It suddenly dawned on me today that in two years, FGG will be 18.
That means no more child support.
And while I've still been living below my means, with the rising costs of food, gas, etc., it's getting harder and harder to have that little extra bit of play money.
Plus, with my folks now retired and living on a fixed income, that bit of help they provided by helping buy FGG clothes needs to come to an end. At least according to my Dad, my Mom still continues to spoil FGG rotten.
The child support has definitely helped me be able to do things for FGG that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise but now it's time to start getting serious about saving money since once the child support ends, I'll be 100% on the hook for FGG's expenses like college, etc.
The hard part is trying to figure out what to cut, what to keep and how to stretch that buck until it squeals like a pig. Especially now that I've heard a rumor that my apartment complex will no longer be paying for steam heat starting sometime in 2010, which means I'll be paying higher power bills. Will come at a bad time since AmerenIP is asking for yet another rate hike. Having paid heat has been a godsend since I'm extremely intolerant to cold due to the fibro.
So I'm looking at an increase in my power bill, my insurance goes up next month due to FGG getting his license and you never know when Crapcast will increase their rates again.
Going to have to take a serious look at the budget & make some cuts. Cable/internet probably won't get cut since we both need internet for work/school stuff and the cable tv is cheap entertainment, especially for FGG the sports nut. I don't have HBO or anything like that, just a fairly basic package that allows me to have stuff like HGTV, The History Channel and AMC. We also got Netflix recently that will come in really handy this winter when we go into hibernation mode. FGG can watch stuff on his Xbox 360 and I can catch up on TV shows I miss.
I think the biggest cut will have to be in the grocery department. When I first moved in here, I shopped at Aldi a lot and saved a lot of $ that way. I think I may go back to buying and stocking up on the basics there. It's a lot easier to plan meals and cook from scratch when you actually have stuff in the pantry. Of course, that means FGG will have to get used to non brand name cereal but he'll live.
Debating on the whole buying in bulk thing and joining Sam's club. It seems like we go through stuff like toliet paper/kleenex/soap pretty quickly around here so it might be worth it to stock up on stuff like that. I never seem to manage to catch sales on those things at Target/CVS.
And I'm going to start being more creative as far as meal planning/cooking goes. I think I'm going to go back to cooking for the week on Sundays and planning dishes around leftovers. I just need to find recipes using leftovers that aren't calorie/carb filled since FGG and I both are serious about losing some weight this winter.
And I think the once a week fast food/pizza night may get down to once a month. I'm sure I can figure out how to make pizza at home and that would be a great family project for FGG & me.
I'm throwing it out to my readers, what are some of your best budget busting tips as far as meals/stocking up goes?
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