“There’s always a price to be paid if you are going to win” by Dave Ramsey

We have been budget geeks for a while now and have realized as time goes by, the idea of frugality or you can call it penny pinching gets fun or rather a $$ rewarding dare game to ourselves. We now have the whole year ahead of us and it’s not too late for anyone who cares to get on board and stretch the life out of every penny. Hey, you earned it with hard work, so why no squeeze it’s every possibility out?

So for our January budget, here are some of the few things that have us winning at the frugality game

1. Got to bargain our internet price down again. If you notice, some of these services hike up there prices at the end of the year, of course expecting the consumers to go with the flow and pay more. Not us, we called in and got to negotiate our price back to the rate we have had for a year. You know every $ counts towards savings.
2. Have maintained our Netflix streaming. Instead of paying way beyond the $19 we pay a month for Netflix just to waste our time watching the most current, we don’t mind not being on the band wagon of “current” tv shows as long as it’s saving us $$
3. Have maintained pre-paid phones at the cost of $90 a month for two (this is with unlimited calling, texting and internet) through net10. Love, love our package, plus saves us a lot compared to what most people have to pay with their fancy packages and being stuck in contracts. We also don’t have any added costs of a home phone that we wouldn’t need any way.
4. No speeding tickets yet again; we all know that speeding tickets will not only hike up your car insurance policy but also cost you extra cash usually around $250 if not more. Just keep the road rules and you will be saving quite a bit. We are as of January 2017.
5. Packing lunches for hubby; we have been doing this for years now and to this day (as of January 2017), we are saving quite a bite towards our savings.
6. Pool membership; we have had a pool membership for almost a year now and it’s been nice being able to go to the pool (which is nice and warm by the way) to give us something to do instead of spending way more going out to do other indoor activities. And for a bonus, it’s a great way to work out and excite our munchkins (they love going down the slide).
7. Hubby’s and son’s haircuts at home. It’s amazing the $$ amount the hair saloon will throw at you only to buzz off a kid’s hair in like 10 minutes; on the low end it’s $25 and up. Not for us. As of January 2017, hubby continues to give our boy all the needed haircuts right here in our garage.
8. Making and freezing popcorn. Sounds silly but I really didn’t know how well popcorn could freeze. January is one of the coldest months all year and it’s easy to want to buy extra snacks to munch on while watching your favorite show on that couch. Well, having ready-made popcorn (which is by the way crunchier) will solve that problem. Working for us as of now.
9. Not gone shopping for unneeded end of season sales. Just because things are on sale doesn’t mean that we need them. We were once victims to this. Not this year. Only buy those on sale items if you truly need them.
10. We are sticking to our written budget. As of the past few days of January, we have not spent money on anything outside our written budget. It really feels good to be in control of our finances.
11. 6 months auto insurance all at once; first time ever to pay our auto insurance for the next 6 months which is saving us about $12 a month or $144 a year. Not bad for extra bucks towards our savings goals.

Thank you and Good Luck on your financial freedom path.