DH is facing another paycut. I kind of can't believe it because he has already had two in the past 12 months. We've already cut as much as we can from from household expenses (turn off lights, reduce water consumption, no landline, cheapest internet plan, no cable TV, cheap cell plans w/out data) and have not bought new clothes, gone out to eat or gone to a movie unless we had a gc that paid for it. We have one car. We did spend money at Xmas, but not more than we could pay off in Jan. We currently have no debt except mortgage and car payment. I know the general thinking here is not to have a car payment, but we do, and getting rid of it is not an option.
The only place left to cut from our monthly budget is the grocery part. We already cut out the extras that run up a food bill (chips, soda, cookies, pre-prepared), but allowed ourselves to still buy organic milk and eggs and free range meat. (Basically if it was coming out of an animal, I wanted the best quality we could get.) DH and my approach to dealing with the coming paycut are different. (With the prior two, we were in the same page.) He told me we might have to be ok with going into some cc debt. I say no way. It's a slippery slope. If you're ok with some, why not more? He said, "Well, you can't not eat!" And I said, "I would go vegetarian before I will go into debt." (We currently eat meat for dinner 4 times a week.) Well, he isn't having it, but he likes meat a lot more than I do. I wouldn't miss it much. He would, and he would feel deprived and probably pretty resentful. So my question to all of you is, "What food items do you feel you can use the cheaper version of?" I'm trying to figure out a way to let him still have meat, but cutting back on other things. We could have a separate meat budget within grocery and see how that does. Hmmm...