Saturday, March 27, 2010

Belt tightening time. . .

. . .for not only our wallets, but our waists as well. K and I are both overweight....yes I'll say it (the word I hate so much) - obese. To top it off our spending is out of control - mostly on fast food and grocery/household items. So here's our first step towards eating better and spending less:

1. Bye-bye satelite TV - yes, at the end of April we're cancelling our subscription to DISH Network. Paying $80/mo to lay around and get fat watching TV is not in our best interest budget and health wise. So, it's gone. We've decided instead to going a local gym that has free babysitting for $35/mo for the whole family. Even if we use another $20 to rent movies, TV shows or even Wii games we're still saving $15-20/mo.

2. Good bye one cell phone - we each currently have one at $40/mo each it's a luxary we can no longer aford. We've researched and talked to a few friends and we'll be getting the MagicJack to establish a home phone. The one cell phone we'll keep I will mostly use since I work outside of the home. However we may even get rid of it by year-end.

3. Good-bye Hy-Vee and hello Aldi - we've shopped there occasionally in the past, but we do the bulk of our shopping at Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee. This is mostly due to convenience - they're w/in 3 miles of our house. Aldi on the other hand is 10 miles away. However, if we go there once a month to stock up on basics: canned veggies/fruit, b-fast items, non-parishable snacks, condiments, etc we can save at least 20% on our current monthly grocery bill. (FWIW - these are items we buy generic or store brand already.)

4. www.AngelFoodMinistries.com - we've tried this for the last 2mos and have been pleased. Now I wouldn't make a complete meal out of everything we've bought, but their food is a good cheap addition to our meals. K, who is very picky when it comes to his steaks, etc, was very pleased with the steaks, porkchops, hamburgers, etc we've purchased and grilled. They do offer fresh fruit/veggies but I prefer to buy them when we need them.

We still need to work on a monthly meal plan that I figure we'll need to fine tune each week depending on my work schedule, custody, holidays, kid's soccer schedule, etc. Another goal is to start using my crockpot more. Then hopefully by May we can rein in our spending even more.

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