Being Cheap........Livin' on a Budget

So I am always looking for ways to save money, use coupons, Groupons, anything to save some cash!! 

I found a thing on Pinterest about how to save money and the hubs and I are trying it.  Every Friday we put money in an old Tip jar of his.  It starts out with $1 for the first week and $2 for the second week.  It is for 52 weeks and by the end of the year you should have $1378.00.  So we are both putting money in the jar.  I am not sure what we are going to do with the money but I personally would LOVE to go back to HAWAII!!! We went in October of 2010 and it was the most BEAUTIFUL place I have ever been!!  I plan on living there someday.............just might have to win that lottery we talked about!! Here are some pictures from our trip!

So I try to stick pretty close to a budget but lets be honest............that isn't easy to do these days.  When your paycheck stays the same but everything else is more expensive that doesn't work out very sell.

Could we live without our Direct TV? Yes I am pretty sure I wouldn't die from lack of having it.  But we don't have an antenna on our house to watch the basic TV channels so our only option is cable.

Could we live without internet? I know I can but ONLY if I have my phone with it on there.  If you take that away, then NO!!!!!  So on to the next question.........do we need internet and cellphones with a data plan?  Probably not but we are trying to sell our house on our own and I get a lot of emails on my phone during the day so that makes it very easy for me!  It is all about convenience and well lets be honest, it is really all about me!!

So those three things right there are the biggest extra expense we have and the are a WANT not a NEED.  I sometimes dream about the "old" days when we just had a land line and those old bag cell phones that we used in EMERGENCY cases only!  You know, like if you were dead and had to use it!! Things were so much simpler then!

Squirrel, (I do this a lot, I have never seen the movie UP but I think it is from that movie where the dog is distracted by a squirrel all the time) have you ever tried to do those meals were you can cook something and then make like 4-5 meals out of what you cooked?  I haven't either but it sounds like it might be fun.

Anyway, back to our budget..........I have tried to cut out all the things we can and save as much as we can.......however, we live about 4 blocks from 15 places to eat!!! This makes eating out VERY DIFFICULT for us NOT to do!  Not only is it not healthy but it isn't cheap either!  Just think about how much money you spend over the course of a month on eating out! I figured it up for us and I just about SHAT myself!!!  So back to the basics of cooking at home!!  I have decided that I am going to share with all of you what we are cooking at home so I am more motivated to cook instead of eating out!  Stay tuned!!

Piece and Chicken Grease!!! :)