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[Asherdan]

[lprkn]

For some reason I always read BPOE as BPRD. And I was like, "Ash is keeping it real!"

I'd have to say that my list matches yours to a great degree, except for the food business and the cell phones. I'm tied to a contract, so it'd cost like $150 to back out.

[CortJstr]

I'd drop my landline first, then cut back on cable (SO insisted on getting ALL the movie channels). After that I'd be packing lunches.

[wombat]

I guess it would really be time to cut the premium Japanese cable TV station where I only watch one children's show for five minutes each day.

We'd do all our own yard work and I guess we'd cancel the housecleaner, although he's been with us for ten or fifteen years, so we'd feel bad. No weekend at the beach. And yeah, yeah, not all that eating out all the time.

Dunno after that. The cable is bundled with the phone and internet, which we obviously need, and Tech Staff says we could get them all for cheaper if we switch to the other company. And nearly all my magazines and books are work related and tax deductible, so it would not make sense to cut back too much there. Both cars are paid off - I don't actually know what the insurance etc is - interesting question.

Yeah, it's hard to cut all the luxurious travel, jewelry and fancy clothes when we never bought them in the first place. Our only real extravagance is eating out whereever and whenever the heck we want.

[robot_god]

Cigarettes
Solid food (would survive on skim milk and Nutrament only)

that would save plenty right there and I wouldn't have to give up anything that really matters

[Doc]

I'm kind of having this conversation with myself lately. At the moment I'm basically on welfare (student allowance, whatever they call it, the Man is keeping me is what I'm saying) but that only covers rent and bills and the savings are running a bit low. If I'm frugal I think they should last me another 3 months, after that I need work or another source of income. I've applied for a couple of part time jobs in the last couple of weeks but haven't heard anything definite back yet so....

Food. Not Necessarily going somewhere cheaper (I don't exactly shop at Whole Foods or anything as it is) but buying less of it, cutting back on the couple of packs of biscuits I buy every week won't save a lot (though it adds up) but there's no need to have meat in my dinner most nights and that's about a quarter of my food budget there.
Coffee at uni. It's only one a day and it's so good but it is also 3 dollars. I've been trying to switch myself over to fruit lately which is better but when you eat 3 apples a day instead of one coffee it costs a similar amount.
Good times, I don't go out so often as it is but when I do I tend to spend too much so I can cut back there, there's usually a few cheap student things going on around uni so I won't go nuts and I should be studying anyway.
Internet. It's the next one on the list but of arguable value since it costs me all of 25 bucks a month (35 when you consider I pay line rental purely to have internet).
Sell my bike. I'd really hate to do this but it would be the next logical thing.

Hopefully this won't come to pass though, we're getting stimulus packages around here which should see me set for another 4 months or so, which should be long enough to find work and certainly will hold me out until my tax return in july (which should be reasonably epic this year).

[jay-ell]

Why was this topic locked?  I re-opened it, hopefully it was locked because of a mis-click or something. 

We've already given up a lot.  We moved out of our 3 bedroom house into a 2 bedroom apartment, so our kids share a room (which is becoming a fairly major problem, actually, since they're reaching an age where they wake each other up).  We have no land line and no cable.  We keep Neflix, but that's only $9/mo, and we keep that mainly for access to the online library through the Roku.  It's our alternative to cable, basically. 

I'm already a very frugal shopper and I use coupons and shop sales and plan meals according to what's available for cheap.  (I got five bottles of salad dressing for $3.19 this week.  Not $3.19 each.  $3.19 for all five together.)  So we don't eat as well as we could or should.  (One week we had hamburger helper four times in seven days because it was buy-one-get-one and I had $0.75 coupons, which my store doubles, and ground beef was on sale for $1.99/lb in bulk packs.)  But we've paid off almost $20,000 worth of consumer debt in the last 18 months, so that's a big plus. 

We get pizza on Mondays, but Pedro gets if half-price through work, so we can feed the whole family for under $10.  I feel that's worthwhile. 

I guess if we really got into a crunch we'd have to drop date nights.  We pay Pedro's sister $35/week so that we can go out, and usually we eat out (even if it's just fast food) on top of that.  It's expensive, but before we started having date nights our relationship was in a very rocky place, so we figured the investment was worth it.  But if we had to give it up again, I guess we would. 

And if things got really bad, we could get rid of our second car.  I suppose I could drop Little P off at school and take Pedro to work every morning, and I could either pick him up or he could catch a ride home.  In nice weather, he could bike.  But that would require me to wake up myself and our daughter at 7:45 every morning, and neither she nor I would be very fond of that plan.  And it would make weekends problematic.  We go separate ways frequently on Sundays, and we'd have to either coordinate much more carefully or drop an activity. 

So, yeah.  We've made most of the cuts already, and the ones that we could still make would be pretty painful.  Fortunately, Pedro's job is safe, and I don't have one to lose.  So things aren't likely to get worse for us any time soon. 

[theinevitable]

I am becoming increasingly terrified about having to get a job in a year. All of my friends who graduated last year are... living with their parents, looking for jobs and finding nil. Feeling generally worthless and freaked out. The idea of continuing to be dependent on my parents for a while after I graduate really bothers me... but I am grateful to have that safety net.
I guess I have a year to be looking for a job while still in school.

[theinevitable]

I kinda thought the trend was to head off to grad school and train in your 'real' field?

I do want to go to grad school... but I think that I need to experience a normal job first, to make my stupid, lazy brain realize that I do not want to work a normal job.

The issue isn't "this isn't fair..." just that it sucks.

[pmcd9]

Find a job that involves you and a shovel and your brain will come around right quick on that score.

The man speaks the truth.