A friend of mine recently found out that her husband's company is eliminating his position. Thankfully, they are not eliminating her husband. Unfortunately, the new position that he has been offered does not have the same pay scale. They have to figure out how to make ends meet on $600 less each month. The wife does not work outside the home, and they have a few children. They don't live outside their means, but they do have some debt from their schooling. Other than that, they have a mortgage and a car payment. She asked for some creative ways to eliminate $600 from their budget. The most obvious ways are not the ones that they prefer. They tithe to church which is under $600, but would get them two-thirds of the way there. They also put some money in retirement each month which would get them half-way there. If they did not tithe and did not put any money in retirement, they would make it, but that is not ideal.
Her question is: How do we get there? She asked for suggestions. Here's my go of it from our own budget.
1. Eliminate Netflix: $6 per month
2. Eliminate internet: $40 per month
3. Eliminate one cell phone: $40 per month
4. Don't go out to eat: $40 per month
5. No babysitters: $20 per month
6. No more trips to town or the zoo (gas): $20 per month
7. Eliminate zoo membership: $6 per month
8. Eliminate Dr. Pepper and beer: $5 per month
9. Reduce the amount of cheese we eat: $10 a month
10. Don't enroll the kids in soccer: $12 a month
11. Eliminate subscription to Salvo magazine: $2 a month
Total: $201
Not even close.
I tried to think of other places in our grocery budget to reduce, but we don't buy "junk" food. We buy the cheaper meat (ground turkey $1.65/pound) and stretch it by adding beans and rice to it. We also eat chicken quarters boiled off the bone (and save the broth for cooking). I buy that on sale for $3.90 to $5.90 for 10 pounds, depending on the sale price. We do buy some fresh fruit, but really I don't see that as a place to reduce since we don't buy as much of it as we should, I'm sure. It would be really hard to get rid of some things like one of the cell phones or the internet. We don't have a home phone, so we would have to keep one, but we don't have texting or data on our plan, so we can't get rid of that.
I hope that this is helpful, but it didn't even get close to $600.
Anyway, what are your thoughts? What would you reduce?
Well, we eat out a whole lot more than you do so think we could 200 a month for no eating out. We could drop one cell phone and that would be 35 a month. We don't have a data plan, I could drop my texting plan for 10 a month. I could probably reduce gas consumption by 30 a month. If I dropped both my son's gymnastics class and my daughter's MDO program that would be 205 a month. And if you tithe by percentage I guess you could drop that by 60 if you were doing ten percent and your income drop was 600 dollars. I think that is pretty close but it would be tough to do. I would not drop internet as that is the best way to look for a new job if that is an option. It is hard to do.
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