by Claire
We’re combing through our monthly bills and figuring out what we can get rid of to see instant monthly savings. Right off the bat we were able to eliminate $135 each month. This came from memberships to the gym and clubs we just don’t need and a credit monitoring service that we have replaced with an alternative through our credit union. It doesn’t sound like much but you guys are already teaching me that every penny counts. Hubby and I have also mentioned eliminating cable for the first time and it isn’t nearly as scary to discuss as we both thought it would be. This would be a $80 per month savings. The kids are good about playing outside sans electronics already and this would only encourage that good habit even more. Let me hear what other monthly items you’ve cut out of your budget completely. I’m sure there are obvious things that I haven’t thought of yet.
On this frugality note, thank you to Brandy of The Prudent Homemaker for her gentle nudge to more frugal living. I’m totally overwhelmed by the content of her website BUT I am intrigued by making my own laundry detergent. Now, just as an aside, I promise I just heard my entire family and group of girlfriends laugh out loud at the thought of me making laundry detergent. The humor in that visual is part of the fun I am finding in the idea! Also, I’m ready to explore buying beans in bulk. The kitchen is NOT my strong area but I am very good about making a menu and creating a grocery list from those recipes and then only buying what is on the list. I don’t go crazy in the grocery store. So the beans in bulk will be something we try for next week’s menu. Deep breath.
So, to recap…I have the savings goal set forth, I’m going to attempt to make my own laundry detergent and I’ll explore buying beans in bulk. Okay. Well that sounds pretty pathetic! Oh and I’m diving into chapter 2 of my “Money Road Map” book. One last thing I want to set a timeline for—sitting down and explaining our financial situation to the kids in terms they can understand and getting them on board as part of the “Debt Reduction Team.” I know they will be willing partcipants. We’ll get that done by Sunday, March 11.
Have a super Tuesday!
Born and raised in Texas. I’ve at least driven through every state in the US courtesy of a roadtrip loving Dad.
I’m single with two children and a good parenting relationship with their father.
I am a “life is just half full of funny” kinda gal. Humor is my saving grace and I am thankful for it every single day. I have a strong Catholic faith and am thankful for that foundation.
I read a lot for a living but still enjoy a good book. I love biographies but in recent years have found the need for fun fictional books–sadly, for a long time I just didn’t enjoy fiction!
I love live theatre of any kind–from local productions to Broadway.
I love to scrapbook and pride myself in my kids’ albums.
I love being a mom but also love my career. I’m blessed to have found a balance allowing me to be at everything my kids need and want me to be at–while also having a career.
Favorite Quotes: Well behaved women rarely make history.
Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. -James Bryant Conant
Good luck! One of our goals has been to spend less money not because we have crazy debt to get out of but because we want to have the freedom to make less money if needed. I’ve been posting about the ways we’ve been doing this here: http://preservingpennies.com/category/cutting-costs/ There’s only so much you can do at once. I would suggest not trying to change everything all at once as that might be overwhelming. Then again, some people work better with a band-aid type approach. Whatever works. 🙂
We have not used cable for ages, we do have a converter box with rabbit ears and get fox and one other channel for free now. Luckily fox shows a lot of shows we like! A cheaper alternative is also a membership to Netflix where we get 2 movies at a time for $12 a month. We can not streamline movies as we have Gasp dial up internet but we enjoy our Netflix movies for Saturday night! So much cheaper than cable.
Yes taking baby steps to become more conscious and frugal is a huge step in taking control of your money and over time it becomes a great game and self challenging ongoing progress as you pick up new skills and frugal ideas along the way!
You are really taking some wonderful steps in the right direction.
Even the smallest of steps are helpful if they’re in the right direction.
Don’t get overwhelmed, you can do this. Isn’t it exciting to see the changes and how each decision you make positively impacts your future?
One issue you may face is getting his kids on board. They may think “your” debt is not “their” problem and they should not suffer for what you did before marrying their dad. You and hubby may want to plan how to handle any resentment of the new frugal lifestyle on top of the usual blended family adjustments.
From what I have seen of Dave Ramsey and the other budget proponents, they offer budget spreadsheets and forms with pre-set categories for expenses. Make your budget and move to cash-only spending. Jars or envelopes, a cash based spending system forces you to set your priorities when you make spending decisions. Both adults pull from the same jars or envelopes, so there is no “after the fact” accounting for each person’s $200.
One of the kids should be graduating from high school soon. Is that child going on to college? If so, how will that be funded? That’s a huge new expense that may have to be considered in your budget.
I see your situation as more threatening to your well being than many other commentors do. If you have no cash savings outside of retirement, you could easily end up spending all of your retirement savings if one of you lost their job and your spending did not drop dramatically. So many people out there have lost jobs and have spent their retirement funds keeping up with the house payments and their lifestyle. When that money is gone, they face bankruptcy and foreclosure or eviction. A much less expensive lifestyle and money in the bank will keep that from happening to you.
Hulu.com has many of our favorite television shows online for free. We have never paid for cable but still have access to a few shows when we feel like watching television…
Suspending cable for a couple months or at least through the end of summer is a good experiment.
If your kids participate in a lot of summer activities that involve a lot of driving, it’s not a bad idea to ask each kid to eliminate something.
Look for magazines/newspaper/Amazon Prime subscriptions. Many of these will give you credit for the unused portion of the subscription.
I’m looking forward to hearing your story! Reading personal finance blogs motivates me to stay on track.
Great steps! There are so many things that we could cut out, we should do this as well.
You’re doiing really well Claire. At the blogging and at breaking this mission of yours down into bite sized manageable chunks. I can’t wait for you to knock one or two of those little debts off!
I agree!! Every journey is started with one small step 😉
How much water does your family use? That could be another expense you can cutback on using low-flow showerheads, etc. And are you able to air dry some of your laundry? Not all of it, as with children making sure those jeans and towels are dry sooner rather than later would be a big deal, but socks, pjs, t-shirts, underwear, etc. could be placed on drying racks or the clothesline. That would help cutdown on your electric or gas bill.
We haven’t had cable in 20yrs. We get 3 channels off the rabbit ears and that still keeps our bums on the couch far too long every week. Perhaps start a weekly family trip to the library for books/mazazines and have at least one night a week where there is no TV and everyone has some quiet reading time – many libraries also loan movies so you could use that to take the sting out of giving up cable.
Do you have a big freezer? If not I’d suggest you look into it. You’d probably recoup the cost in a couple of months. We’re only a family of 4 but I couldn’t survive without ours. When I find a sale on meat particularly I stock up. I recently bought two turkeys and cook both. Have a nice turkey dinner and then package up all the rest of the meat in ~2C amounts for the freezer. At least once a week we use a bag of turkey to make enchiladas, fajitas, stew, pot pies, alfredo or tetrazini, turkey salad sandwiches, and when we’ve accumulated enough leftover cooked veggies in a bag in the freezer, I make a giant pot of soup. Those two turkeys bought on sale generated meals for months. When hamburger is on sale I buy 10-15lbs and fry it all up and freeze it in one pound amounts ready for future recipies (dealing with all the fat at once is much easier, and you save that step when making dinner on busy nights). These bags of precooked ground beef become spaghetti sauce, lasagna, sloppy joes, tacos etc. In one of your first posts I remember you saying there were never leftovers, and with teenaged boys I get how that can happen. If it’s on the table they’ll keep helping themselves until it’s gone. I intentionally cook extra of at least some component of every meal with a plan to use it in the next day or two. When you are having pasta, cook double the noodles you need for the sauce. The extras become a caserole the next night. When you roast a chicken, do a second one while the oven’s on (saves electricity). Only bring one to the table so the second one doesn’t get touched by the teens. Next night plan on something which starts with cooked chicken, or bag up the meat and freeze it. When peppers are on sale I buy a dozen and slice/chop them and freeze on waxpaper on cookie sheets. Then dump them into bags – makes future stirfrys and spaghetti sauces fast and easy. When you make pancakes, double the amount you need and freeze the extras separated by wax paper. You can pull out just what you need some other busy morning. This morning for my kids I defrosted pancakes from 2 weeks ago and apple sauce made last month when I found a great deal.
Even with 4 kids, clothing doesn’t have to cost much – review what the 17yr old has and if he’s got way too much like most kids you can probably divide the excess in half and pass it to the two younger ones. If the 17yr old is like mine, he has a self imposed wardrobe of 2 pairs of jeans, ~8 black tshirts and a hoodie. Basically enough for a week, then he washes the whole pile and starts again. He used to have more but it never got worn so I finally accepted that this is all he needs and donated the rest. Now we only replace as it wears out, and if possible it’s as one of his gifts at Christmas and BDs. For the girl, she probably currently has WAY more than she needs. Most girls do – I’ve personally uttered the words “that’s so cute, I have to get her that…”. Donate/consignment sell whatever she doesn’t wear to reduce the volume and make a little cash if possible. Then, do not buy anything until she actually outgrows enough items that she’s running short on something. If she has pants that are getting short, it will soon be warm out – cut them off for the summer. No need for a lot of new pants before it gets cold again. Then check for useable jeans, Ts and hoddies in the hand-me-downs from the younger boys. At least her play clothes can come from this source. Finally when she actually needs something, see if you can get any hand-me-downs from an older cousin or neighbor. If not then hit second hand and consignment stores. I find that good quality used beats new junk everytime. Buy only what you need and stick to colors that blend with everything she already has. Don’t fall into that whole “back to school” marketing nonsense. There is no law that kids must have an entirely new wardrobe every fall. For many years I’ve timed one new shirt to the start of school. One year she was happy with $2 spent on new hair accessories at the dollar store. If you purchase a whole lot of clothing not because you need it but just because the calendar says it’s time, you miss a valuable teaching moment about wants vs. needs.
I’m not sure where you and your husband stand on clothing budgets, but I work in a typical office (slacks, blouse or sweater) and I’ve only bought a pair of socks in the past 18mths. Nothing wore out so there was no need to buy. Simple as that. My husband wears a shirt/tie/dresspants and adds a jacket when at a customer’s office. He replaces a couple of dressshirts each year (at the 2 for 1 sale) and that’s about it.
We got rid of our non-mortgage debt many years ago and are now focussed on killing the mortgage and building our retirement funds. With the exception of a family trip each year, there really are no extras in our budget, but we’re fine with that because that’s not where our interests are. As a result of our frugal style we live on about 55-60% of our take home pay and the rest goes to mortgage, retirement and the annual trip. Clearly we could go out for dinner regularly, but we go maybe 3-4 times a year. We could have 300 channels instead of 3 free ones, and so on. Instead we’ve cut out a lot of stuff our friends and family consider perfectly normal spending, but intend to retire in our mid 50s. We’re quite content with out lifestyle and early retirment plan. Maybe for you, a self imposed frugal lifestyle for x yrs is what it will take. Then you can relax a bit and add things back in. I suspect you may find as we did, that once you get used to fewer channels, second hand cars, packing lunches and eating at home, you kind of lose your appetite for going back to spending more when you are finally able to.
Have you heard of Roku? it’s kind of like a Wii in the sense that you can access netflix and hulu from it. It’s saving my family $100 a month. It is an intial investment of $100 for the device but after that it’s just your regular fees for Netflix & Roku. I also have amazon prime so I get select episodes and movies for free on that channel. We pay less than $20/month for our monthly fees and we love it 🙂
This is the same set-up I have and I love it! I canceled my cable about a month ago and I’ve never been happier. I’ve already recouped the initial cost of the Roku with the savings, and I’m only paying $8 for Hulu so I can still watch my shows (instead of the $50 for cable). Plus, I’m not sitting around watching stuff I don’t really want to watch just because it’s on. I definitely recommend!
One of the best things ever! I have been an avid TV watcher since I was a small child (only child syndrome I call it, and yes I’ve been overweight my entire life. I’m working on that though, but that’s another topic for another day!) I got rid of cable over a year ago and purchased a Roku box. I subscribe to Netflix streaming and Hulu Plus. I still watch all of my shows and there are many other interesting things out there. I’m always watching documentaries on Netflix about the most random things and I love it! It can even entertain my nieces and nephews when they come over. I’ve even convinced others in my life to do it and they love it too!. Only down side for me is that I miss my baseball games on a local cable channel, but I just follow online, watch when they’re on the local over-the-air channel, or go to my parents’ house to watch. I highly recommend looking into this!
Also for the credit monitoring, remember that you get a free report from each of the 3 major credit reporting agencies every year. What I do, and I learned from one of the many wonderful personal finance bloggers that I follow, is to stagger these so you receive one from a different agency every 4 months. It won’t catch everything, but at least you can keep an eye on some things and it’s free.
Hi Claire, I was wondering if you have a Spending Plan (that’s what I call it instead of a Budget)made out on paper yet? I have used one for 5 years and find it invaluable. It need not be complex, in fact the simplier the better. It just helps to ensure that your bills get paid on time so as not to incur even more debt with late fees and such. Also an old book that helped me get started was “How To Get Out Of Debt, Stay Out Of Debt & Live Prosperously” by Jerrold Mundis. It has some great advice and helps you put it all in perspective.
Hi Sarah. We have a great excel spreadsheet that my husband created that has every single bill on it and our spending money built in too. It has made a HUGE difference already. I’m trying to figure out how to post it on the blog so all can see.
great steps already. you’re doing great.
clothes are a big expense you can cut back on. i work in a professional job in a fortune 500 company. my colleagues all shop at brooks brothers and dillards. i shop at goodwill. i can typically find top brand clothes at goodwill for a fraction of the price. i also got a $175 pair of oxfords for $10 there.
cable’s gotta go. any chance you can share internet with a neighbor?
have you shopped around your car insurance lately for better rates? what about home insurance?
a huge unnecessary expense for many people is the cell phones. the kids probably don’t need a fancy phone/data plan. just a few talk minutes and some texts. you’ll know well that kids from our generation didn’t have cell phones at all, and we got along just fine! also check if your carrier offers a discount to your company or your husbands. we get 17-25% with every carrier just because of where i work.
do you have pets? pet food and pet expenses. my dog gets walmart brand food and doesn’t go to the vet unless he’s sick. walmart flea medicine does just fine. i would love to get better quality for him but he’s a member of the debt reduction team too.
good luck.
Adam, do you have any teens? They communicate differently than we do – at least mine and her friends do. It’s texting and twittering with Facebook use way down except for posting pictures. We don’t have data plans on our phones and I do take advantage of a 20% discount on the cell bill through my employer, but if we didn’t have unlimited texting and were paying by the text, we’d be in big trouble!
This article might help with the cable bill decision. http://momadvice.com/blog/2012/03/how-to-ditch-your-cable-bill Meredith from the now-defunct Like Merchant Ships blog (boy, do I miss it) linked to this on her tumbler page.
Wow, I just noticed something. With the $215 you’ve already cut out each month, you can pay off your first 4 debts in 3 months!
You probably will be working on emergency fund for a bit, but you get the idea how quickly you can start rolling once you get started!
My, there are a lot of suggestions in the comments! Congrats on cutting cable – that’s actually a hard hurdle. It was the one thing my husband balked at – he wanted his ESPN! I think it’s a wonderful idea to talk about this with your kids – it will teach them life lessons so hopefully they won’t end up in the same place.
I’m still dying to know – what part of the country do you live in, and is it rural or urban? Do you both work?
Just my 2 cents:
You need to sell the 2 cars ASAP and get 2 cheap cars; that will get rid of $40,000 in Debt in just one move. This will also free up your cash (probably around $700 to $800 per month) to pay your other Debts faster.
Good Luck
We got rid of cable 2 1/2 years ago. I do miss it sometimes. We get our monies worth out of our Netflix account though so the tradeoff is a good one.
This is one of the blogs that I read religiously and I’m glad you are taking up the banner so well! Good luck to you!
I tried the homemade detergent and loved it – fels naptha (sp?), borax and something else. Unfortunately, my husband was allergic to the fels naptha so I had to stop.
Good for you for making changes. Just keep making a little change here and one there-it all adds up!
I clean with baking soda, salt, lemon and white vinegar. I tried making my own dishwasher soap and didn’t care for it. I use a green laundry soap that I love (Ecos Free and Clear) and won’t use any homemade products with borax since it’s a neurotoxin (I have a child with intractable seizures so it wouldn’t be smart.)
I have the minimum cable which has just been raised to $14.99/month. I cut out the larger package a few years ago. I still miss the Food Network and HGTV however I don’t watch a ton of t.v. My son is disabled and sometimes there are only cartoons in spanish on Sundays, lol, and I joke that he has to watch them in Spanish but he’s more into music anyway.
For me, it’s more important to live within my means and I love not having debt. You can do this and it will be an exciting journey. I had to make many frugal decisions over the last 11 years when I made the decision to stay home with my severely disabled son. It’s been worth it though. When I purchase “new” things now, I usually do it only when something has worn out or after I’ve done a ton of research on the item, read every review,can pay cash for it and don’t want to buy used. For other items, I purchase it used and refinish it. Good luck.
I save a ton of money by couponing. I know, I know…geez how original…saving $.50 here and there……no..I mean-really couponing. I don’t per say extreme coupon but I scout the couponing blogs and beg friends and family for coupons. Then when deals happen I can jump on them. I have saved well over $2000 just in 8 mths couponing and I don’t buy anything we normally wouldn’t buy. Its great and I rave about it all the time.
Connie! I have a friend at the office that coupons. We are working to set up a tutoring session so she can help me understand. I’m more and more open to it with each passing day. Thanks!