Surviving On One Income

If you already know how to cook you’re one step ahead. When you need to drop back to a single income household one of the first cuts should be restaurants. Do you really need to go get lettuce wraps two nights a week? Wouldn’t making them be cheaper?
So plan a menu, buy your groceries and whoever is staying home is in charge of cooking dinner. 

When less money is coming in, less money should be going out. To make sure that is the case you need to plan your budget. Figure out the monthly bills, the monthly take-home, the monthly extraneous expenses and then start cutting.An excel spreadsheet is really all you need, but if you don’t have Microsoft Office they are expensive and mean) check out Google Docs a free spreadsheet program.

Get Your Economics On Even Harder:

Keyboard Cat needs to play off the economy right now. – Me, Hi Liner
How to kick the economy in the face in New York – aliciak

Economy have you stressed? Here’s some ways to deal – Chelsea

I was a skeptic here as well. But as of last weekend every window and screen in my house is sparkling as the result of being cleaned with a vinegar solution. Check out how to create your own cleaners from plain old vinegar. tips and recipes for everything from cleaning to laundry to gardening products, the amount of money that can be saved by buying one large tub of vinegar is pretty amazing.
Viva la Vinegar!

Baking bread may sound a little scary, but over the past two weeks I’ve had homemade cinnamon raisin bread and homemade white bread. Both were amazingly easy and amazingly delicious. In addition to being delicious baking your own bread is WAY less expensive than buying it and you can make it WAY healthier than store bought loaves of calories. Give it a shot!

Even though being at home with what seems like a lot more free-time may seem like the perfect opportunity to throw out those handy check lists, it’s actually the time you should get more organized. Use those handy Google Docs spreadsheets again to create a to-do list or just put pen to paper. Having a list of tasks to accomplish every day will keep you motivated and active instead of sitting on the couch and getting sucked into Victor’s struggle with Jack about Ashley.

Who needs to go out? Who needs to go the library (yeah, that’s right Tip Number 1, you’re not THAT special). Most of us have a shelf (or shelves) full of DVDs, books, video games, board games and any number of other entertainment devices that we bought when the cash was flush. So now is the time to put those to good use. Watch that Lord of the Rings Trilogy that you just had to have when it came out on DVD. Relive the glory days of kicking ass in Monopoly. probably have more hours of entertainment in your home than you even know.