Acouple of years ago I had the oppertunity to pay off all my bills,now all I have to pay is car inshurance,phone,electricty and of corse grosery.To save $$ I shop at the goodwill store,go to estate sales (im a big record collector as well as anything frome movies) U would be surprised what some folks thnk of as junk thats worth big bucks.Lasttime I went pickin I bought a real record player with the 45& 33 rpm ect speeds.several boxes of 45's some station cuts and tons of records I havent gotten into checking out the signatures on yet.I have sold some things when I got the right price but at the moment im building up my stock...I may well open an anytique store in my garage so I can work from home.

Times are indeed tight, I have almost been thinking about going back into Food and Beverage or large Concessions management which is very well paid, but I am not sure my health is good enough any more.

Cynthia asked me last night if maybe we need to switch to a cheap coffee brand. GASP.

I wish At Last lived closer to help me appraise the Estate Stuff from my Dad so I could start selling things and have some idea of worth.

Rockin, do you know of a good website for old record player needles? I have tons of really cool LPs I want to listen to.

I like the VS Ipex bra. It's the best support yet.

I am a compliance officer at a financial services company. We took a 30% reduction in revenue in 2009. It has been stressful. I love my job. It suits my personality. At work I am the Compliance Domme!!

I moved this year to a less expensive place. It was a big step down but I actually like it a lot now. I can walk lots of places.

The budget is bare bones now. I have lots of child related expenses that I cannot save on so I have to do with less. Actually I am happier now then I ever have been in my life. Part of that is having a partner who is totally on the same page as me regarding finances.

This recession has taught me that disposable income is not necessary to be happy.

Great thread!!!!

my life changed when the semi hit me almost three years ago. I was a mental health psychotherapist. Since then, I havent been able to hold down a FT job because my back goes out on me after working for so long. I have tried PT employment and am hoping I can do that now that my health is better.

but this has really changed the way I live my life. If you only knew the amount of money I lived on monthly you would gasp. Yet I did it, with the help of my sister and some churches.

After this accident, and with the experience I had with my ex butch husband cheating on me and me losing the family farm over it, I pretty much am terrified now of losing anything again in my life...

So I have simplified my life.

The house I just bought is paid in full. I have no mortage payment. My car is also paid off. I will have a huge garden and this will help me be self sustainable for food as much as I can be. (I dont plan on eating much meat anymore as it isnt good for me.) I have just my car insurance and my utilities to pay now, just like Rocky said earlier in his post. I am a crafter so all my gifts come from my talents. I might even sell some this year to make some money.

If I dont have much, I cant lose much. What I do have, I can sustain even in the worst of times.

In addition to my day job, I take surveys for $$, both online and in person. It isn't time consuming and adds about $300 a year to our income.

Entertainment such as plays, concerts, etc are usually won through sweepstakes I enter. For eating out, we use coupons and almost always get four meals or more out of two. We also go on picnics and long walks in good weather.

We buy the majority of our clothes at thrift stores and obtain items through Craigslist and Freecycle.

I don't think Rene ever buys meats that are not on sale or marked down for quick sale. He also has a fairly good size garden so we have fresh veggies and spices most of the year.

I have three unpaid furlough days now, and we lost some other income, so we adapted by selling a financed car, used savings to pay off a debt, canceled the newspaper, put Netflix on hold, transferred to a less expensive cell phone plan (no land line) and combined the auto and house insurance.

We are truly blessed because there is a bit more than enough and that is a lot in this economy.

Andrea

Have you tried amazon.com? They have a subscription program for groceries. It's amazing; you can buy by the item or by the case, the shipping is free, and you tell them when to send the stuff, monthly, every other, every six... not only that, if you hit a crunch and need to put something off, you can tell them to skip a shipment.

I discovered them when absolutely no one in town was selling the supplies for the Breeze cat litter system, and I got hooked pretty quickly because it's so much cheaper than even the Big Gray Box stores (which did finally start carrying the supplies again). You do pay sales tax, but no shipping, which means I even save the $2.50 it would cost me to go to a BGB store on the bus---AND I don't have to struggle to lift and carry heavy stuff on the bus.

I dunno if you would find your brand of coffee there--they have tons of stuff, but of course they're more limited than most grocery stores--but they have so much stuff, and some of it green, like Seventh Generation cleaning and paper products, that I think it's worth a quick look, anyway.

I also save a considerable amount of money buying all our pets' flea meds at Amazon. It's even cheaper than 1800PetMeds, yanno? I just wish I could subscribe for those, but oh well, I'm just glad to be able to get them!

i am a teacher who lives in a very expensive area. Last year and the year before, i worked extra jobs -- lots of them. The budget cuts have meant that i only have one small extra job this year. Then HR screwed me over in two different ways. As a result i have to move to less expensive digs in a little over a month. i am looking forward to the move, but it's stress on top of stress. And i am a little worried about my cats adjusting. But there is no choice.

i need to do a lot of the things people here are doing -- like cook ahead for the week and pack lunches more regularly.

i have no talents and can't sell anything. i just work. In the past -- i worked a LOT. i probably am going to teach summer school again, and i will be very lucky to get it if i do. Lots of teachers want it and can't get it. But i wish i had the summer off.

I was working a consulting job in the refining industry for a couple of years; I knew it was a matter of time situation going in to it; what I didn't count on was the economy turning South at the end of it, and that my post consulting job situation was going to be much different (albeit much, much better) than what I thought it was going to be. I thought I was going to return to the company I was with when I took the consulting job, but that didn't work out.

I stayed in LA job hunting for a while and living on unemployment. I made good money consulting, but wound up not having much to show for it for several reasons that I'll skip. Anyway, after nine months of looking for work in California, I gave up. I'd met the love of my life in February (although I didn't know it for sure at the time) but in September, I did know. I was still unemployed and in order for us to work things out, we needed to be living closer together so, I left California and moved to Texas. After four months of job hunting here, and after a total of one year and six days of being unemployed and playing in between job hunting, I recently started a new job as an industrial Health, Safety and Environmental Manager for a manufacturing plant in here Texas.

If someone had told me twenty years ago that in 2009, I was going to take a year off of work, and still manage to be okay financially, I would have found that to be quite amusing. I had not been out of a job since 1983 prior to all of this. This economic downturn has been, and remains pretty tough for a lot of people. I was lucky that I had my unemployment and my rental house income to get me through. I'm indeed lucky that it worked out for me. I know many others have not been so fortunate. I've learned a great many lessons through this. I hope things improve soon, especially for you California folks. That place is an economic train wreck!

Glynn

Glynn

I make most of my money from freelance writing- most of it is website content. I also work part time in the sales department for the Oregon Symphony. Then there is my little internet empire- I make some money from affiliate sales and Adsense. It is growing slowly but surely. I just registered 50 new domain names this week, so I have 50 new websites to build. :|

I work in public relations and communications. I also do a lot of freelance political communictions works in Michigan mostly.