We have started to eat out more than we have in the last few weeks but we have stopped ordering the appetizers and started ordering off of the kids menu or sharing things and drinking water helps a lot too.  I also had a friend at work tell me about Restaurants.com which was a pretty neat website offering discounts for local places.  I did also buy Haydyn some new clothes this weekend but we went to a resale shop and got two outfits for $1.99 each!  I had a hard time with this but once I got there I saw that things were clean and in good shape and not my stereotypical idea of a resale shop (and everything was washed in hot water once we got home too).

I feel like changing these small things will allow us to continue the things we enjoy (eating out and shopping of course!) while still allowing us to save as well.  We have cut back severely on eating out though, which is good for us all around.  We have researched changing cell phone providers as well as cable providers to see if we can get better deals.  We have figured out that by me changing cell phone companies we can save about $60/ month!  My contract is up in August so I am pretty excited about that savings. 

This experience has been a real eye opener for me.  I see how wasteful we have been with our money and our spending habits.  I keep kicking myself for the past few years of wasting bonuses at work and haphazardly spending when we could have saved and paid off some things and been in a much better situation now.  I feel like going through this recession and having a baby at the same time has really put things in perspective and has shown me what we need to be doing with our finances for the future and participating in the Earn or Burn challenge has given us the tools to put that into action. 

We have put into savings what we set out to do and paid off more debt than we planned this month!  We still have 4 days left but I think it will be a breeze.