It's that time . . .

I can't tell you how many magazines I have received giving the message to slim down in as many ways as possible: physically, environmentally, economically. Over at DC Rowhouse, we are doing our best to make an effort in these areas. We rented a storage unit and have slowly been hauling things over - granted this is more of a declutter than a slimming down, but we certainly took tons of bags of goods to the Salvation Army. The main effort we are making is to slim our finances, more on the outgoing side than the incoming.

We saved money by bundling our phone with our cable and internet - $50 a month to be exact! That was a pretty nice savings! We now have a "digital phone" which means when the power goes out - so does the phone. This worried me a little, but we both have cell phones and can use those if we need to. But, an annual savings of $600 makes us really happy.

In an effort to slim down physically and economically we have been bringing our lunches almost everyday. Which, makes the grocery bill go up a tad though saves in the long run. At around $8 a day for lunch, $40 a week, $160 a month . . . times two. . . we save $320 bucks a month! Wow. That's some serious dough. If you think about annual savings, it makes it $3840 - that's a nice little vacation if you ask me. I'm sure we will occasionally still buy lunch, but it all helps.

We have also been cooking our meals more often for health reasons and I think that should save us another $100 a month., or $1200 a year.

Oh, and here is the biggest savings of all: we are refinancing!! Refinancing the mortgage will save us $400 a month, $4800 a year. Yeah, pretty nice!

All in all, here is the savings breakdown:

$600 (phone)

$3840 (lunches)

$1200 (less meals out)

$4800 (refi!)

$10,440

It is pretty amazing to see it written down on paper! But, I am sure we will feel the savings soon enough.