Guess what my husband and I spent all Friday afternoon doing?
Our taxes. Ugh. As two self-employed people who are better at earning money than handling it, filing with the IRS – even with the help of “foolproof” (ha!) software – is a major chore. But it also serves as a useful yearly reminder to take a good hard look at our finances and see where we could tighten up.
Food and bills are two of the things we have the most control over – but also tend to be the things that get out of control when we get lax. Some of the areas I’ll be honing in this week:
Da Bills.
- Our awesome introductory cable deal has expired, leaving us with a bloated package full of channels we never watch and services we don’t need. Plus, summer’s coming. I think it might be a good idea to pull the plug again (though I might have to wait until Mad Men is over.) Either way, it’s time to take a closer look at the bill and make a plan.
- Jon scoured our cell phone package and cut about $50 a month, just by looking at what our plan offered compared to what we were actually spending. Since our new text plan is much more limited, he installed Google+ on our phones and we use the messenger service to keep in touch during the day.
- Electricity. It’s crept up over the last few months, and I think some of us (cough teenagers cough) have become lazy about turning off electronics, lights, etc when not in use. Time to reinforce those habits and watch my own behavior, too.
Food.
- My food bill has been creeping up, too, and I’m not sure if it’s due to rising food prices (though I think that’s some of it) or lax shopping habits. I’ve been eating differently lately, but I haven’t adjusted my shopping list well enough. Time to get focused on meal planning and watch out for food waste.
- Eating out: way too much of this happening lately. It’s easy to under-estimate how quickly even lower-cost restaurant tabs add up. I have some thoughts about why I’ve been eating out a lot more lately, which I’ll share in another post this week. But for now, just admitting it’s a problem is the first step.
Is anyone else needing a financial tune-up? Please tell me about your Mindful Monday intention in the comments!
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Cole can almost always get us more cable channels for less by threatening to cut the service. She’s a genius at it.
As for electricity, I’ve been slowly adding LED bulbs to our house with the goal of eventually having all of them changed. They use so much less electricity that you could leave them on 24/7 and still save money. But they are pricey to buy up front.
I did our taxes last weekend. The sobering reality came to me that day. Between us we earned nearly six figures. So why did we spend the last six months of the year too broke to buy non-emergency essentials?
Our cable contract is up next month and we will be cutting back on that, and probably the phone service as well. We’ll also be out from under contract on our home security system. Maybe our son can also stop drinking formula soon. It would be nice to have all that money back. I guess we didn’t waste all the extra money, we made several trips halfway across the country to be with my husband’s family as his father was dying, and that can’t be called a waste of anything. But still and all, I can’t escape the feeling that we must be doing something terribly wrong in managing our money and I feel at a loss to do anything more substantial about it…
Totally hear you! I am sometimes amazed that we don’t have more in the bank, considering we earn a good income and don’t have luxurious lifestyles. But, even little bits of frivolous spending can really add up.
We cut out cable a long time ago when we realized how much of a hassle it is to install, and that we hardly watch it enough to warrant the cost. Last month we ate out more than we intended to, so we’ve since narrowed that down and are more mindful of just how often we eat out.
We’re in the market to find some patio furniture, so we need to make sure we don’t fall into the upgrade mode where we just want to buy anything that looks great, never mind that it costs a bunch more than the first one we looked at.
We’ve never had cable, so I can’t cut it out to save money, darn it. And whenever I make big plans to replace a store-bought food item with homemade (most recently, yogurt), I figure out it MIGHT save us about $10 a month. Not exactly huge leaps in the right direction. Our food bill is worse, I think, because we’re trying to eat more fruit and veggies, and it’s our biggest flexible expense, so it’s my tough challenge right now.
The kids are heavy into Goodwill and thrift store shopping and find amazing deals on name-brand sportswear. That’s all good, but the increased amount of clothes results in increased laundry (so water and electricity), which is NOT good. Just try to pry “really-good-deal” Nike/Adidas/UnderArmour/whatever sportswear out of the hands of active, sports-involved teens who bought the items themselves… The boys are at least as bad as the girls.
Sleeping Mom, the upgrade trap is so easy to fall into! Especially, the “but look what we get for just this much more.” Wish I could go back to our housebuilding days and get a handle on that one.
My food bill is what creeps up too. Suddenly we are getting fast food or pizza too much and next thing I know money is flying out the window not to mention the pounds creeping back on when we eat out all the time!
We moved to Hulu and Netflix ($7.99/ month each) in January, got rid of cable and haven’t looked back. There is always something to watch and I love being able to watch shows from our computers also!
Pam, we were using Netflix and Amazon Prime exclusively for a long time, then we signed up for cable in the fall so my husband could watch NFL. In the meanwhile we went and got hooked on American Pickers and Storage Wars, but I’m guessing those shows are available on Netflix anyway!
You can watch Mad Men through amazon for $2 an episode. I watch with friends on Monday evenings.
Good idea. at $8 a month, that’s still a huge savings over the premium cable package.
I just started following you blog about a month ago and I totally know what you mean about being self employed and doing your taxes…it is awful. Have you ever thought about doing a Dave Ramsey course? It has changed our life for the better. Finances were always a very difficult subject in our marriage and it is so much better now. We still get a little heated but so so much better.
Here via Maggie May … I too struggle with these issues. Though I don’t think it’s perfect, the book co-authored by Elizabeth Warren (the same one who’s now a Senate candidate) entitled All Your Worth has good insights into how it’s not the little stuff but the long-term, committed expenses that do (many of) us in. Her formula (which I’m not currently living but do find helpful as a goal) is — needs/commitments: no more than 50% of total income (so this includes stuff like, enough food to eat, gas to get to work/school/etc., but also, ongoing contracts like cell phone, unless/until you get rid of them); savings — 20%; wants (everything else) — 30%. For whatever that’s worth!