This is gonna become extra important! Since my husband is taking a new job, gasp! It's a bit of a pay cut, but should be a huge improvement in quality of life, and long term may ultimately earn him more. But, we were already pushing it on how much we spend on housing costs, really. We love, love, love this apartment though, it's so quiet and will be *perfect* to bring the baby home to. So we're gonna try to make everything else fly a little leaner to justify staying here a while longer! (If we can't, we'll probably move to a smaller unit in the same building when our lease is up at the end of the year).
The glaring exception to that is that we're going to take a "babymoon" to Hawaii before he starts up at the new job. We have a ton of rewards points from our IVF cycles, and we want to use 'em dangit. Plus, time together before he spends a ton of time orienting to the new role. It'll involve a lot more travel during ramp up then it will once he's established, so it'll be back to 'work widow' status for a bit for me. At least he'll definitely have weekends off =) That will be novel and delightful. Anyway, I'm rambling.
What to reduce?
-restaurants and coffee. These have really crept up the past few months. Between pregnancy cravings and being social with people, we've been dining out more than ever before. I think a non zero part was also that for a while I couldn't cook anything (hurk), so when Husband was tired/stressed from work, we'd go out instead. $174 on this last month, already at $150 this month.
-groceries. This is higher than I'd like right now. We definitely walk over to groceries when we're bored and want a cheap outing, but this frequently results in grabbing a kombucha or some "little" treat we don't need. Those add up! This should also go down for a while as I'm less "fussy" about food.
-I'm *hoping* clothes budget goes down soon, since I have some maternity items now. This will still be around some though, I'm sure =\
-gas for car. May or may not want to reduce this? It's been higher because we've visited friends, gone to the coast, stuff like that. All good uses. Need to decide the cost vs reward side of this more, a la Your Money or Your Life.