Affluent but Frugal

I am often thinking about starting a side business to earn extra cash - sewing, soap-making and recently I while planning our wedding I thought about being a "day of coordinator" for weddings - but then I remember, that I already have a full-time job and if anything, I want more free time, not less! This is why I focus on reducing spending, in order to save money. These are things I cut out to keep our budget slim! 1) Tracking spending For me, the first step in reducing our budget was understanding where the money was going. I've been using mint.com to track spending for about 3 years and I absolutely love it. It auto-categorizes every transaction paid with any of my linked credit cards and I can make adjustments as needed. I love the graphs that show spending over time and net income. There are some other software applications such as You Need a Budget but I like mint. It's free and generally works well. When you first start to do this, you will probably

Oven fajitas are a favorite! To help save money on groceries and eating out, we cook a lot at home but cooking every night is a bummer. It is hard to come home every night from work and make something for dinner and think about what we’re both having for lunch the next day. To make it easier, I will sometimes (not always) cook in large batches so we can eat 6+ meals (3+ for each of us) from one cooking effort (and one batch of dirty dishes). Do you get tired of eating the same thing for 2-3 days in a row? Yeah, I do too. To combat this, I usually will make two dishes and we alternate them. If I make one big batch on Sunday and another on Monday night then we can have some variety and that will basically take us through the whole work week for lunches and dinners. It also helps if I make things that can be repackaged and eaten a few different ways (ie in a wrap one day; over rice the next day). To help with the Monday meal, often I will make something in the crock pot. Sinc