A couple years ago I stumbled across the Grocery Game website and was encouraged by the idea of saving beaucoup bucks on the grocery bill, after a quick search using their zip code locator it revealed only a measly three stores within a 25 mile radius of where we live, two of them drug stores. That quickly blew that idea from my mind and we continued along doing what we always had. Currently we do most of our grocery shopping at a store called Aldi’s. The food is cheap compared to other grocery chains and they do have some deals on well known brands from time to time, but mostly it is from random brands I have never heard of before outside of Aldi’s that attempt to duplicate the name brand items. Our hope is to beat those prices or at least bring the cost of other items down so we can afford to cut the budget down to increase the rate of the plasectomy.

I know of Coupon Mom and The Grocery Game, I know there is more out there, could you point me to some?

This last weekend in January we were weak with our budget. With our first month (January) of trying to plan out our money we honestly thought we could do away with eating out. We almost made it. The realization is we didn’t truly plan for everything. We didn’t plan for the small trips that may have us out at lunch or dinner time. This creates a problem when you have three hungry mouths pecking at you for food. Your sanity can only last for so long with three grumpy kids when they are hungry. In hindsight we should have either forged on or stopped for a snack, instead we decided to visit Wendy’s. It was the first in probably over a month since we had eaten out. Between marching into the last few weeks of the holidays saving and spending money for gifts, the holiday meals with leftovers, and then ultimately being broke after it’s all over there was not a need or the means to eat out. That isn’t to say we have the means now. We basically robbed Peter for instant gratification and something else suffers. This in turn creates a snowball effect where someone or a group is not going to receive their entire amount due. It is a viscous cycle that is brought on by our stupidity and does nothing to advance the plasectomy.

Budget lessoned learned? You need to have blow money for times like these and it needs to be an adequate amount to last the entire month. Self discipline to not blow the budget by blowing the blow money.

Let me share with you things that we found and other ideas to stop the leaking from your wallet.

1. Scale the cable service back or get rid of it entirely.
Did that free promotion of HBO end? How much does your bill run? $80, $100, or $150 a month? Watch for those promotions on TV where you could combine your services. Give your local provider a call and threaten to cancel. You would be amazed at how quick they will offer to lower your rates to keep you as a customer. We recently did this and brought our internet service down from $44.95 a month to $29.95 a month for a year.

2. Cell Phone
Take a look at your monthly minute usage, text messaging, and premium services. Are you paying for insurance at $5 or $6 month on a phone that is 2 years old? Have an old phone sitting in a drawer? Use that if something were to happen to your current phone. Reduce your minute plan if you are not using all the minutes an instant savings of $20. Check to see if you have an employer discount. You could save as much as 22% of your service.
• Verizon Wireless – Dial #646 to check your minutes. Click here to check for employer discounts.
• AT&T – Dial #646 to check your minutes. Click here to check for employer discounts.
• Sprint – Click here to check for employer discounts.

3. Sell Your Storage Unit
Do you have a bunch of stuff? Does your stuff charge you rent? Have you visited your stuff recently? Your stuff doesn’t miss you and you will not miss it. Sell it! Apply your cash to your plasectomy. Two great avenues to get rid of your stuff is to sell it on eBay and Craigslist. For those items that are rare I would personally choose to sell on eBay as you have a global customer base. Craigslist is fantastic for local selling saving you on shipping and it’s free to post. We just sold several small kitchen appliances generating over $100 from Craigslist

4. Gym Membership
Bally’s Total Fitness, Gold’s Gym, 24 Hour Fitness are you a member to one of these chains? What does it run you? A few hundred a year? Have you tried your local YMCA/YWCA? What about running in your local neighborhood? It is still technically winter, but spring is right around the corner and it’s free.

5. Cut Your Electricity Usage
Are you using compact fluorescent bulbs in all lights in your home? Do you know how much electricity is being used by your computer, tv, dvd player, etc? If not, I would highly recommend purchasing a Kill A Watt meter to determine how much your idle electronics are costing you. By using this tool I have my computer that I was leaving on 24/7 was costing me $12-14 a month. That is over $150 a year.

Are you doing anything to stop the budget leaks in your home? Will the money you save by stopping these leaks be applied to your plasectomy or appropriated somewhere else?

She had arranged for friends of ours to watch our son and we would then go have dinner, see a movie and maybe a cup of joe. Sounds nice, right? We hop in the minivan(romantic) and start our trek to our friends who by the way live 20 minutes away, the equivalet of 12 miles. Keep in mind our van gets 20 mpg. So right off the bat we would burn through some of our budgeted gas money that is supposed to last between pay cycles.

Then, not more than 2 miles away from home reality sinks in as I explain that we had $18.36 in our account to make it to payday. Not enough money for any of our “planned” date activites. $18 and change will get dinner for two via fast food, enough for one of us to see a movie(I think), or how about say…oh I don’t know…milk, eggs, butter, the staple foods that you run out of at home.

This began the even going sour, we pulled over into the Walgreens parking lot to discuss what we were going to do. My wife got upset knowing that her romantic idea of quiet night out just went out the window. We went back and forth, until I finally said, No. We were not going to do this. The whole idea was to live like no one else, and keep on our plasectomy. We then, right there decided to have a cheap date. At Christmas we were given a $20 gift certificate to a local Greek restaurant that we enjoy. We drove the two minutes back home, ran inside for the gift certificate and went to the restaurant. The bill including tip came out just over $20. Things got a little hairy towards the end with our 16 month old, but it was relaxed and so much more enjoyable than the other idea ever would have been with the stress of that proverbial elephant called debt in the backseat.

The evening ended well with a night of card games and didn’t ruin our plasectomy.

$25 once a week, four times a month, works out to be at least 52 times a year. 52 weeks multiplied by $25 equals $1,300. Let me say that again, one thousand three hundred dollars, but let me tell you it was good pizza when we ate it. However, looking back and realizing the cost, I am not so sure.

This led me to start making my own pizza at home. I worked in a pizza shop during college so I had a pretty good idea on how to make a pizza, except for I was a delivery driver then and all I did was eat it and occasionally help to knead dough. I researched, read and learned a lot about making homemade pizza and I am not talking chef boyardee, pizza in box, or frozen cardboard. Oh no, I make the dough, make my own sauce, and milk the cow for the cheese(I am kidding about that one). I broke down the cost of this endeavor to the compare to the restaurant dining experience and get this a 14″ cheese pizza costs me a whopping $2.45. That’s right $2.45. Of course any toppings would cost extra.