A few years ago my husband and I decided we were going to make a change. After years of having children and grown children living under our roof we decided we had earned the right to concentrate on us for awhile. We wanted to visit our one daughter and her family who doesn’t live close by. We wanted to be able to visit our mothers and our siblings more often. We wanted to spend time traveling and just enjoying each other once more.
In preparation for doing this we started cutting back and paring down on our expenses. We evaluated everything and made adjustments to not only our spending but our way of life. For example we traded our fancier phones for more basic models and turned to a month to month phone plan. It saved us 50% off our phone bill at the time and it has served us well, at least to this point.
Along with the phone, we cancelled our cable and opted to keep only our internet. We now watch Netflix and Hulu and again we slashed our bill by 50%. We started paying very close attention our electricity usage. We were careful to unplug appliances while not in use. We checked over our current plan and changed to one that more suited our needs. This brought about move savings.
We made a list and shopped for groceries once a week. We avoided the stores at all other times. This provided huge saving for us. We also learned to shop sales and stock up. My freezer and pantry stayed very well stocked during that time.
Thrift store shopping became the norm for us. We always searched out used before making any new purchase. That included clothing. That is something I had never done before but I quickly became hooked.
At the time we had a Dodge Ram dual cab pick up truck that we were putting quiet a few miles on every day picking up and dropping off children from school. We bought a new Honda Fit. Although buying a new vehicle is not necessarily a wise financial move, it proved to be cost effective for us. The new car payment, insurance and gas amounted to considerably less than what we were spending for gas alone on the truck. We choose to be a single car family so we gave the truck to our son.
We even considered selling our three bedroom home and moving into an apartment or smaller home. We considered it but couldn’t make ourselves make that move. Even buying the smaller car was difficult for me because I was afraid it was not going to big enough in the future.
Here we are in the future. We still adhere to many of the changes we made before. We may have to upgrade our phones soon. The basic phones that have served us so well up to this point are unable to handle all the apps the kid’s school want us to have just to keep up with what is going on there. Who knew we would need all that. Still we have been wondering if we need to make other changes. Do we need a bigger car or an additional car? Do we need a different home in a better school district?
For right now we are uncertain of what the future holds. We have no definite answers on how long our grandchildren will be with us. It is still the plan that they be reunited with their parents. If that happens our phones are plenty good enough for the two of us. Our car is more than adequate for us as a couple and we do not need more than one vehicle. If we do not have children living here there is no need to worry about what school we are zoned in.
So for now we wait. We pray and wait and try to make tentative plans for the future. The not knowing and waiting is harder on me emotionally than my husband. He is much more of a go with the flow type of guy. I wish I could be more like him at times.