Here we go again...

Got to love working for a large corporation. With the way things are right now, the ever-impending doom of "Lay-Offs" now hangs over our heads. Ughghgh....

No idea if this will even come to pass, or if it would apply to my department at all. But DH and I made the decision tonight to act as if it might. We made a plan - one for now, and one for if the bottom falls out. I just feel so much better knowing we have an action plan in place. I will be working on beefing up my resume just in case, and have already put out a couple feeler-calls to see what's available out there.  Sucks since I am almost 5 months pregnant....I know its not "supposed" to affect the hiring decisions, but it very easily can. 

Part of this plan is to go as bare-bones as we can right now. Not that we live an overly extravagant lifestyle anyway, but we will be making some changes.

1. Grocery budget - $200 per month.  Max.  No ifs, ands, or buts.  Try to incorporate as many NBPR rebates as I can to get our grocery $$ back each month.  For March, the goal will be to use as much of the pantry as we can.  We will see how low we can go with the budget for March. 
2. Gas - with prices rising, we will attempt to carpool & DH will drive me to work in the morning on his way since its only an extra 2 mi out of his way to take me.  We will drive the more fuel-efficient car whenever possible.  We will also start riding to church together - he goes about an hour before I do usually, so we have been each driving.  I will start taking him, dropping him off, and then hitting up CVS & Walgreens for my weekly shopping trip (only 2 mi away from church).  Attempt to stick to $200/month for gas.
3. Energy efficiency - shorter showers, be more diligent about laundry loads (full only, cold water, line-dry now that its nicer).  Could save $50/month.
4. CVS & Walgreens - get back into serious couponing.  I have been pretty lax lately since we have been busy & we have plenty of items on-hand.  Now I will be focusing on getting all the MM deals & I can work out with the least OOP possible.  Extra items will be donated, and receipts obtained for tax purposes later.  MM deals & rebates will be rolled back into the grocery budget.
5. No snowball payments to any CCs or loans.  Minimums ONLY.
6. Entertainment/ going out to eat - yeah, pretty much not going to happen.  I will do better about meal-planning ahead of time so that we are not as tempted to run out on weeknights.  For now, once or twice on the weekends won't be a deal-breaker, but if the big "LO" were to happen, that would obviously stop completely.

These savings will be funneled straight into our emergency fund to start building it up.  To live our lifestyle unchanged, we would need $2700/month.  To live bare-bones completely, we would need about $2100.  Being able to funnel an extra $500-600 to savings each month will help a lot.