this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

Up until November, we paid nothing for The Tall One's own health insurance that he gets through work (we just paid for myself and the kids). Now, in addition to the normal increase in premiums, we're also paying a percentage of his. This essentially means a pay cut for us since there was no raise in salary to go along with it. In addition to that, my hours were drastically reduced at my tutoring job (something I didn't expect until February or March, as that's when they died off last year).  We never really include my tutoring income in the budget, it normally goes straight to savings, but what with TTO bringing home less, we were glad to have that buffer for a few more months. But now we don't have it.

So what to do?

Luckily, we've tried really hard to not increase our spending when his paychecks have gone up, so for the most part, we really can keep our current numbers and be okay. Except for the wiggle room. Oh, I how I love my wiggle room. I love thinking along the lines of "it's okay, I can spend a little extra in clothing because we haven't eaten out yet, the money can come from there" and then when we inevitably do eat out, it turns into, "oh well, a little less savings is okay for this month". Yeah, I pretty much don't do well when it comes to sticking with the actual numbers. But I can't do that anymore. Assuming we still want to save some money (which we do). There's really no room for that.

Essentially, the budget needs not so much work - we (mainly myself) just need to pay closer attention to it.

How have you adjusted when hit with a decrease in income?