A Mommy Story

Now that we are mostly incomeless, seeing our bills staring us down is a little intimidating. There are still two more paychecks coming, so current expenses aren’t a problem, but the ones looming out a month are a little more frightening. If another job doesn’t present itself in a month or two, meeting those bills will be difficult. Aaron will be applying for unemployment assistance, but of course that will be far less than his old salary, and we’d prefer to not use it at all if we could help it.

(Yes, we paid for unemployment services with our taxes, so we should have access to it. I agree, but I still would like to take as little as we can. There are people who are far more needy than us. At least we have family and friends to rely on a little if needed.)

As a result, we’re making cuts to drastically scale back our spending so we can stretch these last two paychecks as long as possible. Looking over the checking account, it’s obvious we’ve had a lot of unnecessary spending. I’m finding lots of items around the house that we no longer need also, and I’m considering listing them on eBay to make a little extra cash and declutter the house in the process.

While I’ve always been a cost-conscious shopper, I’ve never been an obsessive coupon-clipper, price-tracker, or make-at-home-er. Cooking generally involves convenience foods – actually, convenience is the official word in this house, now that I think about it. But I know we may need to put some convenience and luxury aside until a new job is found.

We won’t be giving up our internet access, because we must have it in order to do our freelance work. Sure, I could go to the library to write my blogs, but Aaron’s job requires him to be checking news all day long. I think the library has limits for how much internet time you can have, and living at the library isn’t that attractive with the whole no food-or-drink rule. We have to keep our cell phones, too, because we’re locked into a family plan contract, and the cost of canceling is an obscene amount of money, with the possibility of a first-born child thrown in, too.

So I’m turning to all of you for help. What is your best frugal tip? How do you make your budget stretch further, not just for food, but for everything? Give me your best dollar-saving advice, within reason, of course – I’m really not into separating the two-ply toilet paper into two rolls to make it last longer. At least not yet.

Thanks in advance! (And whoever has been clicking on my Adsense ads in the past week, thank you. I’ve never had that many clicks before. You’re very kind!)

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Today is the last day to enter my Mabel’s Labels contest over at Mommy’s Must Haves. Contest closes at midnight tonight! Also check out my review of the Step 2 Sand & Water Cart. I’ve got a new contest coming up later this week, too.