Cutting spending

Ryan and I are trying to spend less money. We went to the grocery store last week and had a conversation in the car that went like this:

"I'm going to stop getting my hair cut at that expensive salon."

"Yeah. We should probably cancel cable."

"Also, those gym memberships - we never go anyway."

"I'm going to stop buying fancy cleaning products and just start using old rags, baking soda and vinegar."

"We should start eating at home more often and making our meals from scratch."

"No more clothes shopping sprees!"

"I'll start walking to work and bringing my lunch"


The thing is, we were laughing, because we don't do* any of these things anyway but it's also kind of sad, because I've been racking my brain trying to come up with things we can cancel or stop buying or whatever and I've not been able to come up with much.

One thing we actually did was combine our mobile phone plans - a big commitment, I know, but we felt we were ready. It's about $25/month difference. I've also started tracking our grocery store expenditures. I know we could spend less on certain items, but some things, I'd rather compromise on quantity than quality. For example: I'd rather buy less yoghurt or milk from the local dairies than buy more of the mass produced stuff. 


Of course "treats" get removed from the shopping list - things like ginger beer and ice cream. I'm attempting to get better at making them myself: last week, I made raspberry honey black tea coconut milk sorbet/ice cream (the raspberries were ones we picked last summer - the advantage to not working is that one has time to make sorbet without an ice cream maker!) and yesterday, Ryan used up some sad little lemons and made us some lemonade. 


*or already do? The point is, I haven't had my hair professionally cut since my wedding, I've never belonged to a gym, Ryan already packs a lunch and walks, I've only bought new clothes in the last year because I needed maternity pants in order to be able to leave the house, we don't even own a television much less pay for cable, I have been using vinegar and baking soda to clean for years and neither of us would know how to eat if we didn't cook our own food.