Living on One Income in a Two Income Economy

The Internet is rich with resources to save you money, whether it's travel specials, coupons, or free computer downloads. This week, I will discuss some of the better sites I have found in these following 5 areas that are my personal biggest budget woes:

1. Mortgage expenses
2. Groceries
3. Clothing
4. Travel
5. Entertainment

Mortgage Expenses
The house payment is usually the single biggest expense for families. Unfortunately, there isn't too much you can do to cut back on this expense other than refinancing your home. HSH Associates has a wonderful article that discusses when you should refinance, different refinancing options, and actual costs involved with refinancing your home.

Groceries
As the mother of 3 growing boys, food is another big expense in my household! I sometimes feel that the grocery store is my "second home". About.com's Frugal Living has some good hints to save money at the grocery store. And Kraft Food's Interactive Kitchen has some great, easy recipe ideas to help you save time and money.

Clothing
Trying to clothe my 3 sons is another expensive endeavor. I guess one advantage to having all boys is that I can hand-down their clothes to each other, although the clothes can be pretty worn out by time they make it to my youngest son. Tide offers some tips on keeping older clothes looking new, as well as stain guides and more.

Travel
Well, we haven't done too much travelling in the last few years. It seems like our youngest lasted about 2-3 hours in the car, then started whining and crying. He is finally getting a little better at travelling now that he is four years old, though. Anyway, we seem to do a lot of camping as our main form of vacation. It's fairly inexpensive, and we try to camp at places within 2 or 3 hours from home. To find a campground near you, About.com's Camping site has hundreds of U.S. campgrounds listed by state.

Entertainment
It seems like most of our entertainment these days is home-based; it is just too expensive to get a baby sitter for 3 kids. One of our greatest sources of entertainment is the computer. My boys love computer games, and you can find innumerable shareware and demo games on the Internet. Two of my favorite places to download games are Happy Puppy and Gamespot. And for some good children's software, Gamesdomain has a special page devoted just to kids. (NOTE: before downloading anything on the Internet, I would strongly suggest you first download a good virus protection program, such as McAfee. It's best to play it safe.)