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Making ends meet

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Lupercal:
I guess what I've learnt after being a student at University for almost 2 years is that you can cut back on the smallest things and it actually makes a difference. For example, I started drinking my coffee black because I couldn't afford to spend money on more milk - just enough over a bowl of cereal was my limit. I also avoided stuff like Weetabix or what I call "milk heavy" cereals that require a shit ton of the stuff to make it taste normal.

It was through stuff like this that I just learned to like things. Black coffee was originally pretty gross but now I love it. I always used to buy the cheapest pints when going out for drinks - it soon adds up. When I'd get funny looks from my friends for buying John Smiths at £1.90 a pint, everyone else was paying £2.50 upwards for stuff like Guiness or Budwiser. It does make a difference.

I also second, third, fourth the idea of bulk cooking. I manage to make a casserole or stew (sometimes nicely layered with potato slices like a lasagne) for insanely cheap. Buy a pack of vegetables for £1, half of that goes into one casserole, that one casserole feeds me for 3 dinners. So £1 means 6 meals, which is damn cheap by my book. And its tasty!

I'm pretty sure that some places do insane clothes sales every now and then, or you can pick up something discounted if a button is missing or it has a rip - something easily repairable if you have the time. Same goes for charity shops or thrift stores - you can always make your clothes look modern/trendy/classy with a little work on the sewing machine.

If you excersise, buy some running shoes. They may cost £30 or so, but the fact you can use them for miles and miles, year after year, means you're saving a hell of a lot compared to a monthly gym fee. Why pay to use a treadmil when you can use your legs for free?

None of this is really "new" advice but I kind of know how you feel. The reward is when you start to put money away and you can feel good that you didn't just cave and get say, another loan or borrow money from friends/parents. You'll get there.

StaedlerMars:
Heyayeaaaaaahaaaaaah, eat noodles everyday.

nobo:
There is a fairly big community on reddit devoted to being frugal. You can always take a look there for ideas.

jmrz:
I've just moved out of home and am paying off a heap of debt as well, so I am trying really hard to be good with money. As everyone else has said, the thing that makes the most difference is cooking and making your own snacks rather than eating out. Making casseroles is a fantastic idea and I have recipes for two that my mum makes all the time and they are wonderful (I can post them if you'd like) and they are really cheap to make! You can just put the leftovers into containers and freeze them and defrost when you want some. Soups work well for that too (although I've not made any myself yet).

Mum told me about the system she used to use when she was short on money. She'd take out all of her "spendable" cash from her pay (after bills and rent and such) and sit down and divide it up and put it in separate envelopes. Each envelope was labelled (food, entertainment, clothes etc) and she could only use the money that was in each envelope for what it said. If you have leftovers at the end of the pay cycle, that was great because you could roll it over to the next week and it just built up. You also get into the mentality of realising "I only have $30 for food, what can I buy that will utilise what I already have at home".

Elysiana:
Recipes would be awesome!

I like the idea about dividing up spending money so that we can SEE what we have to spend. I think part of our problem is that we do have a bit of a cushion and it's easy to say "Oh look, we still have this much sitting here so we're okay" when really we shouldn't be going all the way down to that point every month. Like we've got $1000 saved up and I keep that in my checking account so it doesn't overdraft if we have an emergency. When I get paid it goes up to $2000 so I'm like "Yay, look how much is there" but it quickly goes back down to $1000, then I get the next paycheck and go through the cycle again. So I guess you could say it's not technically living paycheck-to-paycheck since we do have that cushion, but we're spending the entire paycheck each month. I don't know how comfortable I feel about moving most of that cushion into a savings account because it's not as easy to access.

Which brings me to the credit card question - yes, we have one, and it is almost maxed out but we do pay regularly on it. In fact, that is a question I have - right now I've got good credit (at least, last I checked). We just got our tax refund and it was pretty sizable this year. Is it better to put most of that into paying off part of the credit card right now, or just increase my monthly payments for a while?

TSK - Ryan uses his phone for his personal company, not the day job. We run a poker company that has games three times a week and so he uses that to call and text people about the games - sometimes 30 people a night. We're actually sharing the cell plan with my mom and it's "only" $80 for the two of us, which really isn't horrible. I'm not sure we need all the minutes that we've got, but if we cut back on minutes, the texting cost goes up and makes it about the same in the end.

Right now we use two banks - we're both listed on each, but "mine" is USAA which doesn't have any brick-and-mortar buildings, and "his" is Wachovia because all the poker income is in cash and we can't send that in to USAA. But I'm starting to wonder if it would help us keep better track of our spending by putting it all into one account instead, or use one for checking and one for savings, or something like that. Any suggestions on how to split that up?

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