Budget!

The number one way to get prepared for any emergency or situation is to get control of your money. We have fought long and hard to get control of our money and bills and are finally seeing the fruits of it. Actually starting to get some savings.

The one thing that we had to do first is cut out anything that was not needed. Bye-bye cable! First thing to go was the cable. I bought a Roku box a couple of years ago and we use Netflix and there are also some great FREE channel apps for the Roku now.

We also stopped renting from the rent to own store. We had big screen plasma tvs from them - 2 of them! - 65.00 a week. WHY?? Hubby said we had to have the big tvs because everyone else has them and that we had to have them for the HDTV. NO we don't! I sent them  back. We have our older tvs back in the house and feel much better that we have an extra 65.00 a week to use for savings or stuff that we need. I had to dig out the digital tv convertor boxes to hook up for the free local tv stations. That is the one thing that has been the hardest with my hubby - he thinks that we should keep up with the Jones and he thinks that if he makes money we should spend it. It has been a long time of fighting with him about that. Slowly getting him to see things differently and see what is needed and not.

Car insurance was another thing that was a huge expense for us. Almost 300.00 a month. After we added our son onto it it went up! Plus he bought his own car so it was added to the policy. We called around and found one that was a lot lower, but when hubby called to cancel our current one they asked why and that they didn't want to lose our 10 years of service. Hubby just told them the other place was giving us discount for son being in college etc. Current company put him on hold for a few minutes and came back and told him that they had found us some discounts and that now our insurance for 2 cars with full coverage is now only going to be 140 a month!! YAY!!!

We still have a couple of more things to do that will save us even more money and hope to have it all done before winter. Hopefully next spring we will be able to move to our own piece of land. That is our goal.

Take a look at all of your expenses - cut out what isn't needed. Little changes can go a long way and help you more in the long run.