Avoiding Financial Disaster

As I wrote last week, my wife is no longer working, which means our business will bring nearly half of what it brought in before. The reduction of income, in combination with losing our entire emergency fund to taxes this year, has really left us feeling pretty darn anxious.

The good news in all of this is that my contract, at least for the next eight to nine months, appears to be stable. Still, we've had to make a lot of cuts to bring our budget back into balance.

Here's what we've done so far:

1. Contacted the telephone company and asked how we could cut our bill. By switching calling plans, I was able to shave 25% off our personal telephone line, and 50% off our business line.
2. Did the same with the cellular company with similar results.
3. Called our bottled water delivery service (necessary because our tap water tastes foul) to cancel. They offered to cut the bill in half.
4. Applied for a 20% discount on our utility bill. Our daughter is receives the Adoption Assistance program, which makes us eligible for this discount.
5. Canceled our downloadable music subscription.
6. Cut our Netflix subscription. We disconnected our satellite TV service two years ago to save money, so that cut has already been made.
   
7. Fired our gardener (who was doing a crummy job anyway) and hired someone else who will do more work for the same amount of money.
8. Planted a vegetable garden.
9. Stopped using our credit cards. Fortunately, they are already paid off.
   
10. Quit eating out.
11. Canceled my guitar and piano lessons.
12. Halted additional principal payments on my mortgage and auto loan. For now, we'll make the minimum payments.
13. Cut our grocery spending.

I'm sure we'll be making more cuts over time, but here's the initial group.