Making some painful cuts

I talked yesterday about how in the land of self employment we either have enough or not enough cash. We are currently in the not enough category which has inspired us to make some painful cost cutting measures. For some these might not seem painful in the least but for me this has been one of the toughest and it was getting rid of my iPhone. We have currently put our beloved iPhones on a break in order to have enough money to pay other bills. I absolutely love my iPhone. It has amazing features, if I got lost I could use the GPS on the phone, if I needed the Internet it was right there, and perhaps most of all it showed the world I had arrived. We are currently using a pay as you go phone that only has minimal minutes on it in the event of a car issue. I won't lie I miss my phone. I miss the status I had when I pulled that phone out at the store. However, I don't miss our $150 a month bill right now.

Another place that has been feeling the budget cuts is the toilet paper category. We are a family of seven and were very accustomed to fluffy soft expensive toilet paper--BUT we were flying through the rolls of toilet paper. It seemed like I was replacing a roll every single day. We were wasting all of that soft cushy toilet paper! One day (I'm sure it was because Ecb's were involved!) I bought what we refer to as John Wayne toilet paper ( it's rough, tough, and doesn't take any crap off anybody!!) otherwise known as Scott's toilet paper. It was a miracle of sorts! Suddenly one roll of toilet paper is lasting a week or more. It seems like it's the never ending roll of toilet paper. Our toilet paper budget has now shrunk to only $10 a month compared to $20 or more. I know to some that measly little $10 isn't worth it but at our house a 50lb bag of chicken feed is $10 so this cut has really helped!

Have you had to make any painful budget cuts lately?