Last month, we shared with you how Savings.com posted their Savings Pledge – a unique way in which they are attempting to help families become more financially savvy. We were asked as 2011 Deal Pros if we would partner with them in sharing this message. We shared this with you then and encouraged you to participate – all you need to do is check out their Savings Pledge on Facebook and pledge how much you plan to save each week.
So we asked you to take the pledge and to even share what you are pledging to save for. But, you may have noticed that we didn’t reveal our families Savings Pledge! Well, we had a good reason at the time. Just last week we shared some news about our own financial goals for 2011.
Since becoming debt-free, it is amazing how your world can open up! We went from barely living paycheck to paycheck and being very fearful of losing jobs, living under extreme financial strain and stress and living in fear day-to-day that without any paychecks, how would we pay our bills to having a breaths of fresh-air, relief and a huge weight lifted off of our shoulders. But that wasn’t the only change! It sparked a passion from both of us to realize that for once in our marriage that we had the opportunity to pursue our dreams and dream jobs as we previously shared.
So, our Savings Pledge for 2011 is to save additional hundreds each month in every area of life so that we can fund and run our own business from home. We have taken a 75% paycut (hopefully only temporarily) as we get businesses off the ground. But this dramatic pay cut requires us to tighten our belts even more to make this work!
For a time, here is our plan – we essentially plan to expand our weekly budget to be our monthly budget:
- Current eating out budget is $40/week. This is something we enjoy and since becoming debt-free, we upped the ante, but now we are dropping it again to actually be $40/month ($120/month savings).
- Our gas part of our budget has dropped from $210/month, down to less than $50. This is mostly due to the fact that I no longer commute 45 minutes each way to work and so this becomes an automatic drop. We will continue to drive less to keep it lower ($160/month savings).
- Drop our clothing budget from $15 each week to $15 each month ($45/month savings).
- Our food budget was $80/week as a family of seven, mostly buying organic and natural groceries. We plan to drop this down to $50/week for $200/month ($160/month savings).
- We also trimmed our utilities, extra curricular activities and entertainment to save another $100 per month.
We are cutting our total budget by $585 a month as well as temporarily set aside building savings while we work on this new goal! This was a similar budget to when we were in the heart of digging out of debt, so here we are again 😉 Our budget has evolved several times over the last several years, but here is what it is today!
So now we want you to tell us what you are saving for as well as head to our little home on Facebook and simply make your “Savings Pledge” by clicking on the saving pledge tab on the left! Join the fun!
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