somedays I want to be rich...and warm....

We are truly in the throws of winter now and boy is our wallet feeling it. We have very low funds, very low temps and we are very low on wood. We figure we have enough left to get us through another 6 weeks. Who knows, maybe the groundhog will be right and spring will start in exactly 6 weeks!! huh!

My husbands job has been touch and go and last week he only worked 3 days. But, then came some good news (well, for us). Just when we thought he was officially out of a job, the company (a family owned business) had a internal falling out of sorts and several of the crew have chosen to leave. After we had a long talk, he came to a very wise decision to be "switzerland" in all of this (staying neutral) and just ride the storm out. Upon hearing this, his boss was very happy that he stayed out of the whole mess and just wanted to work. So, now he is back to work (40 hrs this week- first time since thanksgiving!) and things are going well. They even meet at a new location, so we car pool to work everyday! We have saved atleast $50 in gas this week!! Yeah for us! My husband deserves a big kudos for sticking with it!

So, not only are we saving money on gas, but its really motivated us to keep going on the savings. I see on other blogs everyone else seems very motivated to do this as well. Some people have reffered to it as a "money diet". This is a great idea! So here's our successes for the week:

• hung all laundry by the woodstove this week. 4 loads, no dryer!
• tonight is community dinner night (we try to do this once a week). We go to a friends to eat or they come to our house and we share the expense of the meal. Its cheap and cuts down on the energy used to cook, if your not the host. Plus, its fun to visit!
• We have car pooled all week long- $50 in savings so far this week! Its an hour commute each way, so thats big!
• We've kept the woodstove going all week long. We've trained my sister to go over on her days off to load the stove mid afternoon. Its been 5 degrees out just about everyday, so this has been a big help. Today she will load it twice for us while we are out at our friends for dinner.
• I did a great job comparing grocery deals this week. We even found a new local store with great dry food deals, so we've been stocking up there. I stopped going to the co-op. While it was a really neat store, the prices were not a bargain. I just cant afford organic bulk coffee. sorry.

This is in addition to all the other things we normally do. My next plan is to reduce the lights we use. More candles!

Until next time.....