My grocery store has a thing where every $1 purchased goes onto your rewards card....spend $100/month on groceries (not hard to do since I buy my dog food for my 6 dogs there also as it's the cheapest place for the lowest grade good food I can get)...you get .10/gallon off the price of their gas.....pretty good gas.

I also had my insurance raised by the company I have been with all my life (35 years). I found another insurance company to go with & ended up getting a little money back from what I had paid.

Sad thing was that I was figuring that next month I had paid off the vet bill for my mommy eskies surgery & thought I had a free month.....NOT. My breaks were making noise on my truck. Thought it was the new breaks I had put on a month ago....NOT SO LUCKY. They said they found the break hoses in the front end of my truck were separated somehow, they were filling with air & causing the breaks to be slightly applied......another unexpected expense.....grrrr. I have to save for my property taxes in October.......grrrr. Need to see if I can get the property value lowered. If I can't sell the house for as much as I paid for it, I shouldn't be taxed for more than it's worth either. Lots of places where one can look to cut their expenses also.

I don't have a TV. Haven't had one since I moved to KY.....I really don't even miss it. I play DVD's on my computer DVD player & so I can relax that way. Get my news off the internet also.....good enough to satisfy me & keep up with current events.

I only have a cell phone because the cost of a land line was way too much out in the country & I cut my minutes down to the minimum with rollover the months when I don't use all of them....makes up for the months I use a little more, but am always careful about how many minutes I talk on the phone.

Of course, I have a huge expense with boarding my horses. Once I get 2 of them moved here that will cut my monthly expenses some, but will then have to add the cost of food which is now part of the board bill & pray that I don't need to have a vet bill very often except once a year for the shots & coggins health certificate. It will still be less then the board bill I have now.....but at the moment, I don't have a choice in that & I am just not willing to give up my horses at this point....too important to my mental health.

Always will be trade-offs that we feel are very important.....priorities is what we call them.

Ramsey is a wonderful guide to saving & to cutting your expenses. My home T went over my expenses when we first got together.....funny, I taught her a few things about getting rid of debt. I bailed my husband & I out before we moved into our last house. I thought I taught him everything I knew, but guess he just didn't care because when I ended up disabled & not able to take care of the finances (didn't really care because I didn't plan on living any longer to care), he totally blew all the good I had done because of his stupid ostrich mentality of sticking his head in the sand & refusing to see the reality of the situation......grrrrr.