Before drastic measures let's try a couple of simple things. You need to go insurance shopping. Can you find something that is lower than your current insurance? And of course since you are not in that new car anymore the older car should be a little cheaper on insurance too. Eat more Pasta. Pasta is cheap and filling but it's easy to get sick of quick like. But if you can figure in a few more days a month of pasta you can save yourself a little money on groceries.
Now comes the hard stuff. If this still puts you over budget or with no room for "crap happens" then we have to get drastic. You decide which one goes, phone or cable. Yes you can live without either one or both. It is entirely possible. If your phone is how you get online you may want to get rid of the cable first but know that you might have to cut phone and internet as well. If that happens you can always go to the library to get online. (I've done this too)
However you get these bills down just know that it is temporary until you can get back on your feet or find a better situation. And whatever you do you MUST find a way to be putting a minimum of $20 a month in the bank and preferably a lot more than that. I advise at least $50 a month in the bank but that is not always possible. Think of your savings as your lifeline or your dream. Every time you put even $1 into it you are 1 step closer to achieving your goal of not having to live on next to nothing. You are 1 step closer to whatever your dream is.
Now if all of these suggestions do not help you enough then you might need to look for a different place to live. You may need to find less expensive rent or remortgage to a lower payment.
To wrap this up let me share with you what we are living off and how.
Due to health issues in our family we have hit a bump or rough spot. We currently are living off of $800 a month. I don't have a cell phone or phone at this point. I don't have a lot of extras.
Our bills:
- rent..........................$300 (includes my electric/cable/wifi because we live in a camper in an RV park)
- Credit Card............$100 (because I want it paid off quick minimum is actually only $40)
- Pet food/litter..........$ 40
- Household...............$ 40 (cleaning supplies, feminine needs, soaps and such)
- Insurance.................$ 30 (we have an older vehicle, used, and we have been with our insurance company forever)
- Cigarettes...............$100 (for now we are affording them and well it's my only vise)
- Savings ..................$100
- Food .......................$300
- Total.........................$1010
Now that goes over my budgetable money and we were struggling and shuffling things before but now we are workamping. What that means is we live in the RV park and we do a few hours a week of work for them to cover our rent and hookups. So that removes my rent from the mix. I also could, and sometimes have to, pay my minimum on my credit card and lower my savings by $50. I choose to pay these at high rates for now because I want the credit card paid off and minimum payments just won't do that and I need to get my savings up because we need a new camper and want to travel in the next year or so.
At the rate I am paying it my credit card should be paid off in less than 6 months. That cuts another $100 off of the actual total of $710 that I am currently at. In this way I have created emergency money to access only when I absolutely have to because I don't want to get that far in debt again. Within a year my savings will be in excess of $1400 and I will have a nice little amount of money to fall back on if things turn any more sour on me.
Now eventually, when my husband begins recieving his disability, we will be able to have more money in our budget and I will then simply save faster and maybe add the luxury of a cell phone to the mix. For now though we are living within our means and we have a little each month for savings and for ourselves so I am happy.
My last note on this subject is this. It's easy to get deeply into debt or under a lot of payments when you have money. Sometimes it seems that the more money you make, the more money you spend. However, with a few simple steps you can easily learn to keep those payments down and get your savings up for a rainy day.
We used to live in a big house with an equally big mortgage ($965/month). We had Direct TV with every channel you could get. We had 2 cell phones and our home phone with DSL. Our electricity ran around $200 a month and our heating bill on an average winter was about $2500. We made the money to cover all of this but never had the money to put into savings. We never thought we would need to worry about it or that we could afford to worry about it. Then one day everything changed. We knew we could not afford to continue as we were going. So we chose to change our lives and live simpler. Of course we had always wanted to be full time RVers anyway and this lifestyle choice is not for everyone but for us it works. So we sold what we had left and bought a used camper and a used van to haul it with. And those older used contraptions have carried us for 2200 miles so far and kept us warm and dry and fed. And now, here we are living on less than we have had to in a VERY long time. We are finding the ability to save and now understand the importance of it very clearly. If we can do it, so can you. Find what you CAN live with and without and make those cuts. I guarantee that you CAN live with and on less.
