UPDATE on our savings!

Last month the Penny Saver helped us trim up our budget and we cut some corners and I am so happy with some changes that we made, thanks to her suggestions and all of her blog readers comments! :)
I wanted to update you on some changes we made. One thing that I realized, was that we were sticking with the same companies for YEARS and we were just paying whatever we were supposed to pay. I never called around and never found out if there were cheaper options, we just did what we KNEW. And that cost us big time. Not anymore! :) I have to say, that trimming all of these finances down has been A LOT of work. I have kept a notebook, lists and it has been a time commitment but it has paid off! As a working Mom this was not easy to work into my schedule but it was important for my family. I am so glad that I did this!


If you remember THIS post where I switched up our trash service from $348.84 a year to $258 a year which is saving us $90.84 a year!


We switched our cable from Direct TV and Qwest internet service to Cox basic cable which was $2,102.52 per year to $960 per year saving us $1,142.52 a year. Geez we were paying a lot!


We were paying A LOT for car insurance with State Farm. They are so expensive in my opinion! We were paying $1,352 a year and we are now paying $816 with Progressive which saves us $536 per year! And by the way, that is with the same coverage that state farm gave us, exactly!


We were paying close to $900 a month in groceries. We are down to $500 now and that will save us $4,800 per year!


We did pay for school lunches which are just gross anyways and did it out of convenience and were paying about $900 a year for school lunches. I posted HERE about our laptop lunch boxes and how I got them for FREE through amazon. We are going to pack lunches and have some healthy fun doing that! :) That should save us close to $900! And my husband pointed out that even if we only packed them half of the time, that is STILL a $450 savings!


We dropped our home phone from Qwest to Ooma which we bought off of amazon for $200. We were paying $993.72 a year and we are saving $793.72. We only have to pay month taxes on ooma. There are no real bills for that and we like it so far!


This is a grand total of $8,263.08!! Can you believe that???? We will save that in a year and if we hadn't made these changes, we would have been paying them!!!