Five Days to Frugal / Day 2...Consider your habits

I'm a creature of habit, and change for me does not come easy. My friend Lisa and I joke all the time about how ingrained some of my habits and characteristics are. For example, when I go to Sam's, Walmart, or Target, I always park in the same area or row. That's just one example. I won't bore you with others. Even though I am such a creature of habit, it seems new habits are hard for me to establish. However, since the big pay cut, it was good motivation to start some new habits =) Here's some of the new frugal habits we've taken on:

-Live like a mole. Do you really need that light on? I was on our utility company website the other day and their rule of thumb for exiting and entering rooms is the following:

For standard light bulbs, if you will be out of the room for more than 5 seconds, cut it off. For the new fancy fandangled energy saving light bulbs, if you will be out of the room for more than 15 minutes, cut it off.

-Use cash. Let me repeat that. Use cash. Use cash. Use cash. I fought this. I fought it hard. My reasons for fighting it...we've always lived on a budget. I track our expenses. I know what I'm using my debit card for, keeping good track of our checking account and balancing it. I know where those debit card purchases are made and why I made them. Yeah...well, the small little problem with that is the debit card allowed me to stray from the budget. A smidgen more than I intended on groceries here. A trip through Sonic there. It adds up. More than you think it will add up. I now take out cash once a week, and there is no straying with cash. When it's gone, it's gone...and painful. The cash is used for groceries, household and cleaning items, dog food/pet food, if anyone needs something like a haircut, if there is a gift I have to buy (birthday, baby, wedding), any needed miscellaneous thing, etc., etc., etc., and also for eating out...which brings me to point #3...

-We stopped eating out so much. Before the pay cut, we were eating out a lot. More than we realized. On average we were eating at a sit down restaurant once a week in addition to fast food once or maybe even twice a week. Now, we still hit the fast food once a week. And a lot of times we hit fast food due to lack of planning on my part. I need to work on that some more. But we've not been to a sit down restaurant in forever. And ever. And ever. Not really, but it has been so long that I can't remember the last time we went to a restaurant where they brought your food and drink to you and that you had to tip. {{Sigh}} I can't wait to return to my favorite Mexican Restaurant. When we do, it will be a real treat. I may dream of Shrimp Quesidillas tonight after this post.

-And finally, consider what you use and what you waste. Living on a Dime has some really good statistics on how much food that is purchased in the US gets thrown in the garbage because we don't eat it. We are working on that. We eat left overs more than ever before, but there is still room for improvement there.

So that's just four ideas. If I were to pick one out of the four for you to implement, I'd say it would be to use cash. You will just be so much more thoughtful about your purchases. You'll be using what the Lord gave you to manage wisely =)