Saving Money This Summer

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If you read one of my earlier posts, I talked about how Nathan and I are heading back to eastern WA for the summer! Nathan got an internship at our home church and we are so excited about it! However, the internship isn’t paid, and we don’t have summer jobs, and we still have rent to pay back in Vancouver. Oh yeah! And then there’s our trip to CA with our friends.

So how are we going to make this work?

Here are some of the things we did/ will do this summer to stretch our dollars:

1. Cut the cable and home phone in June and internet as well in July and August. That alone will save us $341 this summer. I have got to be honest with you. It’s way easier than I thought to go without cable! I get so much more done! And it’s also quite easy to not have a home phone. Cell phones are working just fine.

2. Cut the gym membership. We didn’t do this soon enough to have it cut off for June, so we are still paying this month, which is okay because we will still use it until we leave later in the month. This cut will save us $103 this summer.

3. We paid off the car at the end of May/beginning of June, so we have one less payment to make! This will save us $630 over the summer.

4. Use coupons and rebates. I have saved already $60 this month with coupons and probably more than that if you include the loss leader sales I have taken advantage of.

5. Stock up on really good sales. I have now seven boxes of Pop Tarts for our trip to CA. I bought all different kinds(on sale of course,) so hopefully we won’t get sick of them. I also am stocking up on granola bars that I can get for less than $1 a box. We want to avoid eating out and are packing all our own foods. Which leads me to…

6. Stop eating out. We normally give ourselves $30 a month to eat out. We are giving up that luxury to save that money for our trip. This summer that will save us $90.

7. Cut back on gas usage. This was partly done for us as Nate is done tutoring for the year and a 40 miles/week were eliminated from our consumption. When we are back in eastern WA, we plan to walk/ride bikes as much as possible. The town is tiny and there is really no excuse for driving everywhere, especially because my parent’s house is centrally located in town. We are estimating a savings of $150 over the summer on gas.

8. We are opening our apartment to a family member to stay. Hopefully, this will all work out with our landlord. This family member will be paying the utilities while they use our apartment saving us about $50 if we just left the place inhabited.

9. We are staying with my mom and dad therefore cutting out the need to pay two rents and all the utilities. I imagine our food bill will be less, though we do plan to contribute as much as they will let us! We estimate that this situation will save us as much as $1500 this summer.

10. Carpooling. We are carpooling with friends to a wedding this weekend and planning a trip to CA with the same friends in July! By carpooling, we cut those ugly gas prices in half! For the trip to Spokane and back for the wedding, I estimate gas at $60. That will be just $30 each! For the trip to CA, we are estimating gas at $500. That’s $250 each!

11. Taking advantage of discounts. We are purchasing city passes from Costco for CA for around $220/person. That includes Disney, Universal Studios and the San Diego Zoo! Not bad!

12. We are staying with friends and family members as much as possible on our trip. When we can’t stay with others, we will split hotel rooms or camp making the cost significantly lower.

13. Plan. Plan. Plan. As soon as we got our paycheck in May, I started planning and laying out our finances to make them last all summer and stretch out to the meager month of September. Assuming that Nate and I will be subbing again next year, we will not receive paychecks until the end of September for this next school year. Our last check for the current year will come on July 31st. With the plan in place, we will have plenty set aside for next fall, our summer expenses, and the trip!

14. And this really should be number one, pray! We are praying/trusting that God will continue to provide and meet our needs and then some as we follow his guidance over our lives. Read my post I wrote earlier today called “The Lord Who Provides!” God is really working on us in this area.

Visit The Money Life Network for more tips about how to save money this summer! I am often inspired by what I read on this site!

http://milkyourmoney.com/2008/06/08/find-out-how-you-can-win-100/?&owa_from=feed&owa_sid=

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