Cut cable and landline. As I've mentioned before, our cable bill was enough to make Baby Jesus cry. So we got rid of cable TV, canceled the landline, and signed up for a $17/mo Netflix account that gives us three DVDs at a time. Net savings = $120/mo, not bad, not bad at all.
Shop a little smarter at the grocery store. We call Whole Foods "Church," so I must confess that this is really the last area we are willing to seriously slash. We love food, we believe in eating well, and we don't want to skimp at the expense of our health. But we have done a few things that have lightened our grocery spending. (We include household cleaning and paper products in this line item.) I substituted some canned and frozen veggies for fresh - broccoli is just fine frozen, and canned corn is good enough in the off-season. I switched from canned beans to dry - canned beans are cheap to begin with, but dry are cheaper. And some of the pricier items we use, like soy milk and granola bars, we now buy at Target instead. Net savings = about $25/mo, not too shabby.
Don't heat the rooms we aren't using. I finally got around to it today, but I have been meaning to do this for months - since the summer, I think. I bought magnetic vent covers to block the heating/AC vents in the finished basement and guest room, neither of which we ever use. They cost less than $5 for a three pack at Lowe's. Net savings = TBD.
Don't go anywhere. It's about as much fun as it sounds. But in the short run, we have saved a lot on entertainment spending just by staying in. The Netflix subscription certainly helps there too. Sure, we're getting cabin fever, but we've had a lot of fun too. You can't do The Robot at a movie theater, and believe me, I've tried. Net savings = as much as we can stand.
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