In Reply to: Unexpected drop in income.. need hints, ideas, tips, etc. of ways to cut back. posted by I'll start the list... please add so we can all learn! on August 22, 2005 at 11:00:56:
that to pick up the local channels for news and weather.
Buy in bulk when possible for things that you use a lot of.
Go with store brands/off brands on canned foods, just watch the sodium content.
buy a meat scale for a few bucks at wal-mart and use that to divide up hamberger meat into one pound containers (we use this a lot so bought the gladware things that can be reused). Most meal kits call for one pound of meat. THis saved us a lot because we were acutally using what was called for rather than guessing and not getting 5 meals out of 5 pounds of meat.
If you go through a lot of bread, find a bread thrift store. We can get Wonder bread for about 34 cents a loaf here. Granted it has a short date (usually only a week or sometimes less), but still less than spending almost $2 a loaf at the grocery store.
Cut back the options on the phones and as you said get rid of as many extra phone lines. Our local phone company was charging almost $45 a month for just BASIC local service then we had long distance to pay on top of that. We went with Vonage and get 500 minute of talk time for $15 a month. If we go over that 500 minutes it is just a few cent (I think 3.9) per minute. THey also have an unlimited plan for about $25 a month. Toll free numbers are free to call and so are incoming calls. For the 15 a month we also get voice mail, call waiting and caller ID. We have it set to ring our home phone and cell phone at the same time that way we can always answer.
To save gas, make ONE trip a week for groceries etc. DH works round trip 3 miles from work (I work at home). THat is all we drive during the week. On Friday or Saturday (our days off) we make our shopping lists and make one trip out. Also, if you plan ahead on your grocery list and plan meals it is easier to get everything in one trip. When we first started this we took the same list to 3 different stores (we usually have the same things week to week) and saved our receipts. We now shop at the store that saved us the most overall instead of wasting gas running between stores to get things on sale. Not counting the baby food/formula/diapers etc., just the groceries for the two of us, we can get by on about $30 a week for groceries.
That is all I can think of right now. If I think of more that we have done I'll post it.