Scraping by

I'm having a difficult time making ends meet towards the end of this month. I spent all my money on this month on bills, food, GAS, and stuff to work on the house. Not to mention I just dropped $3000 on a lawn mower! The only things I have actually bought for myself this month are some guitar strings, some picks, and a $14 blender.

My checking account shows -$21.00 in it right now. I have transfered some savings money over and I have another transfer going in that is taking for-fucking-ever! That will help me scrap by to get to the end of the month. I have a trip scheduled for next week and I'm hoping to have enough money to get through that trip. Then I get a nice fat expense check and my paycheck at the same time. However, this time, it's different.

There are a few subscription based services that I got rid of, saving me a few bucks. Bowling will be over which will save $20-30/week. I also will not have to pay a credit card bill, nor any other loan payments. All I have are house payment, electricity, insurance, TV/Internet, cell phone, and water bills. These will total about $1000/month all together.

As gas prices rise and rise, I've considered putting my truck up for sale. I could probably get $10-12K out of it. It's a very nice truck and has $2000 worth of stereo in it (minus a blown sub amp). I can barely afford to keep gas in the thing right now with prices shooting towards $4/gallon. The last time I filled up the truck was a few weeks ago and it run me $73.50. Since then, I just put in $30 at a time and it gets me to almost 1/2 a talk. Just terrible if you ask me.

My car, on the other hand, gets 2 to 2.5 times the gas mileage and only costs about 1/2 as much to fill up. However, it has 165K miles on it. I don't really have any problems with the car other than keeping it clean.

I really hate that I'm a slave to the motor vehicle. They are getting too expensive to own these days, yet we MUST have them to get by in life. That's the case in my area where there is no public transportation and it's common to have a 45-50 mile commute to work. If it were any way possible, I'd never drive again. Driving is dangerous, expensive, and just an overall burden on my life.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do right now. I'm anxious to see how May treats me financially. I've cut some expenses this month. I figure I'll save $600-650 this month on the expenses that I've cut out. So all this might just be a moot point. $600 is a lot of money. This is sort of my own economic stimulus package.

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One other thing I forgot to mention is that I'm currently working on trying to get rid of my cable bill. I'm looking into various internet options that do not require me to carry television.