Smart Spending

In this difficult economic time, the solution is to tighten our belts and stop the spending spree. After seeing our net worth reduced by a large percentage, my husband and I seriously reconsider our budget. We've cut out over 30% of our spending and will be extremely careful until the financial crisis is resolved. We give up things when the price goes too high. When milk hit 2.80 a gallon, we started to buy it less. It's not close to $4, and we just don't buy it. The heat in the house is set at 62 all winter, day and night.

We combine trips—I rarely do an errand singly—when I go to the bank, I hit the seconds grocery and the country store on the same trip, walk or bike to do errands when we can. I buy second-hand whenever it makes sense. We go out less. Before we go out like 2 to 3 times a week, but we go less frequently now.

We rarely purchase "wanted" items any more. We buy only "needed" items. Needed items like eyeglasses. By not getting expensive glasses from the optometrist office anymore, we just ordered a pair of eyeglasses for only $8 and $12.95 frames from Zenni Optical. We brought it to our doctor and asked him about the quality, and they were high quality, perfect Rx, just like you'd get for $300+ elsewhere. We saved a lot on this item, prices are low because they sell only their own manufactured frames direct to the customer, with no middlemen and virtually no advertising budget. In fact they were even mentioned in a book here http://books.google.com/books?id=IizPul2vifUC&pg=PA119&dq=zenni+optical&client=firefox-a#PPA119,M1

With this, their product offerings meet our goals, that is to save money.