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XP: Budget saving ideas?
We have not had a post like this in awhile, and I find such good advice from you ladies on things like this. What have you done/do you do, to cut down on costs? I will list some of the things that we have done since I went to reduced work time. Share your ideas!
-went to basic cable...although I miss the dvr sometimes, it is a huge savings and we do not watch that much tv anyway. Plus, you can get just about anything on the internet.
-went from Gold's gym to Planet Fitness (I will join the Y in the near future, when we can take advantage of more of the kids activities with Evan, but for now, I just need a place to work out when I get the time)
-We shop at Aldi's for seafood, cereal, and some other basic things. This cuts down on our Wegman's bill, which is where we do the bulk of our shopping. Farmer's Market soon for all produce.
-coupons!! I love coupons and use them all of the time! We use them a lot to go out to dinner too.
-We re-financed our mortgage. Our payment will not go down much, but we cut 8 years off of the mortgage, without having to do much.
-We shopped around for new insurance and our credit union gave us a much better rate on homeowner's and car, than what we were paying.
-We will be buying the Empire Pass this summer, as we go to State Parks a ton, and this will end up saving us a lot.
-Re-usuable water bottle and making coffee at home...saves us a ton, and then coffee out is a treat!
-Programmable thermostat, hang clothes on clothesline in summer, plastic on the windows (but now we have new windows, so hope to save some from that)
-Try not to be too impulsive with buying 
(I would love a flat screen TV (more for safety from baby than anything) and a Mac, but we will be saving up when we have extra money for these things) Trying to determine what is needs, and what is wants. Travel is where we like to spend our "extra" money). We paid off our last credit card bill, by doing some of the above, and hope NEVER to have credit card debt again.
Ideas?
PHOTO Credit: Meryl 
Re: XP: Budget saving ideas?
I am glad you posted this as this is a very regular discussion for DH and I. We are looking ahead to when we have a child, and will need to trim our budget.
We plan to:
cut cable, cancel the gym, join BJs
We currently:
pay all bills online (no $ spent on checks/stamps), use coupons, get take out from our favorite restaurants instead of dining out, buy wine from warehouses instead of the cute & pricy places, use Bank of America's keep the change (it is amazing how all that change really adds up!)
Great topic! We use a lot of coupons and we shop for our basic grocery items at Walmart instead of the local grocery store. We buy toilet paper and napkins in bulk.
We lowered our cell phone minutes and text messaging to a minimum plan.
We also have $50 each taken out of our pay checks automatically and put into a savings account. We don't even miss the money because its taken out before taxes so thats pretty sweet.
- Eliminated land line phone
- Eliminated cable entirely: we now do antenna + netflix + hulu over our PS3 (or xbox, or bluray player, they all work)
-Use netflix instead of going to the movies except for the ones we really want to see on the big screen.
- Planting container gardens for lettuce, herbs and tomotoes
- Cook more meals from basic ingredients instead of pre-packaged food.
If you can do most of your clothing/housewares shopping online - use bing.com's cashback program, and you get rebated a certain % of your online shopping bill - and there are a lot of eligible stores on their list!