What would you give up?

[Homesteadmom]

Poppycat I wish you all the luck in the world on whatever you decide to do.

 

[scrambledmess]

We have alot of extras we could drop if we needed to do so. I would already give up the TV as the only one who really watches it is DH. But he doesn't want to give up ESPN or SPIKE TV Cellphones could easily go. The internet could be downgraded to dial up or gone altogether. Our parish has dumpsters on most every road, so we could give up our trash service. The last thing I would give up would be the kids' tae kwon do lessons. They have been the best therapy for our oldest child. So we would cut ever corner possible in order to maintain that expense. But in the end, that would go to in order to keep our house and be able to eat.

 

[Homesteadmom]

Scrambledmess, because we recycle so much we could easily give up trash service too. Dh could either take it work & throw it in the dumpster there or I could take it to my parents house each week. It wouldn't even be a large garbage bag full. Maybe a 13 gal one. Thanks for that reminder.

 

[Zenbirder]

I would love to be able to give up trash service, but we are not allowed to! We have two dwellings on our property, so we have to pay double the fee to the county, and then there isn't any door service, we have to haul it ourselves to the dump!
Plus I have had two flats in the past from nails on the dump road! So now I take all the household and kitchen stuff to a friend's garbage can in town. Our town also quit recycling glass, plastics and all metal but aluminum. It makes me mad.

 

[cknmom]

We don't have sattelite or cable, we only watch videos and dvd's. We could give that up to save electricity, especially since our tv's on/off button is going so we leave it on always(i know, lots of electricity wasted!)

We have windows for airconditioning. In the winter our heater is set at 58* at night and 65* during the day. We maily heat with our fireplace.I have the first fire of the season going right now. It is 30* and supposed to get down to 25* tonight!

We buy a wood permit from the ranger station for $25 a mo. We can go into the national forest (when it's open for chainsaw use) and we can get 1 cord a month.

We could switch from coffee beans to ground coffee, I already make all our baked products. Just got a fall garden going. We rarely go out to eat. Usually other than going into town and DH commuting to and from work, we stay at home. We don't go o the theater or rent movies.

Our two main expenses are food, we like to eat and like to eat well, we could change that. I spend WAAAAAAY too much on groceries, it is a sore spot with DH. It's hard for me though, my ex gave me a $70 budget for a month of groceries for a family of 5, that's brakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks,everything. I did it for years. But I didn't eat much so I was always very underweight , I didn't drink milk so my bones became weak. It took DH a couple of years to get me to spend money on food and buy better more expensive things just because we liked them. I have gone without food many times in my life , so I like to make sure there is food around, just in case.

The other expense is guns and ammo, we like them around , just in case.

We could give up all alcohol, we don't smoke. I could take DH's credit cards away, he is the spender in the family.

We could give up our trash pickup. We have a trailer and could fill it and take it to the dump in town, it's free. But we live in the mts. and I don't like the idea of having a trailer of trash sitting for all the critters. Our pickup is only about $200.00 a yr. so it's not bad.

I don't know where else we could cut.
Monica

 

[Homesteadmom]

Our trash service is a pickup service that is a private company. When we first moved out here 8 yrs ago it was only $12/mo, it has gone up to $18/mo now. I asked aobut every other week pick up service & they told me $15/mo. Only $3 cheaper??? It should be a lot less in my opinion since I asked for the 1st & 3rd mondays as my pickup days. We have a 33gal barrel & it is rarely half full on Mon.'s unless dh empties his shop trash. What a scam for the trash co., I think.

 

[Beekissed]

cknmom, we used to store trash to take to the dump and we finally figured out how to do this. If you have an outbuilding or cellar its easier. We rinse out all cans and all food garbage gets put in the compost. This makes our trash virtually smelly free.

When we only had an outbuilding, we suspended a tarp in the rafters and just tossed the bags up in the tarp. When it was time to go to the dump, we just loosened the ties and the trash comes tumbling down. Since we had no heavy trash, this didn't result in busted bags or anything. Plus our outbuilding was not a tall building. This method kept persistant pests from getting into the bags.

Right now, we just put them on pallets in the cellar until time to haul away. No rats in the cellar, as I keep One Bite bars in their....one bite, no rats!

 

[canningmama]

Oh man hmmmm....

Well we only have cell phones now, but I would give them up if it was way cheaper for land line.
Netflix (a lot of Netflix here I see)-the library has lots of free movies to check out
eating out for sure-already trying to do way less of this
critters-I would start thinning out those that don't do a job, like my chickens that haven't layed all Summer and still aren't

 

[Dace]

I like this thread, you all have given me some things to think about.

We are already running a fairly tight ship. If we had to give up a few things these are what would not be too huge of a sacrifice:

1) cut back to very basic cable
2) cut out call waiting on the phone
3) get rid of the fax number
4)buy a wood permit and cut our own wood (this would be a first in either of our lives!)
5) already working on slashing our electric/gas bill
6) doing pretty well with the grocery bill, but could probably trim a bit there.

I'll have to think on it to see if I can come up with a few more!

 

[user251]

we have rabbit ears for tv (with the new digital boxes. what a bunch of crap) dont eat out, dont go on vacations no garbage pick up, it goes to work to be thrown in the dumpster. We could however give up cell phones and an expensive honda odyssey payment. we could rent out one of our 3 eating machines (kids) for extra cash i guess.