Resolution #1= Spend LESS, Save MORE

So for my first resolution in the new year was to "spend less and save more". I think everyone has probably made this resolution at some point in their lives. I know I have. This year I wanted to come up with specific and realistic things we could do to achieve this goal. In our current financial situation, we cut out all the fluff or extra curricular stuff we could a while back so now if we hope to cut back even more we're going to have to get into how we can downsize our every month's bills. Our cost of living. So here goes...

1. Our television, internet, cell phones.

We currently have ATT as our provider for all of these services. I went to work researching competitor's prices and tried to find one that would give us just what we NEED for a better price. With numbers in hand I called ATT to find out how to downgrade what we currently have to the most basic programming, internet, phones available. This was going to be a HUGE sacrifice for ben and I because we have the iphones which we are very addicted to but the plan is not cheap so change was needed...I called and told them I needed to downgrade everything and could they give me some pricing options on their basic plans. They asked me why I wanted to do this and I told them because we need to cut back in the new year and I was checking all the companies to see who could give me the best price on the BASICS. This is great...we went back and forth about them wanting to keep me on what I currently have and blah blah and finally the salesperson said they would bump everything down to the basic PRICING for 3 months if I keep my current service. To which I was like what? I'm gonna keep everything I have now but for the cheapest price? and she said yes and so I asked and what am I agreeing to in the future and she said nothing, just that you won't cancel your service in the next 3 months. Ok deal. So long story shot, we just cut our bill in half but we have all the same stuff. Having been a marketing major in college, I get this...they think yeah you're trying to cut back right now but in 3 months when your pricing goes back to normal, you won't remember! Little do the ATT people know, I WILL be calling again in 3 months becuase my resolutions are going to last all year! But in the meantime great! Thanks ATT.

2. Groceries

In an effort to save on our monthly grocery bill, I again have done some research on the grocery stores within 5 miles of my house. I found out that 2 of the grocery stores closest to me do double and tripling of coupons so those results narrowed the search down to 2, and then I found out that kroger offers a reward card that gives you additional savings AND you can load digital coupons directly onto your kroger card so they will be used whenever you go shopping. You don't have to carry all the coupons with you. So I chose that Kroger is where we will do our grocery shopping from now on. I went and got the rewards card, that also lets you earn money off your gas! Then secondly, I decided that I must get into this coupon clipping thing. So on sundays my afternoon ritual will be spent going through the sunday paper and clipping any and all coupons I think we might need or use. Then heading off to Kroger to do our weekly shopping. I do have to say that I have always been somewhat thrifty when it comes to buying groceries, I always choose off brands or whatever is cheapest or on sale so now using coupons adds another layer of math to my grocery shopping. Coupons are generally for name brand products from the manufacturer's so I will have to be watchful to see if it would be cheaper to buy generic or something else that is on sale, or to buy name brand WITH a coupon. I am hopeful that this will reduce our grocery bill though.

3. Electricity

I did some research on how we might be able to cut down our electricity bill, not really expecting to find anything that we're not already doing. Keeping lights off, keeping the air high, etc. I didn't really find a whole lot except for that by far space heaters are more energy efficient than central heat which I had never really thought about. So in the last couple of weeks we have used space heaters and built a fire in our fireplace and kept the heat off. It's been plenty comfortable enough (it's not THAT cold here anymore) but I'm not real sure how much electricity that is really saving. They had other suggestions like buying energy efficient washer and dryers for 5000K each, I thought that was funny...if I had 10K to invest on a new washer and dryer I don't think I'd be googling "how to save money on your electric bill". So needless to say we're gonna hold off on that one! One idea was to change out all your light bulbs from normal to the compact fluorescent energy efficient light bulbs. They have all this research about how much money it can save you on an average electricity bill. The only thing is those too are more expensive than normal light bulbs BUT I had a COUPON yesterday for $2 off so I bought one. Yes one is not gonna change my house into energy efficient but as I see those light bulbs on sale OR I have coupons, we will make the switch over. I'm not gonna go spend a whole bunch of money to replace light bulbs that don't even need replacing. So that will be a slower process.

4. Books

Books are kind of my entertainment. Reading is what I like to do for fun and I love going to barnes and noble and buying new books. I never NEVER buy books at barnes and noble unless I have a gift card. I get a lot of gift cards to there because it's pretty much (along with target) the only store I ask for and then I buy the really cheap on sale books in paperback so that I can make my gift cards last a long time. But now we went and joined the arlington public library (which is FREE!) and I'm really excited about it. We can rent DVD's and check out books there and it is just a nerd like me dream come true! I've wanted to join the library for a long time but it's harder than you might think to get a library card. You have to be a resident of the city in which you get a card and because ben and I have moved so much our drivers licenses have never matched the actual city we were living in. I very much look forward to this as a source of FREE entertainment for us.

5. Keep the Change

Finally, on to saving. Again because of our current financial situation we are more worried with less spending, than saving. If we actually have money to save then we have done amazing! But in an effort to make sure we are saving SOMETHING from every month. We enrolled (free to enroll) in this new program with bank of america called "keep the change". Every time we use our debit card for a transaction they will round it to the nearest dollar and put that change into your savings account. THEN on top of that they will MATCH whatever change you save from each transaction and put that into your savings account so for example if I spent $3.80 on something, they would round it to $4 and take $4 out of our checking account. Put our 20 cents into our savings and then match it with 20 cents from them. So I saved 40 cents without doing anything. It's not much but the hope is that it will add up and it will be so little that it will be money we won't even miss.

So that's all I've come up with so far on how to downgrade our spending and increase our saving. I tried to google ways to cut back on our water bill but all the things it recommended we already do. We have one of the lowest possible interest rates on our mortgage so re-negotiating that right now would not be beneficial. We aren't willing to downgrade our car or health insurance. In our minds those are very important things and we feel like we have the best of both of those plans for good prices. We have no credit card debt or I would definitely be on the phone about that. So yeah...those are my thoughts on spending less and saving more. If anyone else has this resolution and has come up with things I haven't thought of, let me know!! I'm on my way to being a frugal spending, saving machine in 2010!