Families Trying To Cut Costs

As the economy hits more and more families and businesses start laying off employees or even worse firing more employees every family in the world is looking for ways to cut costs. As a person who hasn’t really ever been a “big spender”, I have been finding it hard to figure out where I can cut my already low-cost life.

First I called Comcast because I do need the phone in our house which is VOIP and very affordable compared to other phone services and I do wish to have my local news stations as well as PBS Sprout (since I am on the Band Of Bloggers team). Of course, I need to have the internet since that is how I make my income and am able to interact with adults, without the socializing I get to do online with adults my life would be all about my husband part time and my children full time. Every adult needs that adult interaction some how – the internet is how I get mine. Long story shorter, I was able to get my monthly bill with Comcast down from near $200 a month to just slightly over $100 a month and now that’s what I can say is a savings and a bit more affordable.

My husband and I were smart about our car situation because we have two 1995 vehicles that do not have any payments, we own them outright. My husband and I had to drive two hours for both our vehicles but we were able to pay cash in hand and own them without any car payments which is worth the two hours drive each way for two vehicles!

Next, we have car insurance, an electric bill, mortgage and of course home owners insurance. None of those bills are really negotiable and so I moved on to our grocery bill.

I am famous for going daily to buy dinner for the night and when I do that I am too lazy to drive 20 minutes to Walmart or Market Basket in the next town over to get my dinner, rather I go downtown to McDonald’s (YUCK) or our local grocery store. This “local grocery store” is not always so affordable, they are nearly $1 more on any item I purchase and so it was easy to go spend $60 on items needed and one meal.

My mission to start cutting costs must be focused on ways to save money on groceries. I am not writing this to tell you I am becoming a frugal blogger because I have no clue how to really be frugal but I am telling you that I want to share my journey to cut my grocery bill down a bit while still being able to fill my cabinets with healthy food choices.

I was talking on Twitter the other day about how I spent $137 this week on groceries for five and I had a huge response. One person asked if I have teens and that if I do she was coming over to “study”. Another mentioned she started meal planning and that has really worked for her. Well as I got to tweeting with this person who is known as @ashryel on twitter and has her own blog I found out that she started meal planning after watching the Food Network and although sticking to the “menu” is hard she has done well-saving money with this “Menu Planning” idea.

I have invited @ashryel to guest blog for Happily Blended about her personal story because I am interested to hear more about how she manages to do meal planning and any other tips/advice she can share. I am not certain what day she will guest blog but I can not wait to learn from Ashlee.