Cutting the Budget!

From Jenna:

The first thing my husband and I did when we decided that I would be a stay at home / work from home mom was to seriously cut our budget. We ended up saving $500 off our monthly expenses. Here's some ideas that helped us do this:

• Refinancing our mortgage
  
• Increasing the deductible on homeowners and car insurance
  
• Start doing our own "dry cleaning"
  
• Decrease the amount of my personal money coming to me each month since I wouldn't have to be buying lunches out, etc.
  
• Less commute means less gas money!
  
• Removed "extras" from our cell phone package
  
• Cut down on entertainment money
  

Before we made this decision, I had been convinced that we were at our minimal household budget. There are always creative ways to continue to cut the budget though and I'm committed to finding new ones. The best way to do this is just to be really honest about what's important to you and budget only around those priorities. Everything else is trivial.

What this did essentially was to buy me more time. The less I was responsible for bringing into the household, the more time I could spend "out of work" and figuring out how to work from home instead.

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step".

Join us in our journey as we become work from home moms

Hi! We're Christina and Jenna and we're on a mission to be Stay at Home / Work from Home Moms! After a decade in the corporate workforce, we've officially retired and have set down the path to financial freedom! Refusing to be hindered and caged anymore by "the man", we have committed only to working for ourselves and allowing our families to share in the profits - not some strangers.

We should mention that we didn't have a plan prior to making this jump, and we don't have a parachute, but what we do have is determination to not fall.

Our motivation is simple. In the working world, the odds are not in your favor. It's like playing at the casino - one way or another, the house always wins. Often your loss is years, moments, days, and money that you just will never ever make up for. We're not willing to make that sacrifice anymore for a false sense of "security".

And no, we're not in denial. We have bills to pay, mortgages to make and children to support. There's never been a more important time to make ends meet. And there's also never been better motivation.

Our goal here is to honestly document all of our research, our motivation, and every step of our journey as to what works and what doesn't, for all of you out there trying to do the same.

The phrase "it's not personal, it's business" is about to die. It's all personal because this is your life. Our children, our husbands, our many blessings will now have the attention they deserve as we finally let go of the chains and start living the life we want. A new perspective is emerging and we are running towards it full speed!

Read on to see how it starts...