Cutting Out

We are working on saving for a large goal. And we are trying to reduce expenses. I believe I am a pretty darned frugal girl already. So cutting more is worrisome…where? We live quite sparse already. What do you cut next?

We don’t have car payments, therefore our car insurance is quite cheap. We don’t have a Starbucks in town so we have no latte factor. We don’t pay for cable. We do pay for internet. But I dare someone to cut that from my cold dead hands. I bet I would still fight!

I don’t get mani/pedi's because it weirds me out to have someone do that for me. I don’t buy new clothes. I come home each day for lunch and cook nearly every night at home.

I unplug a good amount of appliances already. We could turn up the AC a bit and sweat more…

We could cut my cell phone, but we don’t have a home phone. And I drive a car with nearly 180,000 miles. I feel much safer having a life line should my beloved car go kaput.

One area where I refuse to cut anymore is on food costs. I am way behind on my Quicken updates and since we haven’t combined our finances yet, it is hard to get a real feel for the grocery costs, but trust me, I do quite well in this area. I buy generic, I load up during sales. I shop at different stores to get cheaper prices on certain items. So I refuse to go down to ramen or macaroni and cheese or beans. Nope, uh uh.

Help! What other extreme ideas do you have? What problem spending areas do you have that you know you should cut? Where do you try and cut small corners? What do you try and do when you can’t cut anymore but need to?