Gas and Food Price Crisis

I know, I know, everyone is paying through the nose, as they say, for the gas to do necessary tasks which require driving. My 15 year old daughter must get to school, and my 17 year old son needs to do the same. My husband needs to get to work and I need to do the driving to maintain the household. I have stopped driving to meetings, either clients meet me at my home, or we communicate through e-mail or by telephone. Luckily, all of my business associations are also long-standing relationships. Even though we work to consolidate our trips, we spent over $250 last month for gasoline. Last year, during the month of April last year, we spent over $100 less!!! That extra $100 came out of money needed to pay the bills and a few extras. Our income did not increase to compensate for that $100, did yours? This month, there are no extras. Our household has gone into a necessary crisis to save money. Here in Arizona, summer is our expensive utility use time, cooling our home and cars against the 100+ degree 100+ days of the summer. OUCH!!!

Steps we are taking to lessen the spending in our household.
1. We enrolled in the energy saving plan through our utility.
2. We turned our cooling units temperature to 82 degrees. Last season the settings were at 78 degrees.
3. We are grocery shopping closer to home, and using our less expensive farmer's market year around stores.
4. We make lists not only of items to be purchased, but the route to take and other chores to do on the way. Planning is the new chore.
5. We are trying to make a game out of conserving and planning. Though, I must say, I feel like the children, this is getting old. At first they tried to complain out of the game plan, facing final exams, this was not the time to institute one more thing. So, we talked out our frustrations and entertained alternatives. They didn't like the alternatives which included saving electricity by turning off computers, TV, radio, lights at night, video games, turning up the air conditioning to 88 degrees, and our usual Summer vacation. Only one of us will be traveling this Summer, and that is related to education.
6. We are drinking water, not sodas, juices, coffees, teas, mixed drinks and smoothies. We aren't even making these, except when we find the fruit on sale to make juices. We are not purchasing bottles of water, instead using larger volume purified, actually distilled water.
7. We are trying to compact our trash to fit in just one trash container, instead of two. It means removing our compost items for compost, rolling our trash tighter so more fits in the container, and paying more attention to the recycle labels.
8. We planted a small garden for lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and a few other things. The set up was sort of expensive, but the growing will be nearly cost-free for this season and more to come.
9. We just aren't buying things, instead, we are making it on what we have. Even if we have some cash left over at the end of the month, it goes into savings. We never know if the price of gas and food will increase next month again, and we will need the extra from this month for next month.
10. We will begin to use the library more this Summer, instead of Borders Books or Barns and Noble.
11. We will do more walking and bike riding than last year this time. Later in the season, bike riding will be too dangerous due to the heat.

What are you and your family doing to conserve your money? You don't have to be living in poverty to save at this time of hardship. What are you doing to save yourself?

Mother One