<p>2000/yr?? whoa. Must have tome premium coverage!!
We just granted younger s “freedom” off our USAA auto insurance policy. He loses the family discount and has to pay higher rated b/c of where he lives, but he doesn’t have to keep the coverage as high I we did (required because we have an umbrella policy) . We will see a nice reduction in our premiums, but I forget if what they told us was for 6 or 12 mos.</p>
<p>Steve–yeah. H and i talked and decided with the car still worth more than 8000, and the collision at about 500, probably makes sense to keep it. (no young drivers on the policy, thankfully. we have to list S who lives with us even though he almost never drives the car, but at 27 and perfect record, he doesn’t seem to affect the rate, thankfully.)</p>
<p>Having kids who have been financially independent since college graduation. It is very liberating to know that we can spend our retirement money on ourselves only without having to subsidize down payments for their houses, their future kids’ education, etc.</p>
<p>Buying clothes at resale and Goodwill. All kids have part-time jobs and pay for their own gas, entertainment, clothes (except for occasional gifts). Three paid off cars with minimum insurance. Only eat out once a week at local diner. </p>
<p>Glad we’ve been saving money but just found out we need major foundation repairs. So…we’re back to square one.</p>
<p>I realized I was throwing away a LOT of food so I’ve taken steps to remedy that. When I buy a package of lunch meat, like ham, I separate it into snack size zip lock bags and freeze it. I keep them flat so I can put it on a sandwich for lunch and it is thawed by lunch time on the sandwich. I can toss some into scrambled eggs. I no longer throw away half a package of lunch meat every other week. I do the same with cooking. I don’t make a lot of leftovers anymore or if I have leftovers, I freeze them. My fridge is cleaner for it too. Instead of buying fresh broccoli, cauliflower and carrots to make mixed veggies, I’m buying a bag of the mix of them from the freezer section. I can take out exactly what I need. I am buying much less fruit because it kept going bad before it was all eaten.</p>
<p>“Having kids who have been financially independent since college graduation. It is very liberating to know that we can spend our retirement money on ourselves only without having to subsidize down payments for their houses, their future kids’ education, etc.”</p>
<p>We can only hope we are all so lucky!!!</p>
<p>library
coupons
walking or public transportation instead of driving (I could be a lot better at this, honestly, but my family members are pretty good at it.)
one car (2006)
only two small pets (love big dogs, but they eat a lot!)
only two children 
no alcohol, cigarettes or soda
pray (for good luck with home maintenance issues!)
camping instead of flying+hotels
S said he didn’t want “stuff” this year, god bless him, (just some good eating!) so I took him up on that! - kept it minimal.</p>
<p>next step: cut down on my food budget, by ME eating less!</p>
<p>I’m one of those who strategically combine coupons with sales. I save at least 50% on paper products, cleaning supplies, and HABA.</p>
<p>The food waste is a good point. My husband is notorious for coming home with a couple pounds of grapes - when there are already 2 pounds of grapes in the refrig that he didn’t bother to look for. Lunchmeat can also be a waste - I usually buy smaller amounts more often. </p>
<p>Looked in my freezer last night and it is full - so why was I bringing more food home??! Told myself that besides refills on things like milk, we are going to eat what we have a home and clear out before I buy anymore stuff. Need to empty that freezer and start fresh!</p>
<p>I want to echo the public library. I don’t belong to Netflix because I get DVDs from the library instead. Same for books, never buy them, only get them from the library.</p>
<p>I’m with JustTryHarder (post 29). We downsized and got rid of our mortgage.</p>
<p>Also, I generally only shop at the Talbot’s Clearance Store – I just bought five tops for 23% of their original price! We rarely go to the movies and only eat out for very special occasions. </p>
<p>We buy cars and use them until they die.</p>
<p>We just get the streaming Netflix option - like $7.99 a month. We like being able to select movies on the spur of the moment. </p>
<p>Thank goodness my husband thought ahead when we built our house in 1995. He put in a second chimney flue to accommodate a wood boiler and also super-insulated the house. Oil was very cheap back then, so friends asked why he did that. He figured oil would go up eventually, and boy, did it! We bought an amazing wood boiler from a guy who just wanted it out of his basement. Now we cut a lot of our own wood (we have a big lot in the Maine woods) and buy the rest locally. It can cost $700 to get your oil tank filled ONCE, and many people need their tank filled every few weeks during the winter. We are saving a ton of money this way.</p>
<p>I am told by my kiddos that having ice in the freezer doesn’t make it full! While my 5 were at home the fridge and freezer and pantry always seemed to be full to capacity. But now that they are all grown and have their own places the fridge, freezer and pantry look very empty!</p>
<p>I have always combined my coupons with the weekly sales and stored leftovers. Walmart will price match any other stores prices so that really helps out with time, gas and savings. I try to combine my shopping trip with any ship-to-store pickups I have, and getting my oil changed there as well…along with pharmacy pick-ups, gotta love those $4 scripts! Our new Aldi is in the same parking lot as our Super Walmart so really saves time and money.</p>
<p>Finally unloaded my old truck so now son and I share my 2003 subaru outback. With him in med school he only needs it some weeks/days and I have it the other times. He’s about 40 minutes away so switching is easy and allows me to see him more with his hectic schedule. We too have an umbrella policy with USAA so our rates on everything are competitive.</p>
<p>No land line, use Magic Jack ($19.99 for the year) since we are out in the boonies with no cell phone reception. Have to drive up to the corner store to use our cell phones, so I just have a simple phone to call from and text (I can only receive text messages since I don’t know how to text). He has a smart phone but uses it at the hospital all the time and his scholie helps pay for it.</p>
<p>No newspapers, only buy them on Sundays for the coupons. Have a few magazine subscriptions but they are all free. We do have a small farmer’s market that I can walk to on Saturdays, sometimes have some nice veggies and fruit.</p>
<p>Since we didn’t have much disposable income when they were all at home I couldn’t afford any makeup, or jewelry, or alchol, didn’t smoke or really go out much. Old habits die hard!! Oldest will be 30, so it seems I have been looking out for someone much longer that when it was just me. I am still in my forties and this is the first time I went into a store with a list just for me. Needless to say it didn’t turn out well.</p>
<p>I guess I need more practice! I ransacked my bathroom for nail polish, blush, lipstick and came up with ace bandages of all kinds for all the kiddos, sun burn ointment and multiple rolls of tp. Found zero makeup, 1 old bottle of perfume and muppets band aids.</p>
<p>I have decided to empty my house of all their junk and see what I am left with, should be interesting.</p>
<p>Kat
also not a coffee or soda drinker so just tap water here, I love sweet tea but it doesn’t like me</p>
<p>Though they can vary depending on location (even locations within our city and suburbs) local farmer’s markets can be very economical for me in the warmer months. A quart of summer squash for $1?! I say “yes” to that!!!</p>
<p>Muppet Band-Aids, old perfume, no lipstick. Kat, are you sure you didn’t just clean out my bathroom cabinet?</p>
<p>Love Aldi. I set a $ limit when I go. Same for the farmer’s market.</p>
<p>The biggest thing we did that worked was overpay our credit card bills- sounds counterintuitive, but it got monthly mins down, plus reducing the overall. I also arranged for the bank to auto transfer $x into the savings account each month. If we don’t see it in the checking account, we tend to forget it’s in the other.</p>
<p>About car insurance: when we added the girls, AAA came in lower than we had been paying another company for just DH and me. When we then moved homeowners to them, incluing upping the policy, the entire bill was less than home alone would have been with the old carrier. Amazing. And we have used the car ins part, had excellent service.</p>
<p>Yesterday, I realized I can borrow magazines at my library. You know, cost-cutting isn’t bad. We go to concerts and plays at the local U, choose to have lunch out (when we do) rather than dinner- and the whole restricted budget thing reminds me of when we were younger, frist on our own. I find it kind of refreshing.</p>
<p>Oh, one other big way we now save: I finally got DH to stop handing out big $ to the girls, each time they said they just had to have some. They both have school jobs that pay quite well. We save that $ now for their special needs, the bigger bang.</p>
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<p>Our son was looking for something in the freezer and HE actually suggested that we not buy new food until we eat what we have. The problem is that H does the grocery shopping and I do much of the cooking. He comes home with very odd cuts of meat that were on sale, etc. and I have a hard time figuring out what to do with them.</p>
<p>Just to vent a bit - I really really hate when he buys a huge package of some kind of meat - e.g. 5 lb of chicken breasts or 16 chicken thighs (to save money, of course) then freezes them without separating them into smaller portions.</p>
<p>Missypie, that would annoy me too. But on the other hand, I thought the guy behind the meat counter was going to TEAR INTO this younger woman customer who was on his tail about taking 10 whole chicken breasts, cutting them in half (half breasts) and then packaging each of those in plastic bags and then brown paper wrapper. 20 packages. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t have the guts to go that far!!! To that extreme I feel I should buy ziplocs and do it myself at home!</p>
<p>missypie, my husband does that, too! We have several bags of huge frozen chunks of chicken. Grr.</p>
<p>Ladies, you need to modify your husbands’ behavior with some gentle prodding, such as placing the 5lbs. block of frozen chicken parts on his plate at the dinner table.</p>