How Not to Handle Money

This may or may not come as a surprise to some of you, but my family is having some serious money issues. All four people living in this house are unemployed, we keep spending money like there's no tomorrow, and yet money keeps materializing from nowhere. Or at least, it did before this morning. To give you a quick background, our monthly budget looks something like this:

-80 Digital Cable
-60 Phone/Internet/(unused) Cell Phone
-70 Gas (not gasoline)
-50 Water
-90 Electric
-150 Gasoline (frequent trips to Port Huron)
-300 Fast Food (almost every day)
-150 Actual food (we have access to a Bridge card too)
-200 Various Purchases
-----
1130 Total Expenditure


+450 Dad's Pension
+623 My Aunt's SSI
----
1073 Total Income


See a problem there? I failed to factor in medical expenses from my dad's recent heart attack and my mom's car accident, and I probably misjudged some of the bills, but the you can clearly see the situation.

If my mom would stop running people to Port Huron (up to) three times a week and cut back on her spending a little bit, we could probably save $300 right there. We also leave the TV, multiple fans, my mom's computer, and the computer in the kitchen running all day, regardless of whether they're being used or not. We could save on gas by doing larger loads (someone washes three or four items at a time on the largest load setting) of laundry and actually allowing food to thaw before we begin cooking it. We could save some money on the phone bill by canceling service to the cell phone we don't use. We could completely cancel the cable too, because there's never anything on.

But we won't because it's obviously better to spend all the bill money and complain than to manage money responsibly. I hope Jason is better at handling money than I am or we have a serious problem.

ADDENDUM: My mom randomly decided that she needs a new shelf for her DVD collection and prepared to go to Kmart to buy one. I know she doesn't have any money and I really don't want her to cancel the our Internet service, so I gave her the shelf I used for DVD's, which she gave me when we first moved in. Now she's mad about it.