out of debt and have a lower mortgage so we can save more and travel more. It's not worth it to me to pay for square footage that I don't need or use. Most houses in our area have a nice view, not quite as incredible as ours, but it isn't worth the money for me. It is for R though. So this remains to be seen. If we could sell for what we want, we could potentially reduce our mortgage by $400/month. We haven't been saving at all, including retirement. I'd like some extra money to give us some leverage. I'm nervous about the state of the economy and I'd like to put more distance between myself the financial edge.

So that's where we're at. Not fun, but that's life.

The Effect of One's Surroundings

This is my new living room. I wish I had before pictures. Let me just describe it to you. I had painted the living room a butterscotch color with the fireplace accented in pumpkin (must have been fall?). I didn't love it but I was so sick of painting we just lived with it for a couple of years. We had hand me down dark green chenille oversize couches. These had holes and were totally threadbare when I finally convinced to get rid of them. We didn't really have much else except a desk R's mom gave us (which I did reuse). I HATED my living room. I'm all about not keeping up with the Jones' but I got to a point I finally quit inviting people over because I was just embarassed. It just felt yucky and I felt like my whole house was crap.

Fast forward to now. The living room is light and airy and really shows off our view. As much as I've designated this room to be for "quiet, calm activities" only, the whole family gravitates toward it. And now I want to have people over. I actually think I have a great house now.

I think there is a line between making your surroundings comfortable and appealing to you, as well as expressing yourself and just being materialistic. I for one feel much happier when I am in a place that I find attractive. Did I redo the living room just so my friends would think I was a neater, more stylish person and therefore worth more as a friend? No, and my friends aren't those kinds of people anyway. I redid it because I hated it. Me. Hated. It.

So there you have it. My new living room.