Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Do the Hard Things

Are you a working mom who longs to be at home with your children? Maybe you're a stay at home mom who feels like they can't make it anymore on one income. I want to encourage you to recheck your budget and make some hard decisions.

I've found that we almost always have an area or two that we can cut back on, right now the areas that are screaming at me is our internet/home phone and gas for our van. My husband walks to work and we live next to a grocery store-realistically I don't need to drive anywhere. I want the freedom to go and do as I please. I could easily get by on one tank of gas a month instead we use much more. We have the potential to save $100 a month just by cutting back on gas!! We also have cell phones that get internet so we don't need our home line and internet. We enjoy having those things but they aren't needed. We could save another $100 right there!!

Even when we lived on $10/hr there were ways to cut back. We had no internet, entertainment budget, cable, and only had 5 outfits each. However, we still had phone service, trash pick up, and found ways to eat out 3 times a month. If we had needed to we could have saved another $100 a month by cutting out all our extra spending.

It isn't easy to cut out the hard things. We don't have credit cards- none. We can only spend what we have in the bank. We have to say no to a lot of good things to enjoy the great things like having a stay at home mom and being debt free.

3 comments:

Georgi said...

But cutting the home internet might make home scholling a little difficult wouldn't it?

The Farmer said...

we don't use the internet for homeschooling. if we did we'd use it at the library.

The mom said...

When the need to eat out surfaces, we found that a lot of local cafe's and deli's will pack up to go boxes. The price is sometimes half of the fast food restaurants. Especially, because the serving sizes are usually larger and they can split a meal and still get full.