No Fat Here (Or, Ay-Yi-Yi-YI, We Have No Money!)

So I have been working on the Budget. That is nearly a four-letter word in this house, but I chose to stick my head in the sand after my initial "Come to Jesus" moments with pen & budget papers from Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover". That was a costly move, to the tune of $XXX in overdraft fees. *gulp* So I sucked it up again, put on my big girl panties, and dealt with the Budget again this month, and we are really sticking to it.

This time I realized that our chief problem, apart from our Debt, is Cash Flow. Mainly, it was a lack of Cash Flow that was negatively impacting our bank account and our lives. So, I have done the mature, grown-up thing this month and attacked the easy bills to give us some breathing room and help us achieve our total money makeover. First call was to the cable company, to see what cable could be cut to lessen the ouch factor to that $100+ monthly bill. High speed internet had to stay for DH's work, but I was able to cut out several tiers for a net savings of $14 per month. It's a start.

Next I changed our phone service from Qworst to the cable company, for a savings of $20 per month, plus an additional $30 over the next three months with their new promo rate. You can bet I'm going to call them again and see if we can't renew that "introductory rate" of $20 per month for unlimited local and long distance when the 3 month period is up. Then I called my cell phone company to inquire about cancelling my contract. That would have been a $275 "ouch", but the CSR suggested I could put my contract into hiatus for 6 months, for a net cost of $15. This will allow me time to save up $$ for cancelling, and also give me time to either find or replace my cell phone, which is still MIA. Odds are I will opt not to replace it if I don't find it, and will just continue to use DH's pay-as-you-go phone.

So by next month, we should see savings of $94 per month on our bills. Just in time, too, as our winter heating season approaches and I know the electricity bill is going to start ticking upward. There is further incentive to stack up all the wood on our lot and scavenge free wood from our neighbors, something we have been too lazy to do up to this point. But frankly, there is not a lot of fat in our budget. I am cancelling the pest control company (finally), which will free up another $33 or so per month. However, there is really not a lot of wiggle room. I talked to DH about giving up his expensive parking for his commute, and trying out the bus. It is a true measure of love and commitment that DH is on board for doing so, even though it will mean fighting his way off the ferry first in order to catch the bus home. That would save us another $80 per month! Every little bit helps. And my new strategy is minimums on the CC (consolidated to one with the lowest and also fixed APR, hallelujah!) and aggressively pay off the car. As far as Cash Flow goes, the car is a HUGE chunk, and once we free up that money we can really aggressively go after that CC, then the HELOC. That's the plan anyway. Stay tuned!