Budget Cuts January – We Just Won’t Spend It
ONE DOLLAR AT A TIME
Budget Cuts January
These are cuts that we have made this past month to help trim down our budget. Some are small and some are large but all help to trim down our monthly expenses as we save toward our debt free future.
All month I was trying to make mental notes of the items we were cutting back on and quite honestly I have nothing specific to share with you. I think the reason for that is because, after the holidays, we really decided to not spend a thing this month. We just put a lot of purchases on the back burner. We just said …we don’t have the money so we just won’t spend it.
We did take the time this month to evaluate our financial plan for the year and give a rough plan of our budget. My husband and I sat down a few times discussing it and tweaking it to the point that we feel pretty good about where we are headed.
Usually around this time is when we plan out trips or mini vacations that we would like to take. Our trips usually revolve around one of our kids sporting events and this year will not be any different. The only difference with this year, however, is that we will be limiting the number that we go to.
In years past, we just booked a flight, rented a car and a hotel and enjoyed our weekend or week watching our kids play games all around the country. Well this year we are carefully selecting which ones we will attend based on how much it will cost.
This happens to be our daughter Megan’s final year playing softball for Pitt, so we would like to see as many games as we can. We have been saving up our airline miles and hotel points for a while in order to use them specifically to attend her games. So we are hoping to go for next to nothing. And, we will travel individually so as not to spend as much money. We are very lucky because most of her games are broadcast on the internet so if we are unable to go we can still watch it and not feel like we are missing out.
When I think of the money we spent on things like this in the past I just cringe. We used to have the attitude of, we’ll figure out how to pay for it later. Now, before we do it, we figure out how to pay for it. And if we can’t, we just won’t spend it.
Do you have things that you are really cutting back on this year? A vacation, an activity? Did you give up something that you really loved to do but just don’t want to spend the money anymore?
Cindy, My BIL just signed up for Verizon FIOS and got way more than we are getting for 125.00. We pay 175.00. My wife called Verizon and explained that money was tight and Cablevision was much cheaper and within about 3 minutes the CSR gave us a 40.00 a month discount for 1 year. Might want to share with the readers. They must be doing this regularly because it was too quick and Verizon was always tough to get a discount from. I’ve had huge success getting discount and perks from Sprint for our cell phones!!!! Good luck!!!
Cindy –
Love your site! And I completely agree with “cringing” looking back at the things I spent money on when I was rolling in the dough as a single, professional. Now with a 2 year old and baby on the way (happily married) I am so much more resourceful! To echo Eric’s comment above, I had a similar conversation with AT&T last week. My husband and I had banked about 4,500 rollover minutes from being in too high of a plan. I called, lowered our plan (saving $30/month) AND kept the rollover minutes we had banked to cover any overages we might have on the lower plan.
Every little bit helps!
Love the blog! We’re trying to cut back on everything! Especially eating out-when it was just my husband and I we ate out all the time, but now with baby we’re trying to keep things cheap. One thing we’re commited to is ordering off the dollar menu if we HAVE to stop at fast food. You spend half money and get just as much as value meals. When we do go out to dinner we are trying to only go to places that are offering good deals, or coupons. The most we want to spend eating out is $25 including tip. We also don’t go out as much anymore, cutting it down to just a few times a month instead of a few times a week!
I’m curious about the PP (karen) how did you get your bill down? We’re on AT & T and so is our family, so the only people we call are in network and free. So we have a ton of rollover minutes that we just never use! We shopped around and can’t seem to get it any cheaper than the basic plan we’re on now!
We just changed our cable package and got rid of the movie channels. We barely would watch it. We did sign up for Netflix and so far that has actually worked out really well for us. We can stream movies and TV shows directly to our TIVO. We’ve used it far more than the cable channels and it is only costing us $9 a month which is still cheaper than the premium channels. We also are brown bagging it more to save money. We are trying (note not always successful) to eat more at home and limit it to one take out pizza night a week and maybe one fast food night.