Fearlessly Frugal Strikes Again!

I'm on a serious savings streak, ladies. Last week on our trip to the commissary I used almost $32 in coupons. I essentially bought 2 weeks worth of food for $89!! With the exception of bread and milk, which only lasts a week in this house. I was stoked. In addition to that, I called up our cable/internet company and explained our new one-income situation and the representative signed me up for a new bundle (cable/phone/internet) that gives us HBO and STARZ and a higher speed internet for $20 less per month than what we're paying now. Awesome!! Brandon and I cancelled our gym memberships, which I was a little sad to do. Brandon was originally going to cancel his membership only but their cancellation policy was such a hassle (30 days notice via written letter, certified mail) that we both decided to cancel at the same time. So we're paying for the month of August and that will be the end of it. Then this morning I called up my car insurance company, explained that I got laid off, and they readjusted my annual mileage on my vehicle which saves us another $10 a month. That's $85 a month in savings!! Of course Brandon has been wanting a new iPhone for the longest time. He's been literally counting the days till our next phone upgrade, which is today.  So if we get new phones then that will bump up our monthly phone bill by about $25 a month.  But even if we do that, we've still got a net savings of $60 a month which I'm very happy about. 

I did some number crunching and figured out that we can have our credit cards paid off by February, which leaves about 3 or 4 months to save some money for a trip to England.  We won't have everything saved up by the time we leave but we should have about half of the trip paid for which is fine with us. It will only take another 3 months or so to pay off the other half.

I used to be so diligent with my budgets, having made them out all the way to 2015.  But in the past few months I seem to have misplaced my budget papers so I need to re-do them.  But from what I can remember, we don't have to start saving for the $18,000 till August 2013.  I think that's also the month we'll have my student loans paid off.  I need to do my research on our car loan and student loan balances and recalculate my budgets again.  It really helps to give me peace of mind as well as keep me on track for the goals we want to meet. 

I'm still working on the budget recipes and meals.  I need to get better at cooking dinners and planning meals based on what we've got on hand.  But it's a work in progress and I'm sure I'll figure it out soon.