We live a pretty simple life. We don’t go to fancy restaurants or wear designer clothes. But every budget has some fat that can be trimmed. Especially when a job comes to an end.
We were in the process of discussing different options when we received some good news. The stimulus bill that was just passed has a little clause that is very helpful to our family. You see… if you lose your job but need to keep your health insurance, you have to go on Cobra. Cobra is basically a way that you can pay for the entire portion of your insurance premiums and thus not lose coverage for pre-existing conditions. For our family, Cobra costs us around $1200.00 a month.
Yep… I’ll wait while you catch your breath. 
The new stimulus package doesn’t have much in it that will help our family but there is one tiny little clause that will prove very helpful. Those folks that lost their job after September 1, 2008 will have 65% of their Cobra payment covered for a total of 9 months. (Can I get an Amen!?!).
For our family, that will put an additional 800 bucks back into our pockets.
Inspired by this little savings, we started looking at other things. We used to go to lunch on Sundays but instead, we had already started taking our lunch to church and thus saving our family $25.00 a week. Another thing we can cut is our storage unit. The price just went up on that little thing and we figure that we can scrunch the Christmas decorations into the back of my closet, move the car out of the garage and store stuff in there instead. Other items can easily be donated toward a garage sale that the church is having to raise money for Pennies for Bella.
Total savings with cutting out Sunday lunches and eliminating the storage unit: $177.00 a month.
Finally, it was a long battle over this one but my back “issue” proved that it could be done. For years I have resisted changing to a lower cable t.v. package. But while spending so much time lying around lately, I realized that I rarely find anything on T.V. that I want to watch and many of the shows that I “must see” are available online. So, we are downgrading to what me and the BFF’s affectionately refer to as “Amish Cable”. Amish Cable is cable that just helps you to make sure you can fully view your local channels. AG loves her PBS shows and I know they don’t come in so well on an antenna. Amish Cable will make sure the girl has an adequate supply of Word World.
That change will save us about 40 bucks a month but I made Dana give me something in return. I get to keep my Netflix subscription with no harassment from him and he will upgrade it to the next level, costing us an additional 4 bucks a month. Total savings from changing to Amish Cable while moving to non-Amish Netflix: 36 bucks a month.
Between the changes we made and Obama’s little Cobra gift our total savings is around a grand a month. Woo Hoo!
This is AWESOME! I hope those who’ve been naysayers for so long will now start to realize this is the sort of thing that will benefit them and stop fighting it already!!
You’re too funny! Keeping it all in, smiling on the outside! Girl, your gonna’ burst one day & then you’ll be a big puddle on the deck, a tall puddle…..
Thankful to hear you’re 800 smackers up! Now for the other job….
Woohoo for you guys!
Good for you! One of my goals this year is to get rid of my storage unit. I think it’s possible if my body holds up to the work involved in cleaning out the garage and moving all the stuff over. There are some other changes I can make that will allow me to keep feeding my yarn habit…
That is a great clause! I had to chuckle at the Amish cable comment.
Good for you! Those recurring charges have a way of sneaking up on you (and adding up to big $$)!
Yay for cutting the budget!!! I love the Amish Cable term
Glad that the stimulus is helping where it’s needed. I hadn’t heard about a lot of tangible benefits yet, so I’m happy to hear that it’s doing something useful!
Good for you! Isn’t it amazing the things we think are necessities that really aren’t? Love the Amish cable! We find that we use Netflix a lot to order tv series. There are a lot of great ones out there and this way you don’t have to wait for the next installment and can catch them in order. I’m so glad too that the stimulus package is helping someone! I was afraid that it would be all this pork and the “real” person wouldn’t see a dime of it.
Congratulations on your savings! We are trying to do the same things. We are dumping our storage unit just as soon as my two boys are in apartments (one in March, fingers crossed, and the other in June) because we have a bunch of inherited furniture that they can both use and have no garage at home to use and we live in a townhouse. That’s $150 a month right there! We have also been looking at phones, tv, internet as we try to save. Nothing is a lot on its own, but it all adds up to a small fortune! Unfortunately, since we own our own business, there’s not much we can do about our health insurance cost…we “only” pay $900 per month, but we have a $5000 for three of us and $2500 for the oldest son who can’t be a part of our family plan, deductible. Yikes!
As I read your post, I was wondering where the good news was. I did find it, however, and I commend your personal strength because I couldn’t do it. I am glad for your family and send you my prayers. My husband jokes about having to watch TV by candlelight if things get hard. 😀
Whoa. That Cobra price tag made me stop breathing for a minute. That’s just ridiculous.
And we’ve started watching most TV series on Netflix. You don’t need to remember to Tivo them, and there are no commercials. I’m always a season behind on everything, but so what. It might be time to go to Amish cable, since we hardly ever watch anything on it anyway.
Good for you!!! BTW totally get the Cobra costs. We’ve been there, done that more times than I care to share. How are you supposed to pay that kind of money when you no longer have a job?!?!?
It’s always cracked me up when people get laid off and other people (trying to be encouraging) say, “But you get COBRA!!” They don’t realize that just means that you still will have insurance if you can pay both your AND your former employer’s premiums, which usually comes out to about the $1200 you mentioned.
I’m glad you got a break on that! And I just joined Netflix and think it’s the greatest thing since canned beer. I wish we could cut our cable package down, but our high-speed internet is bundled, so we’re stuck.
I hope things stay on an upward swing for at least a little while!
Now that digital is out, the antennae is our new best friend. It’s free. Tons of crystal clear channels. We live on a shoestring. No credit cards. Yard sales for fleece fixes (wink, wink). What the kids don’t suck up; the farm critters do.