No, this is not about burning calories. It is about trimming my operating budget for our household. In order for me be able to stay semi-retired and be there for my kids (I love being a stay at home mom who works occassionally as a consultant to keep the brains from turning to mush), and saving enough for the 2 summer months when my husband is not working, I had to trim some fat off our budget.
I got my Internet/Home Phone/Wireless bill and was simply appalled at how much it was. The culprit was the Wireless. It was $106.00! We are on a Family plan where my husband and I share 100 minutes and we can call each other anywhere in the country for free. We have been consistently using more than 100 minutes every month, resulting in extra charges per minute used. I know that some may say to me, "why do you even need a cell phone?". Well, the answer is, we need one because my husband is a Supply Teacher who needs to continuously call for that assignment. It represents our main income stream at the moment. So, I decided to call Rogers up and asked if there was another plan we could be on that would provide us with more minutes in the package. It turns out, they have a new package called the Family Share $50 Plan. To make a long story short, the Customer Service Representative switched me to the new plan where I get 200 minutes (so we doubled the minutes), unlimited text messages (the last plan we were on, we had to pay by the number of texts!), same free calls between my husband's cell phone and my cell phone, all this for less money than I was paying! I get to save $40 per month because I no longer need to spend the extra dollars due to over usage. Bonus! It sure pays to call up your Service providers to check up on any new plans they may have introduced.
Then, I called up our Insurance company. In the olden days when both my husband and I were working full time, with our time commitments at home, at the church, and rental properties, I just did not have the time to examine my policies. Now that I'm a stay at home mom/semi retiree, I have the time to read those auto and home policies in detail. I realized that they had been charging me for extra extensions for ground water and above ground water damage. I've lived in my house for enough years to know that we do not need that coverage (we could have made a claim on it a few years ago because we did have some problems due to sump pump not being maintained properly - but now that we've got 2 sump pumps that are mantained properly, it is no longer an issue). So, I called them up to cancel the extra premium and was able to reduce my premium by $14 per month. It may not seem like a lot but that converts to 2 movie tickets on cheap Tuesday movie nights. I strongly recommend reviewing your policies in detail to see what optional items they have tacked onto the bill.
Another service I cancelled was the Alarm monitoring service. Now that I am home all the time, I did not see a need for an Alarm monitoring service. In fact, we had not been using it for the last year. That was another $28 per month that was slashed from the budget.
I did not want to cut the charitable giving part of our budget. We give to the ministries at our church, World Vision and Holt International. However, given our budget and my unwillingness to change being a stay at home mom, I had to temporarily suspend the donations to World Vision and Holt International until our financial picture changes. But, will continue with the donations to our church. Any comments on this would be most welcome.
Well, all in all, I was able to slash our budget down to what my husband's income is plus save $5,000 over the next 5 months to cover most of our budget for the summer. The rest will be made up with that wonderful Tax Refund that will be coming to us in February (yes, I do my taxes very early).
It feels good to have a budget that allows me to breath a little more easily because of the practical budget cuts that have not changed how we live.
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