Sunday, January 27, 2008

Re-making the budget...

Well, tonight was the first night I worked on re-doing the budget to find the money for the car loan.

This isn't going to be easy. I knew that.

Updated Quicken - our BEF is down by $314.82. We are in the $600's for our BEF, which is better than I thought. I used our money for the christening gown to get us up to date, too, so that was part of the "loss" from the car.

So far, I have found a grand total of $35 to go to the $257.97 car payment. Only 232.97 to go.

8)

I need to call the cable company - there's only a few bills that we can actually change, and they are one of them.

I'm also seriously considering a pre-pay cell for us. We never use ours - we only have it with us for emergencies, to call home or AAA if needed. Most pre-pays that I've found are about $10 a month (minutes expire, etc) vs the $45 we're paying now per month. That would save us another $35 - and then we only have to find $200 a month.

Only. Ha!

It's not a panic - we do a lot of spending we don't have to. We'll have to cut out the eating out to once a month (which is what we should do, anyway) and really cut down our groceries, etc. I have $300 a month budgeted for that now, and I know I could get that down. Gas...can't change that too much, although we need to look to see how the new car will be doing on gas mileage.

So - still trying to find it all. This week will be the biggie. We need to get it all set on paper before the first car payment is due on Feb 23rd.

Oh, and work on getting our BEF up to $1000 again.

no problem.

3 comments:

Wendy said...

Oh, I'm thankful to be paying off my dh's car next month. I've been so incredibly lucky that my baby has been plugging away for 6 years with no payment attached to her. I love her more and more all the time .... even if she doesn't have air conditioning anymore.

Wish you luck finding the extra money. I have no brilliant (or otherwise) suggestions. Don't you wish you could just plant a tree or something?

Jennifer said...

Kris, I have had a prepaid cell phone for 2 years and it's worked great for us. I also only need it in case of an emergency or if the kids need to reach me if they get sick at school or something. Give it a try!

mom_of2boys said...

I don't know if you have a Speedway or Super America in your area but you could always get one of their reward cards. You have to buy gas so why not get something back! Every now and then, usually in the summer, they run deals where you get $.03 off each gallon...works pretty good. I cashed my points in for 2 $50 gas cards at Christmas. I also save on gas with the Kroger Plus, if you have a Kroger gas station. You can save $.10 off each gallon but it depends on what you have built up from your purchases the previous month.

Those are the only ideas I have for saving on gas...besides keeping the correct amount of air in the tires, regular oil and air filter changes.