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We have two paydays a month —- pension and social (in)security, but I pay all our bills on the first. It makes it easier to keep up with. Our Verizon is a lot less than yours with unlimited talk, text, and data plus two lines. I went to the local store and told them I would have to cancel unless the bill was adjusted down. They did. It’s worth a try! Our phone company offers just internet, so we have that as well without a land line. Our biggest expense is gas for heat and I pay that monthly all year long with an “even up” in May. We are working on adding more efficient heat for early fall and spring to bring it down. 

It's amazing how much we take for granted in modern life. Your example of your SIL and cake really illustrates how much of what we think of as "simple" is really a luxury. My mother was one of seven children and went to a restaurant exactly once with her family growing up. Nowadays, so many families go out to eat weekly or more. We go out around once per month and I feel like we could easily reduce that.

Look into low-cost carriers like Boost Mobile or Cricket for your cell phones! My husband and I pay $60 per month with Boost for two smartphones with unlimited data a minutes. They use the same network as T-Mobile, which gets good coverage in our area. Verizon and the traditional carriers are egregiously expensive.

I've been so proud of our new budget that I've made. I worked so hard on it and thought it would never come together, and then it did. :) It feels good to enjoy simple things again. I've been thinking about Christmas lately, and at Aldi's today they had large sticker activity books for $3.99! Anywhere else they would cost $15! We got an ocean-themed one for one of the younger extended family members, and it felt so good to get such a nice gift for so little money. :) But I have a budget challenge for this month with my son getting invited to an amusement park with his friends. His admission, usually $95, will be paid for him, but he's going to have to pay park prices for food and drinks all day, so I'm having to cut the weekly grocery money way, way down to cover it. We've got a lot in the fridge freezer and pantry, and the garden is producing steadily so we should be okay. 

I have been too stingy with buying clothes. I found out they wear too fast if you don't have enough. I'm buying clothes or making some to make sure we have enough. I have an old pair of sweatpants that I've been practicing mending on, but the seat finally got too many holes and tears to mend again. I'm going to use the material from the legs to make a whole new seat for them, inside and outside, and then I'll have some gardening shorts. :) I even got an audiobook from the library to listen to while I hand sew and hem them. :)

I feel like I'm hurrying, hurrying to get everything purchased, maintained, repaired, saved, paid off, done by the end of next year. I feel like my whole life got squeezed into the next seventeen months, having to accomplish in months what should have taken years. My husband's industry is headed for a bloodbath. He doesn't know how to do another job. We'll both work at fast food if we have to, and I'm planning for the worst. I feel like I can do it! I can make a happy life on very little. :)

We use Google Fi for cell phones. They are $25 per line, unlimited. They mainly use Tmobile and US cellular in the US, but they will connect to any tower in other countries. We live just a few miles from  the Canadian border and we sometimes bounce onto Canadian cell towers, and FI is the only one that ever seems to be able to handle it with no problems and they don't try to charge international roaming. 

I have managed to keep our grocery budget from going up. If it's made with flour, like bread and pasta, I make it from scratch. Avocados are now an occasional treat, when they used to be an almost daily breakfast food. We grow, forage, or trade for most of our produce, and we don't eat fresh produce out of season. It helps that I work for a plant nursery part time, so I get opportunities for free food from our vegetables and herbs when we cull them out. I also know lots of rival nursery vendors and we will trade our surplus. Keeping stuff destined for the compost is allowed by my employer.

I dehydrate and can a lot. I've been canning and dehydrating potatoes in various forms (cubes, shreds, slices all work well for dehydrating). I still have tomatoes, zucchinis, blackberries, and apples that must be done, but there will probably be other stuff depending on what ripens or makes its way to us over the rest of the harvest season. Our apple trees will be ready to pick in a month, and I am sharing some with a friend who shared with me two 5-gallon buckets full tomatoes last week. Today I am dehydrating homemade salsa. When we need salsa, I just boil it in a bit of water for five minutes then let it stand to thicken for 30 minutes. Dehydrating is easier than canning, but some things like jam and fruit, for eating plain is best canned!

This apple season I am going to experiment with making vinegar. If I'm successful, that will be one more thing we get for free. We recently experimented with making real sour cream (not the milk and vinegar recipe all over the internet, but the real stuff). It's really easy. You simply put 1/4 cup of a sour cream with live cultures (Daisy brand is a common one) into a quart jar. Top off with cream or a 1:1 mix of cream and milk. Shake well then set it in a bowl of the hottest tap water that comes from your faucet. Shake it once or twice over the next hour as the water cools. Once the water is room temp, take the jar out and set it on the counter for 24 hours. Voila! Sour cream. Now you just need to save 1/4 cup to make the next batch (we stick it in the freezer, just bring it back to room temp before making more sour cream).

Getting better at cheese making is on my list for winter skill building. So is winter sowing, becoming a better seed saver, and building and learning to use a rocket stove. 

We've cut out bills about as much as we can for now. We have our house payment, home insurance, car insurance, electricity, phone, internet, groceries and household items, car gas, pet expenses, medical, and a small amount so we can go out a couple of times a month. We have managed to get rid of all of our subscriptions except for the $3 monthly member dues to a farmer's grocery co-op. This gives me a big discount that I can use three times a year, which I use to stock up on locally grown organic meat for the next few months. 

We are big believers in fostering social capital. We tend to pick up usable things from the side of the road that others discard. If we can't use the item, we can usually find someone who can. I'll post free offers online or through our neighborhood Buy Nothing group. We have made friends doing this, and it builds up a social circle of people that help each other, which doesn't cost anyone anything but saves everyone money in the long run. 

I don't know what we will do if we have to cut back more. We could give up the small amount we set aside to go out, but that wouldn't save much. Internet and phones are necessary for work, and a landline isn't an option because there isn't a phone line run out to our house. The closest connection is at the end of the county road, which is over a mile  from our house.

We use Consumer Cellular at home. Our bill is $30.37 for one line with limited data since we have Internet through someone else. We used to pay $25.50, but increased the data a little. My husband has a work phone with Verizon for $95+ a month. I'll be glad when we can add a line to the Consumer Cellular and get rid of his work phone. 

Jenny Wren, I appreciate your recipe for sour cream. We don't buy sour cream regularly but my occassionally I make tacos for my husband and I hunt for the cheapest but natural one I can find. It can add a significant cost to a meal. Would half & half be equivalent to the 1:1 proportion?  I saw some on clearance last week but since I never use it I passed it up. I will have to watch for it now. 

I have dehydrated things but never potatoes or salsa! I usually just make my salsa as needed from fresh or canned tomatoes. This sounds interesting.  I was under the impression dehydrating potatoes was challenging. 

Stephanie G, you're doing great. You should feel good!

Katie P, my mom likes to tell me she remembers when they got their 1st drive-in. My mom thought it was dumb to pay to eat in your car! I can tell you when I was growing up we rarely ate out. Maybe once or twice a year as we got older and the budget wasn't quite as tight. I used to have friends who ate almost every meal out at a restaurant. And if they didn't then it was take-out. I can't imagine having to do that for every meal. They did do cereal for breakfast. They had boxes & boxes of cereal. The mom proudly said she didn't cook.

We had a clothes rack in China that we could scroll up and down. It hung on the enclosed porch, which also served as our office/ computer space. But the ceiling was high and the clothes line overhead didn't get in the way. It was very space efficient and clothes dried well. 

It was like this one, but of course, just a fraction of the cost: https://a.co/d/2gLVHjT

So much here to think about!

I am fortunate that a family member insists on paying my cell phone bill. I would however like to point out that places like Mint Mobile can reduce a phone bill by a lot.
I am looking around for a cheaper internet provider because mine keeps going up.  Nothing is appealing right now!
I keep a notebook with my income and expenditures and I am planning my retirement budget. I had a talk with a rep from the company that holds our work retirement savings. He was very helpful and said he could give me advice for free even after I quit work. I am also seeking the advice of an independent insurance agent for when I lose my work coverage for dental and vision. 
I am taking an internet class on eating the healthiest options of food. I can’t have gluten or a lot of beans and grains so this is particularly important for me. I hope to find the least expensive options with the greatest nutritional value.

I often have the fabric around a patch tear shortly after patching. It’s as though the rot keeps spreading. Does anyone else get that

I look forward to seeing what others are doing. 

Donna, your budgeting and record keeping always impresses me. I love those curtains and the holdback. I bought heat and cold reducing curtains that look like just regular curtains. Living in Wyoming, it can get very cold in winter and very hot (well hot to me - 90's) in the summer.

Your meals always look delicious, also. I have to eat gluten free and dairy free, so that costs a bit more. Sorghum berries ground into flour make a good 1:1 substitute for wheat. I make up our own gluten free flour mixture which saves over buying the pre-made.

I rarely go shopping as my husband loves to shop and I don't. I make out the grocery list for him. Unfortunately, he doesn't really grasp a budget. He is doing better now sticking to the list.

We could eat for a very long time with our deep pantry, but do need to buy fresh vegetables, dried fruits and nuts, and A2/A2 cream for coffee. I am unable to eat eggs, although I love them. We use bananas in place of the eggs for baking. 1/4 cup of mashed bananas is equal to one egg. There are many egg substitutes. 

Thank you for another wonderful post. I always look forward to your new posts and to reading all of the comments.

Glenda

Jenny Wren -- How do you dehydrate salsa, please? I dehydrate onions and garlic to make my own onion and garlic powder for winter when the fresh won't keep, and I dehydrate tomato and fruit slices, but I have never heard of dehydrating salsa. And thank you for the homemade sour cream instructions. :) I'm going to try that tomorrow with some cream I have. I have a Kilner yogurt-maker jar I have never used that has a zippy jar coat to keep the jar warm. It's really too small to be practical for yogurt but probably the perfect size for sour cream. 

margaret p -- aww, thank you. :)

My husband and I use Visible for cell phones, with unlimited talk, text, and data.  It is $25 per phone, and we each also pay $5 per month for our watches to have cellular connectivity.  Our adult kids also use Visible at $25 each.  There are no additional taxes or fees.  Visible is owned by Verizon.

When I was growing up cake at home was a special thing to have.  We had cake for each immediate family member’s birthday, but if we were having a party with extended family that was the only cake, so we didn’t have cake on our actual birthday unless it was the same day as the party.  For holidays sometimes my grandmother would make cake on Easter if the strawberry stand didn’t have good strawberries yet, otherwise we would have strawberry shortcake.  I loved strawberry shortcake so much I started asking to have it for my birthday instead of a cake with icing.  Now that I’m an adult I understand why my parents couldn’t do that often, as strawberries were more expensive than the cheap cake mixes and canned frosting from the store.

Grandma Donna, I love the patched towel!  I patch cloth napkins and sometimes I like them even better with the patches.  Today I got to know my thrift store serger (overlocker).  I made “family cloth” aka reusable toilet “paper” for myself (for urine only).  I’m challenging myself to use what I have.  I bought and washed the flannel more than 5 years ago, but then didn’t make more family cloth because what I’d already made was plenty.  Today I cut it, and for my serger thread I used polyester machine embroidery thread in nice colors to match.  When my husband bought me my (used) embroidery sewing machine as a Christmas gift he also had me buy a full set of thread in colors.  It isn’t strong enough for seams, but works well in the serger.  When I was sick my old family cloth got really threadbare, and I wasn’t up to hanging it to dry as one more thing to do, so I stopped using.  But the price of toilet paper is high and I figure I can save $5-$6 per month.  That might not seem like much, but if I can find 10 ways to save $5 per month that is $600 per year.  This time around I made the cloths bigger and then folded them in thirds after I sewed them.  I didn’t want them to be more than 2 layers thick so they will dry quickly on the line, but last time I made then small and found myself using 2 or 3 little cloths stacked together.  Making them bigger and then folding them means I have fewer individual items to hang on the line.

I used to wash up the dinner prep dishes as I went along, but now I am setting them aside and my husband is washing them when he washes the dinner dishes, so we can save on hot water and dish soap.  He still loads the dishwasher, but there are always pots and pans to wash separately.

This week I baked bread and made soymilk.  I don’t know how much money baking bread saves us, but making soymilk saves $40 per month!  I used a soymilk maker I found new in box at the thrift store a few years ago, for $12 after the half price discount.

One money saving tip I have for people who have a pet who requires wet/canned food is to make their own from dry food.  My little dog was having vomiting issues and we found that canned food helped, but the cheapest canned food had ingredients I didn’t like and the high quality canned food was way too expensive.  So now I grind up the dry kibble in a food processor, enough to last about 2 weeks.  At night my husband makes the food for the next day by combining one days worth of ground up dry kibble with lots of water.  It looks very soupy at first, but overnight turns into wet food like you get in a can.  We divide it into 3 meals and he is doing much much better.  I told the vet and she thought it was a great idea and said she would pass the tip to her pet patient parents if they can’t afford the wet food.

Gr.Donna, once Charles retires you might find savings in place you may not realize now but there will be higher expenditures in others. It seems to be a balancing act

I make my own yogurt because I can't drink regular milk but can handle yogurt and some cheeses. It is so much cheaper and easy to do. I am going to try the sour cream.

I make all sorts of vinegars, and have had great success making apple cider type vinegar. I would say if you are planning on using it for pickling test the acidity for strength, there is a litmus type strip you can get to test it. It is not a short process but when the vinegar is ready save the "mother" in a jar with a bit of the vinegar and use it to start the next type with it. The pineapple vinegar I made is deluxe in salad dressings. I will be canning pears later this year and will use the peels and cores to make vinegar.

I use vinegar in cleaning also, it cleans copper very well when mixed with a bit of salt.

We did not eat out when I was a child, my dad wanted to be at his own table in his own kitchen.

A similar grocery shop for the week cost £20.22p. The medium chicken will provide meals all week, chicken dripping, and then stock from the carcass. We have weekly rations for the two of us, 100g of cheese, butter, and bacon from the freezer, and make kefir daily. We have plenty of eggs from four ageing hens, and plums, blackberries and the first windfall cooking apples from the garden.  We make our bread, and I shall make a fruit crumble, a bara brith, and rock buns when the oven is on to casserole the chicken. 

Breakfast in summer is a small bowl of basic muesli, eked out with extra porridge oats, and fruit. In winter we have porridge with fruit. 

I enjoy reading Nella Last’s War. She wrote regularly for the Mass Observation project, an amazing resource of wartime diaries and reports written by volunteers. She managed the keep the family well fed on a low income and wartime rations, by keeping hens and growing vegetables in the garden. She would make the dining table attractive, serve soup before the main course, and a dainty pudding, to disguise the very limited amount of meat available. 

Donna. I was impressed with your patched towel. Another great idea to try.

I made a quilt in 1999 using curtaining fabrics as at that time my MIL made curtains for a business and had LOTS of leftovers.

About 4 years ago I noticed the top had seams starting to fray. I'd just sewn rectangles together. So I thought " what would pioneers have done" and thought " they would have patched it.". So that is what I did. Sewed patches made from small squares sewn together and narrow borders around them then hand sewed them on. You would never know it had been mended as the original rectangles were many colours.

I brought a stainless steel kettle and we have it on top of our free standing fire box. Hot water for free and for drinks all day, putting in the chicken mash etc

I really like your rocket stove. We always try to have several ways to cook without electricity. 

We have a 44 gallon drum cut lengthways that we use to cook on and also for the feeling of a mock vacation except when we are finished with our campfire we get to go upstairs to our comfortable bed instead of sleeping on the cold hard ground in a tent. We use kindling and wood from our yard and get hardwood offcuts for free from cattle truck manufacturing. Dried orange peels make excellent fire lighters, they are full of oil and smell lovely too. 

I walk my dog around the neighbourhood and sometimes find things on the curb. I have brought home a plant stand and some pots and saucers in recent months. We put out an old wardrobe that was no longer needed last week and it had found a new home within 24 hours. 

I keep my old flannelette pyjamas to make wonderful handkerchiefs as they are so soft. I cut them with pinking shears so I don't have to hem them. 

My family always gives me a hard time for pressing the sliver of the previous soap into the new bar. We used to call it soap welding when we were children. It saves wasting anything. 

Your patched towel reminded me of a story my mother in law told me. She said that when she was young they would buy calico for sheeting. When the sheets wore thin in the middle they would cut the sheets down the centre and turn the centre to the edges and sow the original edges together to make a new middle. That way they would get twice as much wear out of the sheets. 

My grandmother always used to say - look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.