A lot of people do not want to budget as it is something poor people do, or it means you dont make enough. believe me people budget.
to the OP: I just want to show you some numbers from what you have given.
Ok so we shop your car insurance and increase your deductable to 500 from 250. (many places have a 20.00 a month price difference between those two numbers, so yeah if you put keep that in mind it saves you moeny after the first year of saving the 20.00) save $30.00 a month.
Cut out the premium cable channels, maybe keeping one set. Downgrade your highspeed internet to the slowest High speed they have (unless your job or personal use demands High speed- but only you know that. Most people do not download enough to need a superfast conection) saves 30.00 a month.
Go over your cell bill, if you are coming close to a renewal dump your insurance, realise you do not need so many minutes so downgrade your minutes/text program. saves 20 a month
Go thorugh your house. You live alone. Unplug that spare TV in the guest room, unplug the stuff in your sons room, use a powerstrip and just shut the power off, install CFL bulbs in everything, close ducts to empty rooms so you are not heating/cooling empty space, clean fridge coils, Turn lights out when not using, turn stuff off when not using oustide of initial costs of Power Strip and CFL bulbs you probably could see a 25.00 a month savings.
Conserve trips in car. try to one stop shop when running errands so you are not making so many small trips. heck act like gas is still 4.95 a gallon save 25.00 month. ( i am assuming 150 a month in gas is 4-6 fill ups)
Now I do not know anything about you, I do not know if you have people over for meals a lot so you have a lot of food on hand, and I do not know if all your eating out is with a date or just with friends. I also do not know if you live in a high food COL state but... There is no shame in eating a peanut butter and jelly for lunch occasionally,
Cut your eating out in half, and your food budget to less then 50 a week and you are saving 500 a month.
if you don't date and dont go out you are eating out WAY TOO MUCH and eating out at some very nice places probably.
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From another thread I did:
A compilation of two posts I made telling someone they probably had extra money in the house:
1-Get a notebook for you and for the spouse. Give out a set amount of money each week and ask that every cent be accounted for. Every week tranfer it to a master list.
After a month you have an idea where your money goes and how much you spend (people trying to lose weight use this, if you can stick to it it isa great motivation) now take a good hard look at it.
This will give you an idea where your money goes. Is a McDonalds coffee 3 times a week really necessary? No cut that out and you save $6.00 or $24 a month. I cut huge saving when I realized I drank 10 $1.00 sodas from the vending machine at work a week and could buy 12 for 7.18 at the grocery store and use a little cooler with a refreezable ice pak (10*4=$40 vs 3.5*$7.18=$25.13....the cooler and the ice pack was paid off in the first month. Same amount of beverage cheaper no degrading my quality of life)
2-List all your monthly bills and obligations, include a set amount for vehicle repairs and expected gas you really cannot do anything about that.
See where your money is going out at.
3- Save all you grocery receipts. Go through them. Are there generics you can trade out? Frozen or fresh for cheaper depending on season. Most people can save 50% of their food household goods budget by:
a) Buying Generics
b) Aggressive couponing (with products they actually use)
c) meal planning using guides like the book CHEAP, FAST, GOOD, by Mills.
d) grocery planning using circulars and online looking. This does important things- it allows you to buy cheap and it limits trips out shopping. Most people buy at least ONE thing not on their list. If you limit your shopping to x times a month you limit how many extra items you may buy.
e) Shop at multiple stores for your needs. One stop shopping means you are paying more for something that the discount store or store next door sells cheaper. I shop at 3 different stores- The Big grocery store, Aldis and a discounter named Marcs. I can buy coffee creamer for $1.00 a quart, at Marcs, same brand product for 3.59 at grocery store or house brand at Aldis for $2.79. Be aggressive- don't buy what you dont eat, or can eat as thrown away food is thrown away money But shopping can for 3 hours of work save you a considerable amount
f) get another notebook for shopping. It's your grocery log. Write down and log prices of the staples you typically buy at the stores you go to- that way you can remember that milk is chaeper at XXXX but carrots are cheaper at XXXX record price changes as you shop. You can also then compare and see where a sale price is actually cheaper.
g) start downgrading meals- you dont need steak or chicken so much, and you may find frozen chicken breasts at a better price then fresh, or depending on a sale fresh might be cheaper or ground beef abetter buy then turkey.
h) Less prepackaged- mini carrots are great but regular ones are pound for pound cheaper. bagged salad mix is incredibly expensive. Do you really need Mesculin Mix? Will you use the whole bag?
4-All the money you save you need to do two things- Cut it in half- put half down on paying bills off and the other half to make your emergencey cash fund. Every dollar you save you need to view as INCOME that you worked for. You need to save it and pay off your debt.
5- If you buy more then 3 copies of a magazine a year a subscription is probably cheaper
6- Use your library for books, magazines and DVDs. In many places you can order them online and pick them up. Who needs netflix? (or magazine subscriptions honest I only have a few, the rest I take out from the library)< multiple memberships at different libraries can give you different products.
7- Costco or Sams club CAN save you money if you are budgeting hard core and if they have products you use. And if you shop well. My Costco card pays for itself just by one maintenence medication I buy there.
8-Look closely at your cell phone/cable bill. Down grade your high speed internet. Downgrade your cell service. Put the kids on a use budget.
9- Wal mart- they may be destroying America but some stuff they have is cheaper--but just because Wal mart sells it does not mean it will be cheaper then a sale price or regular price somewhere else.
And in responce to a question someone asked me:
I live in a one bedroom apartment
Granted some of these numbers might be location based, and what companies you choose business with but:
I switched from Time Warner with HBO/Showtime and highspeed to WOW and just highspeed, lowest speed they had, saved $45 a month.
Properly recorded my mileage to insurance company and saved 12.00 a month ( I drive less then 7K a year)
Switched to CFL in the lights, unplugged devices I do not use or use rarely and dropped my electric $8.00 a month. Went on my electric companies budget program so I pay the same amount every month.
Evaluated my Cell service, dropped minutes I do not use, dropped texts I never use(1500 to 200) and saved $25.00
Downgraded Netflix (keeping it was a trade off on getting rid of movie channels) $3.00 I pick up the slack with my local library.
My grocery buying, generics switch over and price log using, just did a price comparison and I average spending about $30 a week on food/household stuff (cleaners, soap, detergent, toothpast) if I one stop shopped at the grocery store that would be around 65 a week I spent. SO I save 35 a week. (those are costs on average over time as who buys deodorant weekly but you get the idea,)
pack lunch saves 18 a week
buying Soda on sale gives me brand names at generic prices. I stock up to wait out the next sale
No itunes downloads or CD buying, I library and rip saves about $10 a month. (really yeah thats 12 CDs a year)
$255 a month from what I was spending.
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REMEMBER-keep some creature comforts. But understand you are trying to budget, not spend frivolously.
Dieting by restriction causes a lot of people to lose faith and go off the diet or binge.
I still get NetFlix, i still see movies, I haev magazine subscriptions.
I eat out at happy hour with friends and sit at the bar where we get food discounts.
I get my hair cut.
Driving 45 minutes to save 20 cents on a can of mushrooms is a bad call that will make you hate your budget too.
Buying a $45.00 bottle of shampoo may make sense, but understand that money is coming from somewhere else to pay for it
You make enough money as it is. Do not change your 401K especially right now when the market may be going up.
Dont change your taxes anytime soon. If you appreciate the refund do it. You may want to consider seeing if itemized deductions may work out better for you then using the standards though.
You make enough money as it is you are just spending too much and it seems still having a hard time realizing that.
Look so if we did my highlighted savings from above:
30+30+20+25+25+500= 630 a month.
in month one, you can pay off HSBC and 1/2AMEX, and you gain $19.00 a month as you have no HSBC payment to make
next month Amex and CITI1 and you gain $35.00 a month the following month
month 3 you pay CITI 2 and rest on Home Depot you gain $20.00- you have increased your money by 75.00 a month having those bills paid.
month 4 home depot gets paid saving you 33.00 a month.
IN FOUR MONTHS YOU GAIN $110 A MONTH IN "INCOME' BY PAYING SOME BILLS.
So now you have 770 or so to play with. Coming up on Christmas and instead of charging presents you use/spend $500 of that monthly savings and put the 220 on some other bill.
Message Edited by usmc58555 on 08-30-2009 10:00 AM
