How to Cut Expenses While You Maintain Your Lifestyle | brokeGIRLrich
Monitoring your expenses can be a frustrating process. It’s difficult to find the time to review your finances and overall money situation. If you take a hard look at your spending, however, the savings can be huge. Use these tips to eliminate unnecessary spending.
Subscription Costs
Innovations in technology now mean that we all have dozens of choices for subscription-based entertainment. The Wall Street Journal explains that subscription costs for media can add up rapidly.
A big area for wasteful spending may be music. You may use Pandora, Spotify and iTunes for music. If you’re paying fees to all three sites, are those costs really necessary? Maybe you can cut from three music subscriptions down to one. Keep in mind that Pandora and Spotify have free versions for their music sites.
Movie and TV website fees may be another area for savings. You might pay for Netflix, Hulu and HBO Go. All three of these are subscription-based sites. This may be a tough decision, since these sites create and market their own original programming. Make some smart choice and cut your subscription costs.
Utility-Related Costs
There might be such a thing as too many channels.
Like entertainment costs, expenses related to utilities can add up quickly. Your monthly bills for cable TV, electricity and gas use may include a variety of fees. Sometimes those fees accumulate over time and you don’t notice them.
Take a look at each utility bill in detail. Decide which services are really vital, and which ones you can live without.
In addition to utility costs, you may also use a home security service. One ADT home security company explains that customers may consider alarms for a burglary, fire, carbon monoxide or flooding. Since this spending is related to safety, you may insist on keeping this service.
Your Morning Coffee
A small expense that you might not consider is your weekly spending on coffee and other items each morning. A specialty coffee drink can cost $3 to $5, depending on the coffee shop and where you live.
Maybe you change what you buy each morning. Fast Food Menu Prices reports that a Grande Café Latte is $4.52 in New York. The same size Freshly Brewed Coffee is $2.75. If you switch from the latte to a coffee 3 days a week, you save $5.31 each week.
That may not sound like much, but it totals $276.12 a year. If you cut your morning coffee expenses and some other costs, the savings can really add up.
Dining Out
The cost of dining out may be an easy spending area to address. While your coffee buying may seem small, dining out is more expensive. Also, there’s more planning involved in dining out. Because of the cost, you probably make a reservation- or at least plan the meal in advance.
Before you dine out, stop and consider how that spending fits into your budget. Say that the meal will cost the two of you $80. Is the experience really worth $80 to you? Would you be willing to pay $40 and get carryout from another restaurant?
Small decisions can have a huge financial impact over time. Use these tips to take a close look at your spending.
I cut out my TV bill and I still have Netflix and Hulu. That’s plenty enough for me and I don’t feel that cutting out my Dish Network bill (for about $46/month) hurt my lifestyle at all.
Kayla @ Kat Script recently posted…Memories Of My Brother – Benjamin Andrew
I haven’t ever paid for cable TV. I just stream whatever I want to watch off the Internet. I think I’m lucky that after spending 5 years on a cruise ship with like 4 channels to watch that played the same thing over and over – I’m not a huge fan of TV.
Like Kayla, we cut our cable bill and use Netflix and Hulu. Best decision we ever made! You’re exactly right, the small expenses are what prevent financial progress. Most people are not reckless with money, just wasteful.
Luke Fitzgerald @ FinanciallyFitz recently posted…The Four Paradigms of Money
So true!
Yes all good tips to save dollars, I brew at home and my coffee per cup costs come out to like .30 cents and I just add flavorings. I think priorities matter so that you can spend out in other fun categories. Coffee and eating out is not important to me.
EL @ Moneywatch101 recently posted…The Personal Finance Ratios that Matter
I never even think of picking up the flavoring syrups, but that would make a world of difference to my home brewing. I actually really like all the flavored creamers you can pick up too and that still comes out to a much cheaper cup of coffee.
Subscription costs are a quiet killed of people’s budgets, especially if they are less than $10 a month. It’s easy to forget about them and easy to rationalize not canceling them because they are so low, but they can also wreak havoc on your budget over time.
Shannon @ Financially Blonde recently posted…Music Mondays – Out of Touch
I’m actually guilty of that. I only subscribe to Kiplingers and at least I read it, but when it renews every year, I’m like, “what the heck is this charge?” I feel like it should be a more conscious decision than it actually is.
We have to cut dining out as one big expense. If we didn’t spend so much eating out (from being lazy/not planning ahead) our budget would be so much better! I have to work on this now that I have more free time in the summer so that the busyness of the school year doesn’t seem so bad.
Alexandra @ Real Simple Finances recently posted…Goal-Specific Side Hustles
Dining is my #1 budget killer.
We used to dine out thrice a week with my family, but when I noticed that eating out was one of my biggest expenses so I tried to cut it down to once a week. I control using our aircon too, instead I used my electric fan to lower our electricity bill.
Kate @ Money Propeller recently posted…Life and Financial To-Dos
A/C is one thing I have a lot of trouble compromising on, although it does make a big difference in your budget.
Some great ideas here! I’d definitely agree with the morning coffee one – since switching to some cheaper coffee, it’s saved a lot of money for me. Thanks for sharing!
At the end of the day it’s all of the little things that add up which can help people cut costs. I remember when I was helping a fan with her budget it wasn’t until she noticed all those coffees add up. Now she makes coffee at home and is able to spend her money on other things.
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