[wheelsup]

I buy old, well maintained used cars and put liability only insurance on them. I pay less per year on each car than my wife's sister pays per month on hers (OK, she drives a corvette but she still makes less $$ than me alone). To cut your phone bill consider Vonage or other similar VOIP phone service.

For food items we eat well but cook a lot at home. Buy most of the stuff on sale, with coupons. LOAD UP on things when they have big sales on flour, spaghetti sauce, etc. I don't like wal-mart, we never go there anymore, but they do have good prices. Plan out meals ahead of time. Brown bag your lunches every day. Once you start it's almost fun to see where you can cut costs. For example I was paying $50 for "high speed" internet and called to lower to the "sorta high speed" option that was 1/4 as fast for 1/2 the cost. 256k as opposed to 1 mb/sec. You could hardly notice the difference. The funny thing is a few months later they did away with the 256k option and made everything 1 mb/sec but grandfathered me in at the old billing rate.

I would focus on the 80/20 first. It's a rule of thumb that 20% of clients contribute to 80% of the sales for salesmen. I think it's similar for expenses. The top 80% of your expenses in $$ will probably comprise only 20% of your line items - so it should be easier to lower them than say something that costs you $5/month.