Budget Leaks. Plug Up Those Holes Before You Drown.
Are your bills getting out of hand? I would like to say ours were, but we are still fine tuning. I guess that is what happens when there are continuous improvements with a plan for our money. We are not overly lavish, do not drink the $5 lattes, have multiple subscriptions to various services, or even vending machine snack breaks. With recent economic woes it’s ever important now to get a handle on where the money is going and plug the leaks to increase the efficiency of the plasectomy.
Let me share with you things that we found and other ideas to stop the leaking from your wallet.
1. Scale the cable service back or get rid of it entirely.
Did that free promotion of HBO end? How much does your bill run? $80, $100, or $150 a month? Watch for those promotions on TV where you could combine your services. Give your local provider a call and threaten to cancel. You would be amazed at how quick they will offer to lower your rates to keep you as a customer. We recently did this and brought our internet service down from $44.95 a month to $29.95 a month for a year.
2. Cell Phone
Take a look at your monthly minute usage, text messaging, and premium services. Are you paying for insurance at $5 or $6 month on a phone that is 2 years old? Have an old phone sitting in a drawer? Use that if something were to happen to your current phone. Reduce your minute plan if you are not using all the minutes an instant savings of $20. Check to see if you have an employer discount. You could save as much as 22% of your service.
• Verizon Wireless – Dial #646 to check your minutes. Click here to check for employer discounts.
• AT&T – Dial #646 to check your minutes. Click here to check for employer discounts.
• Sprint – Click here to check for employer discounts.
3. Sell Your Storage Unit
Do you have a bunch of stuff? Does your stuff charge you rent? Have you visited your stuff recently? Your stuff doesn’t miss you and you will not miss it. Sell it! Apply your cash to your plasectomy. Two great avenues to get rid of your stuff is to sell it on eBay and Craigslist. For those items that are rare I would personally choose to sell on eBay as you have a global customer base. Craigslist is fantastic for local selling saving you on shipping and it’s free to post. We just sold several small kitchen appliances generating over $100 from Craigslist
4. Gym Membership
Bally’s Total Fitness, Gold’s Gym, 24 Hour Fitness are you a member to one of these chains? What does it run you? A few hundred a year? Have you tried your local YMCA/YWCA? What about running in your local neighborhood? It is still technically winter, but spring is right around the corner and it’s free.
5. Cut Your Electricity Usage
Are you using compact fluorescent bulbs in all lights in your home? Do you know how much electricity is being used by your computer, tv, dvd player, etc? If not, I would highly recommend purchasing a Kill A Watt meter to determine how much your idle electronics are costing you. By using this tool I have my computer that I was leaving on 24/7 was costing me $12-14 a month. That is over $150 a year.
Are you doing anything to stop the budget leaks in your home? Will the money you save by stopping these leaks be applied to your plasectomy or appropriated somewhere else?
February 10th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Contrary to popular advice, we just scaled our cable bill UP a little. But it’s because we just don’t go to movies (ever – OK,maybe once per year the kids go) and we just don’t go anywhere – our restaurant usage has dwindled to zero – so I figure that if nights watching two or three particular shows on HBO that we are hooked on is our only real entertainment expense, It’s OK to pay for. It’s definitely worth looking over the cable bill, though, to trim anything that you’re mindlessly paying for without even using.
We used to have a storage unit till I realized what a money drain it was. It was a great feeling to stop paying that $140 per month, although it’s not as great to have lots of junk in our apartment closing in on us. But we need to sort and get rid of most of it, so we’re doing what we should be doing instead of paying for 90% trash storage in perpetuity.
I almost never contribute to stupid school fundraisers anymore (which go to line the pockets, indirectly, of the PTA bigwigs in our wealthy school district) and I’m a cheapass when it comes to sending in $5 here and there (I don’t do it anymore) for this or that teacher’s baby shower or end-of-year present. Sounds harsh, but the 24-year-old teacher who lives with mom and dad (in this same wealthy neighborhood) really does not need my money to add to the Target giftcard the PTA ladies are going to buy her, and the woman probably getting three baby showers for her first baby really does not need me to contribute to a school-based baby shower for her. We need our money here at home. I sound like a grouchy old curmudgeon, don’t I?
D