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Money Problems – Day 6: Reducing Expenses
Today, I am continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.
I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.
On this, Day 6, we’re going to talk about cutting your expenses.
Once you free up some income, you’ll get a lot of leeway in how you’re able to spend your money, but also important–possibly more important–is to cut out the crap you just don’t need. Eliminate the expenses that aren’t providing any value in your life. What you need to do is take a look at every individual piece of your budget, every line item, every expense you have and see what you can cut. Some of it, you really don’t need. Do you need a paid subscription to AmishDatingConnect.com?
If you need to keep an expense, you can just try to lower it. For example, cable companies regularly have promotions for new customers that will lower the cost to $19 a month for high-speed internet. Now, if you call up the cable company and ask for the retention department, tell them you are going to switch to a dish. Ask, “What are you willing to do to keep my business?” There is an incredibly good chance that they will offer you the same deal–$20 a month–for the next three or four months. Poof, you save money. You can call every bill you’ve got to ask them how you can save money.
I called my electric company and my gas company to get on their budget plans. This doesn’t actually save me money but it does provide me with a consistent budget all year long, so instead of getting a $300 gas bill in the depths of January’s hellish cold, I pay $60 a month. It is averaged out over the course of the year. It feels like less and it lets me get a stable budget. Other bills are similar. You can call your credit card companies and tell them everything you take your business to another card that gave you an offer of 5% under what ever you are currently paying. It doesn’t even have to be a real offer. Just call them up and say you are going to transfer your balance away unless they can meet or beat the new interest rate. If you’ve been making on-time payments for any length of time–even six months or a year–they’re going to lower the interest rate business, no problem. Start out by asking for at least a 5% drop. In fact, demand no more than 9.9%.
Once you’ve gone through every single one of your bills, you’ll be surprised by how much money you’re no longer paying, whether it’s because somebody lowered the bill for you or you scratched it off the list completely.
6 Questions to Financially Get to Know Each Other
This topic has been blatantly stolen from Budgets are Sexy.
1) How do you spend: cash, debit or credit? I use cash almost exclusively. I live in Minnesota and have two small children, so bundling the brats up to go inside the gas station to pay is nuts. Gas stations get the debit card. Online shopping, or automatic payments set up in the payee’s system are done on a credit card that gets paid off every month.
[ad name=”inlineright”]2) Do you bank online? How about use a financial aggregator (Mint, Wesabe, Yodlee, etc.)? I bank online. I use USBank for my daily cash flow, INGDirect for savings management and Wells Fargo for business. I used Mint strictly as a net worth calculator and alerting system. I use Quicken to manage my money and a spreadsheet for my budget, but I really like the quick, hands-off way that Mint gathers my account information and emails low balance alerts.
3) What recurring bills do you have set on autopay? Absolutely everything except daycare, 2 annual payments, and 1 quarterly payment.
4) How are your finances automated? I use USBank’s billpay system, instead of setting up autopayments at every possible payee. This gives me instant total control and reminders before each payment. The exceptions are my mortgage, netflix, and Dish. My mortgage company takes the money automatically from my checking. The other two hit a credit card automatically. Our paychecks are direct-deposited and automatically transferred to the different accounts and banks, as necessary.
5) Do you write checks? If so, how often? Once per week, for daycare. Occasionally for school fundraisers.
6) Where do you stash your short-term savings? I have quite a few savings accounts with INGDirect to meet all of my savings goals. For the truly short term, I add a line item in Quicken and just leave the money in my checking account.
Who’s next?
Money Problems – Day 3: What’s Coming In?
Today, I continuing the series, Money Problems: 30 Days to Perfect Finances. The series will consist of 30 things you can do in one setting to perfect your finances. It’s not a system to magically make your debt disappear. Instead, it is a path to understanding where you are, where you want to be, and–most importantly–how to bridge the gap.
I’m not running the series in 30 consecutive days. That’s not my schedule. Also, I think that talking about the same thing for 30 days straight will bore both of us. Instead, it will run roughly once a week. To make sure you don’t miss a post, please take a moment to subscribe, either by email or rss.
This is day 3 and today, you are going to take a look at your income.
We are only interested your take-home pay, because that is what you have to base a budget on. If you base your budget on your gross pay, you’re going to be in trouble when you try to spend the roughly 35% of your check that gets taken for taxes and benefits.
Income is a pretty straight-forward topic. It is—simply—how much money you make in a month. If you are like most people, the easiest way to tell how much money you make is to look at your last paycheck. Then, multiply it by the number of pay periods in a year and divide the total by 12.
Here’s the formula: Cash x Yearly Pay Periods / 12. Yay, math!
If you get paid every 2 weeks, multiply your take-home pay by 26, then divide by 12 to figure your monthly pay. For example, if you make $1000 every two weeks, your annual take-home pay is $26,000. Divide that by 12 to get your monthly pay of $2166.66. If you get paid semi-monthly, you’ll take that same $1000 x 24 / 12, for a total of $2000 per month.
Now you know how much you make each month. Woo!
Is it enough? Who knows? We’ll get into that later. In the meantime, spend some time thinking about ways you can make more money. Do you have a talent or a hobby that you can turn into cash?
- If you’re a craftsy type, make stuff and sell it on eBay or Etsy.
- If you’re a writer, start a blog, sell articles on oDesk, or start writing for paid article directories. Squidoo has a revenue sharing plan for your articles.
- Facebook maven? Start making Pages for companies. They will pay for it.
- Are you mechanically inclined? Watch your local free market sites for lawn mowers and snowblowers that don’t run. You can fix them up and sell them.
- If you’re a clean freak, start a home-cleaning service on evenings and weekends.
There are always ways to make some extra money, if you are willing. Sit down with a friend or loved one and brainstorm what you can do. Write down anything you can do, you enjoy, or you are good at. Remember, there are no stupid ideas when you are brainstorming. The bad ideas will get filtered out later.
How could you make some (more) side cash?
Make Yourself Accountable
Everybody knows the reputation New Year’s resolutions get for being abandoned in under a month. Following through with your saving and budget goals can be difficult. There are thousands of strategies for keeping your resolutions, but I’ve found that the best goal-keeping mechanism is to make yourself accountable. There are several ways to accomplish this.
Make Firm Goals. If your goals are open to interpretation, it’s easy to interpret them in a way that lets you off the hook. Make the goals concrete and immune to interpretation, and that can’t happen. “Get up earlier” may mean five minutes, which is technically meeting the goal, but not really. “Get up at 5am” is clear and concrete.
Get a “Goal Buddy”. When I am out shopping, if I’m struck by the impulse to buy something I probably don’t need, I call my wife. She’s more than happy to encourage me to put the movie or game back on the shelf. I have a friend who will call me up if he’s thinking about buying a new gadget so I can talk him down. Friends don’t let friends mortgage their futures.
Go Public. As you may have noticed, I’m being as open as possible with my goals for the year. I have laid out clear goals and I provide fairly frequent updates through both this site and twitter. If I fail, I fail in front of an audience. That’s strong encouragement to succeed. Tell your family, friends and coworkers. Announce your goals on the internet. Make it as difficult as possible to fail gracefully.
Punish Yourself. I have a line item in my budget called “In the hole“. If I go over budget one month, the overage is entered as an expense the following month. This serves the double purpose of getting the budget back on track and forcing me to sacrifice something the next month to make that happen. Another option may be to write out a check to a charity you hate, and drop it in the mail if you miss your goal. Anything unpleasant can work as your punishment.
How do you keep your goals?
Carnival Roundup: Bully Edition
My mother-in-law’s house is ready. The walls are painted, the hardwood floors have been sanded and polished, the carpets have been cleaned. Now, we just have to get the lease signed and let the renters in.
This week, we had our first real bullying incident on the school bus. I guess one of the benefits of having a kid who is the biggest in the school is that nobody punches him. My daughter doesn’t have that benefit. She was punched and pushed for being in the wrong seat on the bus a couple of days ago. Thankfully, the school dealt with it quickly. The bus is equipped with video and the little girl copped to it. She’s s off of the bus for a few days and her parents have been informed. Unfortunately, her twin sister seems to be the vengeful type. She came home yesterday lying about how my daughter behaved on the bus and got another little girl to lie about getting hit and bit by my daughter in school yesterday.
How do I know it’s all lies?
First, my daughter didn’t ride the bus yesterday afternoon. She was scared in the morning, so I promised to pick her up from school. Hard to misbehave on the bus when she was cuddling with her mother on the couch. The other little girl–who goes to daycare with the twins just up the street from our daycare provider (who happens to be the grandmother of the twins)–recanted once she was away from the vengeful twin. Her mother filled us in last night. I’m not a fan of a grandmother defending a kid’s lies. No kids are angels, but helping them lie doesn’t make them better people.
Live Real, Now was included in the following carnivals recently:
I’m aware that I’ve been a bit of a slacker about posting these links. My apologies to everyone who deserved a link but didn’t get it in a timely manner.
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Narrow Bridge
Finance Carnival for Young Adults hosted by Finance Product Reviews
Carnival of Financial Planning hosted by Family Money Values
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Moneywise Pastor
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Vanessa’s Money
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by See Debt Run
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #64 hosted by Master the Art of Saving
Carnival of Retirement #52 hosted by Master the Art of Saving
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Your PF Pro
Lifestyle Carnival #33 hosted by Lifestyle Carnival
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #62 hosted by Savvy Scot
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Debt Black Hole
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Making Sense of Cents
Lifestyle Carnival #31 hosted by Vanessa’s Money
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by The Frugal Toad
Money Mail Carnival #5 hosted by The Money Mail
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Vanessa’s Money
Money Mail Carnival #4 hosted by The Money Mail
Finance Carnival for Young Adults #39 hosted by 20s Finances
Yakezie Carnival hosted by My Family Finances
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Growing Money Smart
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #57 hosted by My University Money
Money Mail Carnival #3 hosted by The Money Mail
Yakezie Carnival hosted by I Heart Budgets
Carnival of Retirement #46 hosted by Making Sense of Cents
Yakezie Carnival hosted by The Ultimate Juggle
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by My Multiple Incomes
Carnival of Financial Planning hosted by Master the Art of Saving
Money Mail Carnival #2 hosted by The Money Mail
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #56 hosted by See Debt Run
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Finance Product Reviews
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Parenting and Money
Lifestyle Carnival #27 hosted by Femme Frugality
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #55 hosted by My University Money
Yakezie Carnival hosted by The Ultimate Juggle
Lifestyle Carnival #26 hosted by Mo Money Mo Houses
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Debt Black Hole
Carnival of Financial Camaraderie #54 hosted by Cash Net USA
Carnival of Financial Planning hosted by Young Family Finances
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Portfolio Princess
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Thirty Six Months
Carnival of Retirement #41 hosted by Financial Conflict Coach
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Master the Art of Savings
Yakezie Carnival hosted by Cult of Money
Lifestyle Carnival hosted by Blue Collar Workman
Carnival of Money Pros hosted by Making Sense of Cents
Carnival of Retirement #41 hosted by The College Investor
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