01/30/13, 02:06 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 6,495
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ItchingDuck
Back to topic:
I read through this thread and was interested at the different situations here. Right now, we could not. We have a $1,000 house payment, 5 kids, 3 horses,4 dogs a lot of cats and will be getting 2 pigs. However my house will be paid off in 5 1/2 more years (a total of a 6 yr mortgage). Then perhaps we could. Especially if we are raising our own dairy and meat. Interesting concept, and one I will certainly attempt to do. I think I would like to challenge myself now to see how cheaply we can live. We do a good job, but there is a lot to buy since we just moved in
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Challenging yourself to live on less can actually be fun. Setting a specific amount to live on like $1000 only works for some people. I find it is a lot easier for people to work in percentages and to do so slowly.
For instance start off trying to live on 90% of what you have been living on. Fixed expenses like a mortgage are pretty much just that - fixed - but everything else is optional.
The first thing is to know exactly what you are spending your money on. This involves keeping track of everything and creating a detailed budget. From there you can make cuts. For instance a few years ago we cut our variable expenses by just 10% (grocery budget of $400 cut by $40, clothes by $10, pet food by $10, entertainment/sports by $10, electricity by $16 etc) and all of a sudden we were putting up to $130 extra into savings every month - $1500 that first year. The second year we cut our variable expenses by 15%. Now we live on 25% less than when we started.
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