Thursday, May 28, 2009

Threat Level Midnight

You earn 20 coolness points if you can tell me what show the title of this blog is from. And coolness points go a long way when you're my friend.

Tomorrow is Pay Day. I capitalize Pay Day because I'm so friggin thankful for it. As we are on one income right now (mainly because I'm a failure) and we only get paid at the END of each month (you read it right, once a month) Pay Day is my favorite day of the month.

But this Pay Day is different, because this Pay Day ushers in our new, improved budget.

Actually, it just ushers in a strict budget in general, complete with spreadsheets and an itemized list of what we can spend.

Here are some things that we've done to save money:
  • We have neglected to get a satellite dish, as was the original plan. I think we get along rather nicely with our rabbit ear antennae and Hulu.
  • Netflix. I know this sounds weird, like "why are you adding another cost?" but here's a little secret that you may not have heard me complain about in the last day or two: We live in the middle of nowhere! I'm always wanting to go see a movie or go do this or go do that and to get to the nearest town requires at least a 20 to 30 minute drive. Now when I want to "DO SOMETHING!" we stream a movie. Best $8.99 a month we can spend!
  • Limited our eating out. It's no secret, Dusty and I are foodies. We love eating out! However, the new and improved budget caps our "eating out funds" and lends more money to our "grocery" fund. And it's really that simple.
  • Scour ads to "comp" at Wal-mart. For instance, this week I bought milk. At Wal-Mart it was $2.19. But if you tell them at the register, "At Kroger it's $1.98" they'll pull out the Kroger ad and viola! You've done comp-ed yourself.
Here are some things that I would like to do, but haven't yet:
  • Find a cheaper cell phone plan.
  • Become a crazy coupon lady. We were buying sunscreen recently and there was this lady checking out in front of us who had a stack of coupons about a foot tall. I was nosy and peeked at her receipt and she saved $137! Are you kidding me?!
  • Sell Dusty's car. Note this hasn't happened yet and probably never will. But I can't remember the last time we used that thing. It's just been sitting in the church parking lot for months. Dusty has some good arguing points about not getting rid of it, so for now, it stays. And 9 times out of 10, Dusty is way more logical than I am.
So what are your money saving ideas? Any advice?

3 comments:

Adam said...

Umm it's from The Office, and good luck with the budget.

Ed said...

Dang, if it wasn't for not being able to watch Fox News and Sid the Science Kid (okay, might be able to get that with rabbit ears), we might go the way of Hulu and Netflix.

We get the Sunday paper and haven't had time to use the coupons, so you are welcome to come clip away. If you get that part down where you save $137, I'll start having you do our grocery shopping and split the difference with you. :-)

Andi said...

I saw a lady on Good Morning America who got a whole cart of groceries for 6.47. But here's a tip- if something is buy one get one free, you can use TWO coupons, because they scan both items, and get a discount on the free item. Genius!