2009 was year of pay cuts and recession. There was only bad news everywhere. Layoffs, budget were very common things to discuss.
I was fortunate enough to survive without any pay cut or layoff but my DH took a pay cut of 20%. Since we manage our finances jointly, it was sure to impact my budget. We are not living paycheck to paycheck, hence this pay cut didn’t mean that we need to borrow money for daily needs, but it meant one of the following two things:
1)We need to slow savings for goals and future.
2)Or we need to cut down expenses to accommodate this reduction.
We opted for the tougher one, i.e. reducing the expenses. Taking a glimpse of our monthly spending, we knew the places where we should be able to cut without much effort and they were:
1)Eating Out
2)Petrol Cost
3)Electricity Bill
We were spending around 3-5K monthly on eating out, excluding the lunches that we both eat at our work places. I planned that it has to go to 1K monthly and I also have to reduce lunch cost at workplace.
1)I started packing dinner leftovers for lunch.
2)I started packing some fruits to work, to avoid urge to buy the snacks whenever I am hungry.
3)DH can’t eat packed food, so he continued to pick his lunch fresh from cafeteria at his place.
4)I was a bad cook or rather not a cook at all. I started to learn cooking. I subscribed to Tarla Dalal and Sanjeev Kapoor’s site and started trying the recipe that I used to get in email each week.
5)For basic dishes, I found recipes through Internet and started trying same.
First two measures reduced our 6K personal charges to 4K, saving me 2K and last two changes helped me in more then one way. I have become a much better cook in the process of saving money and we are eating healthy. Thanks to Tarla Dalal , now I am capable of making a 4 course meal for my DH. :)
I was fortunate enough to survive without any pay cut or layoff but my DH took a pay cut of 20%. Since we manage our finances jointly, it was sure to impact my budget. We are not living paycheck to paycheck, hence this pay cut didn’t mean that we need to borrow money for daily needs, but it meant one of the following two things:
1)We need to slow savings for goals and future.
2)Or we need to cut down expenses to accommodate this reduction.
We opted for the tougher one, i.e. reducing the expenses. Taking a glimpse of our monthly spending, we knew the places where we should be able to cut without much effort and they were:
1)Eating Out
2)Petrol Cost
3)Electricity Bill
We were spending around 3-5K monthly on eating out, excluding the lunches that we both eat at our work places. I planned that it has to go to 1K monthly and I also have to reduce lunch cost at workplace.
1)I started packing dinner leftovers for lunch.
2)I started packing some fruits to work, to avoid urge to buy the snacks whenever I am hungry.
3)DH can’t eat packed food, so he continued to pick his lunch fresh from cafeteria at his place.
4)I was a bad cook or rather not a cook at all. I started to learn cooking. I subscribed to Tarla Dalal and Sanjeev Kapoor’s site and started trying the recipe that I used to get in email each week.
5)For basic dishes, I found recipes through Internet and started trying same.
First two measures reduced our 6K personal charges to 4K, saving me 2K and last two changes helped me in more then one way. I have become a much better cook in the process of saving money and we are eating healthy. Thanks to Tarla Dalal , now I am capable of making a 4 course meal for my DH. :)
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