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In late 2006, I was doing just fine with my pay checks; always had money left over to save, meeting all my bills and obligations. Here we are in 2011 and as soon as I am paid, it is literally out the door. My wife is doing an outstanding job with the meals and making our dollar stretch; but at this point, I simply don't know how much longer we can hold up with the price of everything we NEED sky rocketing and those "needs" never being factored in with "inflation".

And no, we have not "lived outside our means". Our means now do not cover what American Socialism has wrought on us.

"....2006, I was doing just fine with my pay checks; always had money left over to save, meeting all my bills and obligations. Here we are in 2011...."

I hear ya' brother - and living extremely frugaly (is that a word?) - just this morning looked into raiding my retirement yet again....

You ain’t kiddin.

We found Dave Ramsey and really got serious about our finances right before the bottom fell out of the economy. Man we are glad we did that. But we have cut expenses right down the bone and I’m not sure what else we can do at this point. Ever go looking for ways on line to be more thrifty? Some of the suggestions are positively laughable.

“Stop buying a daily cup of coffee at Starbucks”. Are you flipping kidding me?? I don’t even drink coffee. I reuse tea bags 2-3 times when I am feeling extravagant. If not, I use dried peppermint from the garden. Cancelled cable. No expensive cell phone plan. No credit card. Cars are old but paid off. Kids’ clothes and toys almost all hand me downs. My barber is a set of clippers. I work from home 4 days a week to save on gas. Most Saturdays spent either on overtime or a business I have on the side.

Meanwhile there’s the cost of groceries. Property taxes. Medical bills...oy.

Class mobility, right now, means the middle class slipping by degrees into poverty. Not pretty.

In late 2006, I was doing just fine with my pay checks; always had money left over to save, meeting all my bills and obligations. Here we are in 2011 and as soon as I am paid, it is literally out the door. My wife is doing an outstanding job with the meals and making our dollar stretch; but at this point, I simply don't know how much longer we can hold up with the price of everything we NEED sky rocketing and those "needs" never being factored in with "inflation". And no, we have not "lived outside our means". Our means now do not cover what American Socialism has wrought on us.

We're in the exact same boat. We grew up frugal and remain so today but even that's not enough. Paychecks were always tight, but we were never hurting. The last few years, we're hurting. Every month now days it seems we barely squeak by or barely don't. If we could just catch a break for a few months, we'd be fine and have a little breathing room but that's never going to happen. Two months ago, we squeaked through on the good side. Last month, the house insurance put us over. This month the car is in the shop for overdue repairs but I'm going to have to baby the bald tire because that's just not in the equation right now. I'm having to hold off on the car insurance until the last day hoping to throw it over into the following pay period. Also, the rise in health insurance this month meant the paycheck decreased, again. Next, property taxes will be due and we'll be up the creek without a paddle.

Then there's the extras that probably aren't needs but are above wants. Kids in college and first apartments this fall. A wedding present purchase that we couldn't avoid this week. More than our fair share recently of family funerals and hospital and after hospital care that have taken big bites out of the budget. Thankfully, the pantry and freezer are full and every bit of food is eaten or is frozen and is never thrown out. Everything is used, reused, recreated and used up. (FYI to family - last year you got Christmas themed table runners that I made out of leftover holiday fabric scraps but you're getting matched-to-your-decor table runners this year since I have a boatload of free upholstry scraps.)

What the blazes happened?!? Sure, we all know what happened but it still boggles the mind when you've always been responsible, paid your bills promptly, never owed anyone and lived within the budget.