<prompt> Human: Hey all! As I say Im not expecting sympathy but I could certainly do with good advice. Short version is I had a pretty nice deal working remote for a company I had helped start. Ive been laid off and had to find a local job. After many years of approx 320k a year local dollars, Im now looking at 120k for the same line of work programming.I want to stay anonymous so wont name the country but I can say that in my area salaries in local dollars are about the same in absolute figures and also relative to local costs as salaries are in NYC or SF in the US. Having lived there I speak from experience. So, if youre in the US its fine to just pretend these are USD amounts. Problem is.. I am unlikely to get a salary at anywhere near the old figures locally. I already have found new work, but as I say at a more normal figure of around 100k. As a result, the wife and I are going through the process of desperately adjusting our budget down, fast. EDIT:In response to request a quick summary of where were at, financially- 320k left on mortgage. Payments around 3000 monthly.- No debt to speak of other than the mortgage. CreditCards have been paid off recently but seems like its hard to stop using them. - New work is contract programming, paid per hour. Have work at 90 per hour, but hope for vicinity of 100 per hour or a bit more. Not expecting to be able to chargeable 40 hours a week though - maybe only 1600 hrs a year or something? How does one estimate this?- Wife has a new business which is building up but not earning a lot of money yet. - Four kids between 6 and 16. All the usual expenses including stuff like violin lessons or soccer club. Approx 10k a year on education for them, currently. - Our taste in food, understandably ran towards the more expensive organic, local stuff think WholeFoods up till now. Trying to get this down to 500 per week but this is hard. - We have fairly good insurance, two cars... thinking maybe we should look to reduce this by increasing the amount of deductible or something?- We have the local equivalent of a 401k but need to adjust this - maybe adjust our payments down for a bit?- We were starting to put money aside in savings account for only a few months but have put this on hold - if only temporarily - as I just cant make the budget work otherwise. - Really keen to save up for a holiday if we can as the one main expense. Kids will be heartbroken if they cant go this year thinking approx 5k Any suggestions on ways to quickly adjust our costs down, fast, Id really appreciate it. Practical tips are 100 welcome and awesome but I think also any psychological tips or tricks would also be very helpful. Thanks in advance for any tips or suggestions. I will be watching this closely from this throwaway.Thanks!! EDIT2:Thanks heaps for the downvote, downvoting person. So nice.  <response>: This will sound terrible but who cares if your kids get heartbroken if they dont get to go on a vacation. Use it as a teaching experience about how they cant always have what they want. 