How We are Cutting Expenses

We've had to take a long hard look at our finances lately. Car sales hasn't been all that great this year and I'm only 8 short weeks from being forced to leave my job whether I want to or not (I'd prefer sooner than that, but that's a whole different story). Our budget is not viable in the long term, as much as I want it to be, mostly due to our housing costs. For once, I will get specific on costs to show you what I mean:

Housing Costs for July
Rent - $850
Electricity - $350+
Water/Sewer/Trash - $200
Natural Gas - $45+
Total - $1445

Now I won't go into how much we actually brought in for July, but suffice it to say that we had difficulties paying all of that plus groceries, gasoline, the van payment, etc. If you follow the blog regularly, you know that there are weeks that we don't buy groceries at all. It's been rough.

Our current dilemma is that our landlord has decided to become a jerk and not work with us on the rent, which he had been great at doing for the past 2 years. I can understand his standpoint, we do owe him that money for living in his house. However, as a landlord, he has certain obligations to maintain the property, which he has not done (other than replacing a small bit of the carpet up the steps due to Hubby and Beth falling down them because of loose carpeting!). Our heating/cooling/water costs are due in large part to the leaky windows, doors, toilets, tubs, etc. none of which he will fix. That brings up some safety concerns as well, the windows in the girls' bedroom are both broken...as in, the previous tenants busted the lower part of the windows completely off, and now there's ONLY the storm windows (not even screens!). That's a second story window over the driveway with really nothing keeping the girls from falling out. That is a big issue in my book.

After discussing it for all of 5 minutes, we decided that it is in our best interest to break our lease and find a new cheaper place to live. Even if we just find a place at the same rent, but is in better condition, we'd be in a better position financially. Of course, unless we want to live in the ghetto parts of the city, it's hard to even find a place for the same rent. Our option was to move out of the city all together to a small town about half an hour south of where we are now.

We found a house that fit our needs, put in the application yesterday and hope that we can get it. Rent is $200 cheaper, plus the utilities run about half (or less than half) of what we pay now. Gasoline will run us more, but not significinatly more than what we pay now, and it still wouldn't be more than the decrease in rent (not to mention the utilities difference!). I'm pretty excited about it, and will let you all know how it goes.

In the mean time, we've had to put our Camry on the market to come up with money for deposits, which makes us both sad. In the long run though, we'll be able to afford to get another one later on if we decide we really need another vehicle. More than likely, we will come to this decision anyway, considering the gas mileage on the van and the fact that I'll need to take the rugrats around town to do shopping and such. But I won't be driving after having the new baby for a while and won't be working at all, so it may be a long time before we actually need a second vehicle.

That's all for now. Keeping my fingers crossed for this house!