"Balling on a Budget"

My boyfriend and I have huge plans. We plan on moving to Seattle sometime in the next couple of years. We cannot do this if we keep spending money like it is nothing. With this, we have agreed to "Ball on a budget". This is my boyfriend's term.

Every weekend I have been coming home and while I have spent a good chunk of money going out, with Christmas and a month off work coming up I have to start saving some money.

Some background information is that ever since I started at SIUE in 2004 I have accumulated some student debt. The main reason I started traveling was to greatly reduce that debt through the higher pay rate/per diems that come with travel nursing - along with seeing some cool places. However, paying off that money is my higest one.

My more immediate priorities is saving for that month I have off as well as being able to provide a great Christmas to my family and Rob's family (did I mention he has 6 nieces with one on the way?). This is forcing us to "ball on a budget". I will divulge more but I am going to have to research cheaper recipes and mostly free things to do while at home.

Something Rob and I discovered while I was at home last was that we really enjoy eating with other couples and having them over for dinner. It's a wonderful way to socialize with friends while saving money while eating. I know my friends all have significant others and we are all wanting to save money (one couple just bought a house, one couple is saving for a house, and another couple is moving in together and going through job changes). Plus the economy, we all can stand to save some money.

My cousin Ryan and his girlfriend Anna came over for dinner and to watch the Cardinal game one night after realizing that we haven't seen each other in a long time. For $60 we had appetizers, main course, beer, and dessert. For appetizers we had Brie, crackers, and apricot preserves, strawberries and fruit cheese dip. For the main course we had avocado BLTs (mine are BLTPs, I love sweet pickles on mine), pasta salad, and there were at least 30 beers in the fridge. Lastly for desert we had Espresso chip gooey butter cake. Pretty impressive meal for $60 for four people. Needless to say we had plenty of food and beer left over - definetly money well spent.

We hope to do more of the same this week with friends and family - I will let you know how balling on a budget goes for me and Rob - see how successful we are.

Love
L