Tips for Reducing Your Budget w/o Sacrificing Your Lifestyle

The spiraling price of energy, food, and other commodities has put many of us in a bind. Many families are faced with making tough choices to make their income stretch to make ends meet. Now, more than ever, it is important to be a savvy shopper.

Sit down and take a look at your budget. See where you can begin trimming back items that may have been right for you in the past, but just don’t make sense now. For instance, are you spending $40 or $50 on a gym membership that you simply don’t use anymore? You might be required to pay a termination fee, but it would save you hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars on a membership that you simply don’t use. The same goes for premium cable channels that your family rarely watches.

If your family loves watching the latest movie releases but you hate paying rental costs, here are a few options:

• Check out your local library - If you haven’t visited your local library in awhile, you might be surprised at the latest releases that are available. Your library gets the latest releases at about the same that your local video store does. Some libraries allow you to reserve your favorite videos.
• Join a video club. Netflix and BLOCKBUSTER both have plans that allow you to receive DVDs in the mail and keep them as long as you like. My BLOCKBUSTER plan costs about $22 per month and allows us to have three DVDs out at a time. Plus we can turn them movies in at the store for an additional five free rentals per month.
• Wait a few weeks and purchase previously viewed videos rather than purchasing a full price. BLOCKBUSTER and BuyBacks sell previously viewed DVDs for as little as $4.

If you think about it there are probably several others ways you can easily cut back your family budget. Need a few more tips? Read “Beating the Budget Crunch” here.

Roxanne