Bleeding Cash

Like most of America we’ve been attempting to tighten things up around our house because with gas prices what they are its pretty tight right now. I think every checkbook in America is sucking wind except Exxon Mobile who made a jillion dollars off our high demand for gasoline. The money has got to come from somewhere. Coupons, comping at Wal-Mart, whatever: at this point I’m pretty well open to most anything legal that will trim some of the fat from our budget.

Short of setting up my own still in the back yard for brewing my own ETOH to burn in my car or converting my diesel engine to burn cooking oil, the first place I had to look was the grocery bill. Babies have got to eat and so do Mama’s and Daddies. But beans are cheaper than steak and probably more nutritious, etc. We didn’t have to look very hard to see that we were bleeding cash like a US war time defense spending bill.

Our main issue really amounts to a lack of motivation on Friday. We are, frankly, so conditioned to just going out that it’s difficult to break out the pots and pans on Friday afternoon and whip up even a quick meal. Burger, taco, and pizza joints are not only the ruin of your waistline they can wipe out your budget. Here’s an example. Four kids meals and two adult combos of our choice at the local burger joint that shall remain nameless runs $30-$35 of hard cold cash. You do the math on that one. We used to eat out at least twice a week and sometimes once on the weekend if we were feeling particularly unmotivated. That adds up to something like a thousand dollars a year or more for just three meals a week. Three meals a day, seven days a week is twenty one meals a week (plus the odd snack).

That’s the sort of ridiculousness we were faced with when we sat down and looked at what we were spending on food. I don’t know about you but I could use a thousand dollars. (I could use several actually but that’s beside the point.) Tomorrow I’ll discuss the first step we took that actually worked and what we did to torpedo it. Learning from your mistakes is tough but its just about the only way to do it.