Red Squirrel
No Lifer
If you believe you cut everything that you possible could out of your budget then the next step will be increase your income. You can only cut so much fat/waste until you can't anymore. Or move to another cheaper/more affordable place. That's why I live to live down here. It is not perfect (too freaking hot and humid in summer and other bad stuffs such as crazy drivers/etc.) but the cost of living is low and I can save a lot of money for my early retirement (10 years or less from now).
I sometimes toy with idea of jumping ship and working in the mine as it does pay more. You can make over 100k in the mine. Hard physical work though. Got to admit I have a pretty cushy job and it actually pays a lot for a tech job. Most tech jobs here pay a bit over minimum wage but this one pays decent, around 80k or so, and there's no ridiculous BS like needing 10 years of experience in Windows server 2019 (I've seen that requirement lol). I get lot of time off with this job which is part of what makes it nice but I do need to think of a way to monetize that time. I sometimes toy with getting into trades on the side like drywalling or painting or something. I don't think you need any kind of special license for that.
I've mostly been concentrating on paying debt with whatever extra money I do have. Credit line and mortgage. I have around 5 years left on the mortgage. Though I lowered the payment a while back to have more breathing room and to actually put a dent in the credit line, so it might be a bit more than 5 years now. Credit line is only costing me like $50/mo in interest though while mortgage is around $400 so maybe I shouldn't have changed it but reason I did is I came close to buying a cabin in the woods last year and would have put that on the credit line. I want to secure something now as land prices won't be any cheaper in the future. May not be smart to spend that much now but that is a one time cost for something that does not depreciate. If I came to a point where I can live there then I would sell the house and eliminate all bills and be in a very solid financial situation.
But yeah end goal is to really try to find a way to get more income or move to where it's cheaper. I know for sure I won't be able to afford to live here forever. I kind of wasted the last 10 years just running in circles paying bills and I know I can't continue this path.