Anyone reviewing their household budget for the new year??

[Luv Bunnies]

I just cancelled our weekly gardening service. They just raised their rates and were charging us $175 a month to mow the front and back lawns and do general yard clean-up once a week. The owner of the company said they would always do something extra, besides just mow and blow (trim trees or shrubs, weed control, etc.). I found that they were doing less and less each week. Last week was the final straw. Our service was scheduled for Thursdays, and the week before last it was raining so they didn't come at all. Last week, they came at 8:00 a.m. and there was a little frost on the lawn (we don't get snow but get the occasional morning frost). They blew the leaves off the lawn and were getting in their truck to leave. DH was leaving for work and asked if they were going to mow. They said no, they can't mow when there's frost on the lawn. He asked if they could come back later since we didn't get a mow last week. They said, "Oh no sir. We have other jobs after this." I get that we aren't their only customers, but I feel like for $175 a month, they could be a bit more flexible. Maybe mix up the schedule on frosty days so the lawns can get mowed in the afternoons? Especially if they didn't mow our lawn the previous week? We live in an area that has had very little rain this season and is generally in the mid-60s during the day. It shouldn't be that tough to work around the weather. They at least could have stayed longer that day and done some trimming, but they just blew the leaves and left. So we'll be looking for another company that charges less and actually gets the job done. I'm hoping to save at least $75 a month.

 

[havaneselover]

I keep my budget pretty lean so not much I can do. I got my homeowners insurance down to $250/year two years ago from about $700. My car insurance is only $480/year. I renegotiated with Verizon so phone/cable/Internet is only $125/month. Should be going on my company’s cell plan so that should save about $400/year. I did cancel Hulu ($8/month) and my Busch gardens williamsburg 2-Park annual pass ($13/month). If I could give up soda (again—it’s the only thing besides water I drink) I could probably save $30 or so per month. I also told ds to take water to school. He’s spending about $50/month on water and fruit snacks??? Biggest drain really is dd’s Swimming (year round and high school team but it’s really important to her right now.

 

[DisneyHardin]

I don’t know what state your in but my hubby drives a company car and jm his personal car never leaves the drive way . Call your insurance company and explain the situation . My hubby’s car is in “storage” in our driveway . We only pay insurance if we take it out of storage . It saVed us 100 dollars a month

I will have to call again and talk to them. When he first got the take home car, I called and told them that he was no longer driving the truck much. They said all they could do was lower it a couple dollars a month by being on a "low mileage" policy. We have to send in the odometer reading every 6 months at renewal time to prove that we are driving it less than 2000 miles per year. It only saved us less than $5/month from what we had.

We have State Farm and I don't always have the best faith in the ladies that work in my agents office. They have dropped the ball on a couple other things they were supposed to be following up on. I may call again and see if I can get a better rate for the truck.

 

[havaneselover]

I will have to call again and talk to them. When he first got the take home car, I called and told them that he was no longer driving the truck much. They said all they could do was lower it a couple dollars a month by being on a "low mileage" policy. We have to send in the odometer reading every 6 months at renewal time to prove that we are driving it less than 2000 miles per year. It only saved us less than $5/month from what we had.

We have State Farm and I don't always have the best faith in the ladies that work in my agents office. They have dropped the ball on a couple other things they were supposed to be following up on. I may call again and see if I can get a better rate for the truck.

I would shop around. I find State Farm to be overpriced but that may just be me.

 

[comicguy]

Looking at my CC statements, I found a lot of 10-15 dollar purchases for incidentals. Hoping to try and cut the discretionary spending by 20-25% this year!

Going to look into lowering sat bill, car insurance, and cell phone later this week!

 

[scottmel]

This time last year my cleaning lady of 7 years raised her rates by 35.00 a visit. Big hike! I was surprised especially by her comments that cleaning my house was the closest thing to vacation day b/c I keep it so clean between visits myself. So I decided to no longer use a cleaning person and upkeep it myself since DD18 only child off to college. Happy to say I have kept it up fine and my savings was 125 x 12 month.....

My weakness is the internet. I order a fair bit, return a good bit, etc. I absolutely hate shopping otherwise...

 

[neatokimmo]

Have you looked into boost mobile for your phones? They are sprint based, so if you have a strong sprint tower you can save a lot. We don’t keep up with the latest phones. My IPhone se was $159 new last month. Our service is $100 for three lines.

 

[Judique]

This time last year my cleaning lady of 7 years raised her rates by 35.00 a visit. Big hike! I was surprised especially by her comments that cleaning my house was the closest thing to vacation day b/c I keep it so clean between visits myself. So I decided to no longer use a cleaning person and upkeep it myself since DD18 only child off to college. Happy to say I have kept it up fine and my savings was 125 x 12 month.....

My weakness is the internet. I order a fair bit, return a good bit, etc. I absolutely hate shopping otherwise...

Curious how many hours she put in for that amount?

 

[neatokimmo]

I am tightening my spending next year. I am tired of stuff, I am tired of waste. I blow $1 to $5 like everywhere. My resolutions are all money based for next year.

I have to cut the Diet Coke. When I do, I drop weight, that should be a no brainer. $1 here, $1.25 there.
I have to cut the drive through stuff. It’s low quality food. It’s cheap for a reason.
Eating out will be limited overall. Our restaurants stink. I feel like our favorite places are making the shift from quality to quantity.
I am going to make smaller meals at dinner so we don’t toss leftovers.
DH has his own fridge so he is taking lunch. I am sending him with 20 freezer meals for backup.
Dh and dd have all the clothes they need for years. Except for a swimsuit, I am going to alter my clothes down instead of buying all new stuff.

I am not sure what kind of savings this will all produce but it will help with waste, waist, and clutter.

 

[belle032]

I don’t do a yearly budget but I have become more and more aware of where our money is going.

We just got married in August and while it was a destination wedding, it was still a chunk of money put on credit cards that have to be paid off. That’s priority #1 for 2018.
Just paid off our Lowe’s credit card that we used for new flooring. We would have gotten hit with an insane amount of interest if it wasn’t paid off this year.
Dropped cable a few weeks ago and will save about $60 a month. That will go towards our lawn mower payment (sounds crazy, but a zero turn mower is $$$. Wasn’t super excited about that purchase )
Also want to focus on my student loans. I only have about $9000 left and REALLY want them gone. Once I finally pay those off I’d really like to put money towards our mortgage or my car payment.
We have a couple trips next year that I’ve already started putting away for. I am a person that cannot go a year without a vacation. Some people spend money on things, I’d rather go somewhere. But at least I know that and can plan ahead!

Just had to put new tires on my car so there went $500 for that. M car insurance isn’t bad, but I like the idea of shopping around. You never know. And I know for a fact we spend too much on eating out. It’s just the 2 of us so when one of us says “hey I feel like grabbing a beer and wings tonight” then it’s all over. Strangely enough, our meal delivery service (we use Home Chef) has really helped with the grocery spending. It prevents a lot of the picking something up on the way home from work and spending $30 problem.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

I would shop around. I find State Farm to be overpriced but that may just be me.

completely agree. I had them for years...like ages 18 (b/c my parents used them so I naturally gravitated that way) until age 33. Reshopped few years ago and saved a TON on both home and auto.

 

[DisneyHardin]

completely agree. I had them for years...like ages 18 (b/c my parents used them so I naturally gravitated that way) until age 33. Reshopped few years ago and saved a TON on both home and auto.

Its so interesting how insurance rates are so different for different people. I've gotten quotes from other places and no one can even come close to the rates we have with State Farm. I even had one agent from another company accuse me of lying about what I was paying State Farm because he said his company can "always" beat State Farms prices.

 

[sk!mom]

Yes. We have to revamp a bit. I will have two kids in college in the Fall. Since we don't really watch our Cable TV anymore, I am going to get rid of it, and just keep our internet service.

Not sure about cutting the cell phone anymore. We have gone down to what I feel is reasonable already.

We can cut eating out more, take a smaller vacation this year, and cut out some of our food budget (choose different foods.)

I just changed our cell plan with Cricket after they sent me a text about a 4 lines/unlimited data/$100 plan. We only have 3 lines so it's down to $90 for unlimited data. Cricket service has been great here.

DD will graduate college in May. Hoping for full employment for her so that we can have a lot of our money back in our budget.

 

[DawnM]

I just changed our cell plan with Cricket after they sent me a text about a 4 lines/unlimited data/$100 plan. We only have 3 lines so it's down to $90 for unlimited data. Cricket service has been great here.

DD will graduate college in May. Hoping for full employment for her so that we can have a lot of our money back in our budget.

Yeah, we pay around $100 for 5 lines on ATT with unlimited talk and text and 15 gb data shared. The bill is $180 but DH's work pays $80 of it. We can't beat it for what we have.

 

[NY Pirate Princess]

I reviewed our financial plan yesterday and set goals for the year, new broken down by month so I might actually accomplish them. Looking to get rid of my big bank and consolidate with credit union accounts, ramp up 457 contributions to try to get to $18,000 per year in the next two years, and start saving for a new to me used car. I tried to figure out what will happen to us with the new tax rules, but I think only time will tell.

I don't budget. I hide money through direct deposit until I can't pay the monthly bills anymore. I've decided to try a budget again in the new year, and am participating in the uber frugal challenge hosted by the frugalwoods website hosts. I have done it before and found it very valuable. I have no plans to homestead in the Vermont woods, but the hosts don't expect us to live their dream! The Frugalwoods encourage us to discover and fund our own dreams. Early retirement and pennies for palm trees is where we are at right now, and I'm ready to accelerate the savings!!

http://www.frugalwoods.com/2017/12/...he-january-uber-frugal-month-group-challenge/

 

[neatokimmo]

Car insurance...I pay $11 a month for liability insurance. Everyone needs to check out farm bureau.

 

[1st*toright]

Budgeting has been the name of the game for me lately. I started using YNAB to budget back in the spring (I think I heard about it from someone on this board, actually), and it totally saved our bacon this fall, when DH unexpectedly lost his job. Our income was cut in half, but thanks to all the data I had in YNAB about how we were spending our money, it was pretty easy to figure out where we needed to cut spending (actually cutting the spending has been a little more painful, but it was easy to see where the cuts had to come from!) DH is still looking for a job (its likely going to take a while and pay way less than he used to make), so our new budget based on my income is likely to be all there is to work with for a while.

The Frugalwoods encourage us to discover and fund our own dreams

I'm going to check out this website - we've already cut all of the obvious spending (I really miss our cleaning service, but it was the first thing to go) and we are in a decent holding pattern - not acquiring any new debt, have some emergency reserves and current income covers our expenses, as long as we are careful, but I'm still looking for ways to reduce our spending so that we are putting money in savings, instead of treading water.

 

[PennyInPink]

Since we live in a strictly Verizon area, we opted for Straight Talk. $45 month. Sprint, etc, will not work here.

We cancelled cable, and put up an antenna. Even though we live in a rural area, we can still pick up 20+ channels. My internet is only $20 a month, so with that and Netflix, I can live with it. I did miss "25 Days of Christmas" and the Hallmark Channel this past month, but it certainly freed me up for more worthwhile hobbies; not sitting in front of the tube.

My old Impala had 300,000 miles on it, so bought a 3 year old one with lots of goodies....sun roof, etc. 25,000 miles. Paid $10,000 with a lifetime power train warantee. I only pay about $260 for 5 years. Interest rate was like 2.3 I really wanted an SUV, but just isn't necessary.

And that's the name of the game....NECESSARY.

 

[DisneyHardin]

Car insurance...I pay $11 a month for liability insurance. Everyone needs to check out farm bureau.

For us, Farm Bureau couldn't beat State Farms prices.

 

[NY Pirate Princess]

My old Impala had 300,000 miles on it3

Woohoo! I hope mine goes half of that! 2007 with 98 thousand miles.