Pinchin' Pennies

We're almost 5 months into the year, only 1 month away from taking a small family vacation, 2 months away from buying THREE plane tickets for my sister's wedding in IL, and 7 months away from buying THREE more plane tickets to travel back to IL for the holidays....so I thought it would be a good time to re-evaluate our current budget and try to save a few pennies.


My first "cut"....the cable TV. Knowing that I could save $50/month just by eliminating HGTV (and Co.) was eating me up. We survived all 4 years of med school without cable, so I guess in our minds, we felt like we deserved this small luxury...even though NONE of our fellow Residents have it. It was nice to enjoy the dozens of channels for the past 10 months...but we really don't need it, we need the $50/month, however.


The next "cut"....the gym membership. Since March, I've barely stepped foot into the gym.....whether it was due to Randy's schedule or my lack of motivation. The early AMs or the late PMs were just no longer working for me, and since the gym's child care rule is "2 AND potty trained", working out during the day is so not an option. While I know that my gym time during the past year is what has helped me stay sane, I'm willing to sacrifice it in exchange for $40/month and find something else (I bought Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred).


Next....the monthly allowance for diapers. I have been cloth diapering Laney for the last 9 months, so I've been doing a pretty good job at keeping her diaper purchase minimal (still need to buy 'sposies' for when we leave her in the nursery for church, MOPS, babysitters, etc). However, Josiah has always been in 'sposies'. A fellow Resident wife shared that she puts her 2YO daughter in undies in the afternoon just to "save" a diaper or two (1 diaper = $0.25). I thought this was brilliant!!!! But because I was too afraid of cleaning up messes (I was no where near ready to start the potty training process, or so I thought), I just put him in a cloth diaper along with his sister. He loved it, he loved matching his sissy. But then the more I thought of it....Josiah is just 4 months shy of turning 3 (the supposed "magic age" for boys when they finally get the whole potty training thing), why not see if he's ready....that would drastically save our monthly diaper purchase. Operation Potty Train is a completely different post, so I'll save all of the specifics, but he's doing pretty well (with #1 anyway--he's still not sure about using the potty to catch the #2 business). We might use 3-4 diapers/day now instead of our normal 6-7 (3 diapers saved = $0.75).



Now that Laney is just 2 weeks shy of her first birthday, I will no longer have to spend $50/month in formula. I tried EVERYTHING I could to keep the nursing going (after all it is best for baby--AND it's free)...but alas, my body said "ENOUGH!". Thankfully, we only had to buy 6 months of formula, but each can adds up....and before you know it, you've spent over $300 on milk. YIKES!


And lastly, since I'm constantly doing laundry (adding another little person sure does impact how quickly the laundry hamper fills up), we're using an amazing amount of laundry detergent. In my quest to find recipes for more natural cleaning products, I came across a recipe for homemade laundry soap. I made my first batch this afternoon. And as soon as it cools, I'll be washing my first load tonight. A friend of mine makes her own, too, and enjoys it....so we'll see. If we do end up liking it, it could potentially save me $20/month.

And there you have what I've done to squeeze a few more dollars from our budget so that we can enjoy a small family vacation and buy 6 plane tickets in the next few months without gasping for air. If I add up the aforementioned "cuts", we should save around $180/month. Whoa!

What am I missing? What have you done to your family's budget to make your hard-earned dollar stretch a little bit further?