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

$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

$1,000 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 way too outrageous

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