Cleaning Up the Fall Budget

October 28, 2010

Each year my wife and I look at our household budget and see if there are ways we can trim our expenses.  (I know most people do this in the spring along with their other cleaning, but I dare to be different.)  I figured I would share some of our new found money tricks and hopefully some of these may help at least one other person.

First thing I got rid of was a couple of cable boxes for our televisions.  I saw that by attaching some good old fashion rabbit ears, I could still get a decent amount of HD channels.  Monthly savings: $24.

I also saw that the cable company had a movie package on that we no longer use.  Bye –bye!  Monthly savings: $14.

I got a kick out of this next one.  I’m trying to force myself to stay away from my food vices (like Cheez-Its) and we’re also as a family trying to eat better.  So by not buying (as many) snacks we are saving around $30 per month.  I’m also bringing my lunch to work more often which will garner us another $32 bucks a month!

So real quick by revisiting our basic expenses we are saving an extra $100 each month. What to do with it?  Remember my wife has a goal of retiring soon?  Well, if we invest that money and say I can average 9% (I’m very aggressive) in 10 years, we could have approximately $19K.

Can’t retire to Belize on that, but we’ll be happy it’s in our account and not giving it to the cable company!