Educating the Wheelers

The first couple of times that Andrew and I talked about hunkering down and saving more money were the easy times. But now that we’re even more serious — nearly the fabled “gazelle intensity” — it was a little more difficult to cut.

It’s sort of like when you read the article that tells you can lose 10 lbs in a year by stopping drinking soda, and you think, “But I already stopped drinking soda!” (And didn’t lose 10lbs!)

To continue the weight loss analogy, you could say we’d plateaued. So we took a closer look at where we could cut back. Now that Andrew works from home, we moved the car seats from the CRV into the Echo, almost doubling my around town gas mileage. We had already taken an axe to the grocery budget and almost completely stopped eating out, but I started looking at removing more convenience foods. I now bake our own bread, make our cereal, and I’m testing out various hamburger roll recipes. We signed up for Saver’s Switch with our electric company and got a 15% discount there. We are seriously considering getting rid of cable.

Another big thing is finding ways to not go to the store at all. For instance, if I’m just out of milk, I’ll pick it up at the gas station quikee mart (where it’s often a loss leader) or have my mom pick some up for us when she does her shopping. Thus I get to spend 3 bucks instead of the inevitable 75 or 100 dollars.

That goes double for Walmart or Target and the like. A trip for a 10 dollar pack of diapers never seems to be less than 100. Any time I can avoid walking into a store, I’ve dodged a bullet.

With both of us having a hand in finances now, just knowing that you’ll have to justify your expense to the other person raises the bar on what’s a want vs. a need.