Thoughts on Saving

I have been doing a lot of budget work on a personal level in the past several weeks trying to cut our money spent to better save for our future. My wife and I are very interested in buying a house near the place we call home for Cafe Evoke and we want to be in a position to do that sooner than later. I have cut back our spending to better align with our salaries. We are working on the following to help this: 1. Finding a cheaper place to live (currently we live in a very old house that is very expensive to heat and also a bit more than what is comfortable for monthly rent) 2. Checking our options on downgrading the car that we own that still has payments left. By working on these two areas, we could save ourselves up to $500.00 each month. My wife and I are also both looking forward to hopeful pay increases over the next several months that will also help us put money away. This will not only help us reach our goal of maybe purchasing a home, it will also help pad our accounts when Cafe Evoke does open. I was reading this post at Thinking Outside of the Box today and it really fits in with what we are doing. A pay raise should be handled more maturely. That extra cash on your paycheck means a lot more than going to the movies twice per week instead of once. It's an opportunity for financial growth. If you're not a risk taker who may buy stocks etc, then you can just save the extra 200 or 300 dollars in the bank...One thing that I have mastered is to have an unchanging monthly budget regardless of pay increases. If your current pay allows you to save 100 dollars, then a pay increase of 200 dollars should mean you can now save 250 or 300 dollars. The idea is to put more away and keep our current budge in place. This post gives some great advise for anyone that is wondering where all this money that were going to be getting as a raise is going. Tagged: Savings, Cafe Evoke, start up