With the price of gas going up as high as it is and the price of groceries too, are you now more stressed about your budget, or have you been able to modify it some and give yourself some breathing room?

It certainly does add to stress. Some analysts say the price will peak for the year in June, but I don't expect prices to back off much anymore. From what I read, the continued civilization (progress) in China and India will keep the demand for all energy high for decades. This means high prices for the whole world. High prices will quicken our research into alternatives and that is good. But it is a painful process.

In our personal budgets, we have to make long term adjustments. This isn't a short term problem.

Cathleen

about the energy usage of China and India. Prices aren't going down, and for us, though we are getting by now, we just plan on having to tighten spending on gas and food, increase our own food though gardening, fishing and hunting, and DH is increasing his efforts in doing sidework. I have a deal coming up this weekend for consignment work with some horses, and if that goes well, then we'll be getting a outdoor wood burner. That will allow us to pretty much pay nothing for heat (DH's sidework is cutting trees).

I guess I'm not stressing about it majorly, just keeping my eye open for options and changes we can do to keep going comfortably. I don't anticipate things getting "better", rather, the more changes I can do that are permanent savers, the better. However, I still take the short term helps, like my continual declutter battle and selling stuff on Craigslist.

__________________

the more they go up the more i shall have to tighten...dh does not like this but what can you do? he has to commute to work..

I have been stressing about our budget for the last year, so this just adds a "tiny" more bit of stress.

We just paid off one of our vehicles, so that helps a bit. I'm trying to cut costs all the way around right now and figure out how to pay off our second vehicle loan earlier. That would free a total of $1000 month in our monthly budget. This should help ease the stress factor a bit.

We really can't cut much from our gas usage as we don't really drive more than we have to. I am looking more into stocking up during sales for food and perhaps starting a small garden.

__________________
SAHM of 4

August food budget (groceries/take-out): $500.00/$75.00
Total spent: $238.97/$14.12

July budget/spent: $500.00/$650.00

I'm not really too worried. We have only had to budget an extra $50/ month for gas. If you watch the stock markets and pay attention to the economy there are always ups and downs. It goes in cycles. The media tends to only report on the bad things. I was watching the news last week and they were talking that it costs more to make pennies and nickels than what they are actually worth. Maybe that's a small part of the government's problem. Hello! Why would you spend 7.5 cents to make a nickel? I believe that we haven't seen the end of the high cost of everything, but eventually it is going to bottom out. JMO!

__________________
Loving wife to Matthew 6/26/04
SAHM to Jacob Matthew 4/19/03 & Evelyn Grace 2/15/06
Baby #3 due 3/14/09