3409: How We Began to Slash Our Budget by Amanda Brownlow of Hello Brownlow on Managing Family Expenses

Carvana is so easy. Just a click, and we've got ourselves a car. See? So many cars. That's a clicktastic inventory. And check out the financing options. Payments to fit our budget. I mean, that's Clickonomics one zero one. Delivery to our door. Just a hop, skip, and a click away. And bought. No better feeling than when everything just clicks. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. It's an historically hideous season. It's our one hundredth ugly house. And if these walls could talk Do you cry a lot? I do. Ugliest House in America season premiere, Wednesday at eight on HGTV. This is Optimal Finance Daily. How we began to slash our budget by Amanda Brownlow of hellobrownlow.com. I'm very lucky to have married a frugal man that knows how to save money. We met in 2010 when we were just 19 years old and had no clue on how to budget. We went through college together and he got to see all my bad spending habits, which I'm very glad that he did because I had a big spending problem that I tried to hide. I was fortunate enough that my parents were able to help me financially through college. I know that isn't the case for most. I was very blessed, and I still am. Without the help of my parents, I would have worked a lot more than I did, and I would not have been able to graduate early. My husband, on the other hand, had to work his way through college, and it made him appreciate the value of savings more than I did. When we got married the semester before we graduated, I had no idea what it meant to save money. My average checking account balance was below a $100, and I ran that sucker all the way down to zero every two weeks, but I never overdrew my account. You would think since my parents were money savvy, mostly due to my banker mother, I would know my way around a ledger too. But I didn't pay attention when they went over that life lesson. I learned most everything about budgeting with my husband. It was a huge learning curve. When we moved away from the college world into a bigger city, we dabbled in Dave Ramsey books at the recommendation of my uncle. We don't follow the Dave Ramsey plan at all, but we did take away some great lessons, and we found out a lot on our own. Here are some of the ways that we cut our bad spending habits and saved almost a thousand dollars every month. The thrill of looking at how much money we were able to save made all of this worth it. Number one, we cut out cable. We were very spoiled until we moved to the city because cable was included in our rent. We had cable for a while, but soon ended our contract because it was …