Support raising as a means of living puts a different perspective on everyday purchases. Even though my husband has his fulltime job, we are far more aware of where our money is going now that I depend on who it is coming from.
Jordan and I have always lived frugally mostly due to the fact that I changed my life’s work a couple times since graduating college. We still live comfortably and indulge every once and a while with fancy dinners and day trips to Asheville, but those fun things are now even more sporadic.
We certainly don’t mind setting budgets and cutting back, it’s kind of a challenge to see how much less we can spend from one month to the next. Here are a couple of ways we have managed to cut back.
· Eat in as much as possible
o Jordan packs his lunch for work and I get free lunch where I work
o We participate in potlucks with friends usually twice a week
o I freeze any leftovers for easy meals when we’re too busy to cook
o We never turn down a free meal-unless it is only meat (Jordan’s a vegetarian)
· Cut back on entertainment
o We don’t have cable, it wasted our time and our money
o We don’t go out to the movies unless it is an extra special occasion
o We find free things like hiking or hulu
· Save on bills
o We shop at Earthfare for dairy and Kroger for everything elsebecause we can save on the 10 items for $10 special and we get points that we can use to save 10 cents per gallon on gas
o Online coupons are awesome. Earthfare has a coupon every week that is usually spend $5 get this free
o Our heat stays at 68 in the winter and our air at 75 in the summer
o We have a rain barrel we use to water the garden
We feel that living frugally isn’t just about saving money, but about living simply. Life can get messy when you have too much stuff to deal with. What do you do to cut back spending?
