That’s the topic of my new series over at Frugal Hacks, thanks to 5 separate inquiries from ambitious friends and acquaintances.  The first post went live today: Monetize Your Blog, part 1.  Go see, and give it a link if you like it!

This year we spent the entire spring and summer without a/c.   Maybe you live up north and don’t have air conditioning, but we’re in south Texas.  We’re farther south than the southern border of California.  We’re way down there.  And we did it.

We’ve had a record number of triple-digit days this year, but we made it.  We only turned on the 2 little window units twice, for company, and all the windows were open at the time.

According to the forecast at AccuWeather.com, the high temps for our little town for the next 2 weeks should range from just 90-93 degrees, and then it’s just one more week until fall is officially here!    That sounds positively comfortable.   Maybe they’re wrong, but the very thought of sub-100 temps makes me giddy.

Do you know what else makes me giddy?  The thought of all the money we saved by not running the air.  We didn’t just save what we spent on air last year.  This year was much hotter, so we would have spent much more.   Ironically, we probably would have spent more and been less comfortable, since the little window units wouldn’t have been able to keep the house comfortable.  They would have run constantly, but it would have been a losing battle.

Another advantage: we didn’t experience cabin fever.  If the a/c was running, we would have spent all summer crowded together, huddled inside the stuffy house because it was 15 degrees cooler than outside.  Instead, we spent a lot of time both inside and out – on the deck, on the trampoline, and visiting our new chickens.  The kids explored the woods and climbed trees, and fashioned a makeshift seesaw out of a long plank and a paint scaffold.  I still haven’t gone to look at it.  I don’t want to.

And finally, not having a/c at home made leaving the house more pleasant.  The a/c in our van works, but not well.  To our acclimated bodies, it wasn’t bad.  The desperate run from the air conditioned vehicle to the air conditioned grocery store wasn’t desperate at all.  While others looked sweaty and uncomfortable, most of us felt very little inclination to complain.

Don’t get me wrong: there was complaining through the course of the summer.  Some of us adapt more easily than others, and some are more prone to complaining than others.   Some of us vacillate between the two groups.  Some simply didn’t understand why were weren’t using the air.

It certainly wasn’t easy, especially at first.  But it got better even as the temperatures rose.  100 now feels far more comfortable than 85 did in the early spring.  God’s design for the human body is wonderful.  We can adapt, and when the need presents itself we do.

In the end I feel triumphant.  And I feel crisp and cool, even though it’s 7:30 PM and 92 degrees.

Now I’m wondering if we could adjust to winter temps without heat.   I’m also wondering if the very suggestion would result in a mutiny.  Maybe next year…

Now that our 7 year stupid tax has come to an end, we’re putting our collective shoulder to the plow.  Is that the right phrase?  At any rate, we have embarked upon a new budget to help us pay off our remaining debts as quickly as possible.

It’s been many years since we had a formal budget.  Generally, our budget plans have looked like this:

1. Pay bills.
2. Buy food.
3. Strive to resist unnecessary purchases.
4. Oops.

Now, our plan is a bit more detailed.  We get paid on the 15th and 30th of each month.  I’m leaving out most of the numbers out for the sake of privacy, but our budget looks like this:

15th

• tithes – automatically deducted off the top.
• cash – groceries, plus a modest amount of spending money for Perry and me.
• gas - The plan is to put $60 in the tank every Friday.  This gets us to town once for groceries and once for church, with a bit left over for unplanned trips.  Hubby currently carpools with brother-in-law, so the cost of his lengthy daily commute is relatively small.
• cell phones – we keep 3 on a family plan: one each for me and hubby, and one for the kids when we leave them alone to babysit.  Our contract is up for renewal, but we’re toying with the idea of continuing on a month-to-month basis for maximum flexibility.
• Netflix – we have the $8.99/month membership.
• Samaritan Ministries – our alternative to health insurance.  We also have dental insurance through Vision Forum for $80/month but this comes out before we ever see it, so it’s not included in the budget.

Any funds left over from this paycheck go toward irregular expenses (van repairs, dental bills, etc), emergency fund, & extra payments on debts.

30th

• tithes – same as above.
• cash – same as above.
• gas – same as above.
• house payment
• short-sale balance – 18 month unsecured loan.  We hope to pay this off sooner.
• insurance – home, auto, life
• electric – with no a/c or dryer, our bill has been very manageable this year!

notes:

• We have a well, so there’s no water bill.
• Our house is all electric, so we have no propane or gas bill.
• We burn our trash, so no trash bill.
• Our internet access generates some income, so we have the cost deducted from Paypal.

Obviously this will be tweaked and changed as the need arises, but it’s a plan.  Already, we’ve gone over budget on gas.  Hubby thinks we need to budget more for gas.  I think we just had a few high-usage weeks in a row.  At any rate, my orderly mind loves having a real plan, and hubby thrives on this as well.  We are opposites in many ways and that’s often a good thing, but this is one area in which we are alike.  That’s a good thing, too.

With a plan, we are forced to stop and ask ourselves before every single expense: “Where does this money come from?  How do I categorize this?”   Sometimes this is tricky:   Does a shiny new kitchen gadget come from my spending money or the grocery budget?  I think it depends on how badly I need it, and whether others in the house will use it too.

Other items are easier:  a fountain drink comes from spending money.  So do books.   My personal chocolate stash will come out of my spending money, though some might contend that it’s a necessity and deserves a category of its own.  Hubby might even feel motivated to use some of his spending money for my chocolate under certain circumstances.  Ahem.

Our grocery budget includes all household incidentals:  paper products, school supplies, pet food, minor auto maintenance, clothes, and charity.   My last grocery trip included lots of edibles plus a bra, a box fan, chicken food, dog food, ant bait, silverware, etc.  My rule of thumb is if I can get it at WalMart, it’s groceries. Yes, I extend this to include chicken feed, which I technically can’t get at WalMart, but you get the idea. Yes, I could also extend this to include chocolate, but I need the discipline imposed by my personal spending limit.

There are a few things about this new plan that just tickle me.

• Our new birthday/Christmas fund is Swagbucks.  We will either purchase from Amazon with gift certificates earned from Swagbucks, or try to sell the codes for $5 gift certificates at a slight discount.
• Perry and I each have our own modest monthly allowances.  This means that I can spend without ovarian guilt, something that is often difficult for me.  I can stop for a dollar burger on shopping day if I choose without feeling like I really should have eaten before I left the house.  I can add fries to that order.  Not every time, mind you, but sometimes.
• Now when I buy chocolate with my “allowance,” it’s really mine.  I can hide and eat it without guilt.  I will share, but it will be because I’m nice.
• And when Perry and I are out together, he can gallantly pay the bill out of his very own money.  I know, because he’s done it already.    I could do it for him, too.  That part is only theoretical because…well…I haven’t done it yet…but maybe I’ll bring him a big fountain drink the next time I’m out getting groceries.

Is it just me, or is there something exciting about embarking on a new budget?  I can’t wait to pay bills, balance the checkbook, or pull a bit of cash out of the Food Envelope.

There’s something strangely satisfying about making a plan and seeing it unfold just as you designed it.  There’s even something satisfying about revising a plan when things don’t quite the way you expected.  I can’t quite explain it, but it makes me feel creative and responsible and capable.  What can I say?  Math is fun.

What do you think?  Does that make sense, or should this post go under the Mom Is Neurotic category?

We’ve found quite a few new corners to cut this year, not because we’re hurting financially (though we’ve always had to be careful), but because we want to pay off some debts.

I shared some of our new savings in the comments over at Frugal Hacks but maybe some of you don’t follow that blog, so I would love to compare notes here as well.

Big stuff:

• We line dry all of our own clothes. We have a large family so we generate a lot of laundry. We estimate that this is saving us $50/month, not to mention one less appliance to buy and maintain.
• We are skipping the a/c. This is saving us $150-200/month.
• When we gave up the a/c, we started buying a lot of ice for cold drinks instead.  I just realized that we were spending nearly $50/month on ice.  This week, we’re experimenting with homemade ice cubes.  Switching isn’t as easy as you might think because our water has a lot of minerals and bagged ice isn’t just convenient; it tastes much better.  But we’ll try.  Savings: $50/month.
• We switched to cloth diapers and baby wipes. Savings: $30/month.
• We canceled our trash service and started separating our trash.  The burnables get burned in a barrel with a screened cover.  Savings: $35/month.

Small stuff:

• We started using baking soda & vinegar instead of shampoo and conditioner. We also switched from antiperspirants to a homemade concoction which has shocked me by working better than anything I’ve ever used! We don’t do these things for the savings, but that’s a nice little perk. Savings: $15/month.
• We make our own laundry soap.   Savings: $10/month.
• We have started using cloth for other household products, cutting way back on our use of paper napkins, paper towels, paper plates, etc.  Savings: $30/month
• We invested in chickens this year. They live primarily on scraps so feed cost is minimal. Once they start laying, we hope to save $30-50/month on eggs and might have extra to share or sell.  Alternatively, we might find ourselves consuming far more eggs and saving on other sources of protein that we would have bought.

Future plans:

• We hope to install a woodburning stove to heat the house this winter. We’re debating whether to go with a cheap/free model, or invest in a more efficient one.  We might save immediately by using a free one now and then invest in a better one in a year or two.  We expect to save $400-600 this winter.
• We are considering one or two milk goats. This should save us at least $30-40/month minus the cost of feed.  Feed should be minimal since we’re hoping they’ll help clear the land by eating a lot of brush, though we’ll have to give them some grain if we plan to milk them.
• We have talked about using passive solar energy to preheat our water, significantly reducing the energy consumed by our water heater. This is rather common here in south Texas. I estimate that it might save us $15-20/month, though I admit that’s nothing more than a wild guess.

This list is hardly comprehensive, and doesn’t include the other ways we’ve been saving over the years.  These are just a few things that have changed recently in our house.

What’s new in yours?