How Low Can We Go?

Momof3 wrote a post "Could you live on $12,000 a year?". It reminded me of the past when I finally came to terms that our finances just weren't working out for us. I had sat down with pen and paper at our kitchen table and started working a plan with the question "How low can we go?" I started out with by prioritizing our list. First came housing, food and so on. I even went to the spending plan online calculator at Crown Financial Ministries but instead of putting in our actual earnings per year I put in our Net income, $0 for taxes, $0 for tithe and less income than what we were actually bringing home. So say if we were making Net $25,000 a year I would put in $20,000 a year.By putting in a lower income the money that was not included with income we tweaked to compensate for extra on the house,school,and whatever category we couldn't possibly follow that budget by.We took the left over money and put it towards our emergency fund and or debt. If you tithe you can either put the amount of $ you give in the box or you can subtract that amount before you do your budget.We help our parents, my parents lately it is every month right now so I consider that as our tithe at the moment. We also when we can put money in the jars at stores for cancer research,boy scouts etc. Not to long ago we gave $100 to a minister and his wife to send to a village in Africa. We try and do our best right now, even when things seem to be extra tight.

We seemed to get off track however but that is Ok, we are not perfect but we do know when we have had enough and it is time to do damage control.

This worked out really well for us. So yesterday, pen and paper on hand I started tallying up the figures.I figure that to live comfortably we can do this with $2568.75, this included mortgage,house and property taxes,food,hydro,phone,insurances,gas,cable,internet,along with a $300 freedom account,entertainment etc.
Our food budget I allotted for $400 a month, I wanted to go lower on the food budget but with a family of 5 and with 2 cats I know that we will be comfortable with that amount.

The freedom account will cover your irregular expenses but you still need money set aside incase of job loss, illness, insurance deductables and so on. This is where an
Emergency Fund is a must! Dave Ramsey has the 6 babysteps which include an emergency fund, this has helped a lot of people.

So, I challenge everyone to sit down whether it be at your desk or table at home with pen and paper on hand and figure out....Just how low can you go?