Tightening the belt

With the promise of rising gas costs this spring, with our health insurance taking a 20% increase this year on top of a 15% increase last year, and with our real estate taxes taking a 25% jump it was time to see what we could do to counteract this within our family.

Obviously, we can take less trips and be more wise with the ones we do take to use less gas. Other things we have done is to elimintate extra stuff at our house. This has helped tremendously because it brings in extra cash and it is less stuff I have to clean around or move around or mess with in general.

Instead of purchasing V-day gifts for our kids this year, we are going to give them some green paper with President's pictures on it that I'm sure they will promptly put into their piggy banks. Why?? Because they love, love, love to save and they do have many lovely things to play with already. They don't need a box of chocolates or a gizmo. They probably are hoping to visit some garage sales and score big in a few months =).

We recently switched several of our lightbulbs to LED lightbulbs which offers a HUGE savings. It is insane that these new lightbulbs use 1-2 watts of energy!! They aren't in every fixture and can be quite expensive to purchase (ours were on clearance). We put them in outdoor lights so we don't really have to worry if they are on all evening in the dark.

One recent huge money save was kind of funny...
Our washer started to get very loud on the spin cycle. I knew from previous experience that this meant a bad bearing. Well, I thought the warranty was up and Josh kind of questioned it. He went and looked at the receipt only to find we had purchased it 5 years prior to the very DAY! The warranty was for five years. The repair guy came out and found 3 big things wrong with the washer which he noted without the warranty the washer wouldn't be worth fixing. Well, the warranty is getting us new parts and hopefully our washer will last another few years at least. This is a great alternative to having to purchase a new one. We know when that day comes that we will not purchase another one like our current one AND we will be purchasing the warranty. We don't do warranties on everything, but we do on cars and washers!!

Enough for now...this week has been beating me up! I have a horrid sinus head cold thing. I can't hear very well because my ears are popped, my face hurts, and I'm tired!