NBR: Spending Freezes

SnShne322 · August 2014

Has anyone done one? I'm just fed up lately with the mindless spending that we've been doing. We have had, and are going to have, some serious house expenses in the next couple of months. And while we are prepared for them financially, I can't stomach the thought of all the wasteful spending we might be doing on top if it all.

I've been Googling and I know it can be just as a simple as stop spending, but I feel like more guidelines are necessary. How about groceries and gas, etc? Do you just budget for it? I've never really budgeted much before, we've usually just stopped spending if there wasn't money. How do you you figure out how much you've saved? Do you just compare the numbers for the month (or whatever) that you do versus the same time periods before?

Anyone willing to join me? I know J is ALL about me stopping the spending so I just have to get my ducks in a row. I'd really be fascinated to find out how much money I'm blowing on coffee, and target runs out of boredom. Dinners out and weekends away. Books (gasp!). I better get all my preorders in ASAP

RiverPlate · August 2014

I do this once in a while, but it's less concentrated, like no more clothes or no more shopping online. It's the kids stuff that get me overspending, especially this time of year. New uniforms, school supplies, signing up for fall sports and dance and new coats winter stuff and blah blah blah. And then I blink and it's Christmas.

I made a huge dent in my personal spending by utilizing my library more and being picky about what copies of books I need to own. No more paperback that caught my eye in the sale aisle at Target.

josie402 · August 2014

I need to do this. (I'm saying this as I'm holding a giant cup of Starbucks coffee.) I've been trying to do better about budgeting. I like to use Mint for a budget program. You can set up goals and automatically import your credit card transactions. I definitely trim out the spending when I go back and review my purchases each day on it and classify them. I created a category for each of us where we get a set amount of "fun" money (that can roll over from month to month) and when it's gone, it's gone. In theory, anyway. I don't always do well at sticking to it!

booknerd226 · August 2014

I didn't realize how much money I was spending on random stuff until a friend of mine told me how she figured it out. She saved all of her and her H's receipts for a month. She highlighted everything that wasn't a necessity and added the total, and calculated the tax as well. She said she could not believe how much money was wasted.

I did the same and was :-O at the amount. The easiest way for me to stop was to stop going to Target altogether lol, get up early enough to actually make coffee instead of stopping at Dunkin, pack my lunch, meal plan (thank you Menu Mondays) and base that plan on what is listed for sale in the store ads and stick to it, etc.

We also got rid of cable and pay for Netflix instead.

I did have to budget some fun money in for DH and I each week, but it's a lot less than what we were carelessly spending and it helps us buy things we only really need/want, since we only have that amount to spend.

I started out doing really well but now I'm slacking. I do at least notice when I'm spending money on a non-necessity and I do think twice about stuff and put things back.

The way I did our budget is through an excel spreadsheet (nerd alert). I save all of our paystubs anyway, so I just added what we bring home a month, excluding DH's overtime pay (varies). I made a list of all of our bills at the highest we usually pay for them (just in case we over used water, gas, and power one month). I also added a good amount for groceries and gas after meal planning and looking at gas receipts. I added an amount for "maintenance" (like oil changes, a/c filters, random stuff like that) that I just sort of guessed at. We switched to a cheaper car insurance company.

I think the most important thing was being on the same page with budgeting/spending and then holding each other accountable. We've been able to put more money into our savings which has been a great motivator to keep it up.

fabk · August 2014

We are on a spending freeze until I start working. It sucks and is hard (But I want ALL THE BOOKS!) but totally worth it.

We don't eat out unless necessary (ie. on the way to the cottage), we don't spend money on useless things (luckily Target is an hour away). We stopped going to the movies, etc when we lived up north and never got back into it.

So far groceries haven't been a big issue. We buy stuff on sale for the most part. Our three grocery stores are located within a minute drive of each other, so I check the flyers, make my list and pretty much stick to it.

I have to suspend my Audible account still. I am waiting until my anniversary (with Audible) in September as I seem to recall a bonus gift for it.

Good luck!!

pinkybooklover09 · August 2014

I am on a huge spending freeze for the rest of the year. I'm budgeted down to the penny and making no further extraneous expenditures. I just moved house unexpectedly on top of all the new school uniforms and supplies I had to buy for the princess so I'm watching my pennies carefully over the next few months.

Lauren620 · August 2014

I'm not doing a spending freeze, but I have cut way back on my online shopping. Especially when it comes to clothes. I also haven't spent anything on books lately, but that is more because I have a B&N giftcard and I haven't been reading much.

We really need to cut back on what we spend on food and eating out, but I haven't been successful with the whole meal planning thing and H has no interest in giving it a shot.

We are probably going to be getting a new car by the end of the year, so I might try to talk H into some sort of spending freeze before then so we can put more money away.

SnShne322 · August 2014

Lauren620 said:

I'm not doing a spending freeze, but I have cut way back on my online shopping. Especially when it comes to clothes. I also haven't spent anything on books lately, but that is more because I have a B&N giftcard and I haven't been reading much. We really need to cut back on what we spend on food and eating out, but I haven't been successful with the whole meal planning thing and H has no interest in giving it a shot. We are probably going to be getting a new car by the end of the year, so I might try to talk H into some sort of spending freeze before then so we can put more money away.

That's a big part of this, too. We've been really lucky that we haven't had a car payment in over 5 years. I'm hoping to save enough enough each month to pay for my car payment. Or save that much each month and put down on it too for when we do buy. I'm anxious about having a payment again, but we need a replacement vehicle and I want one that will last me a good decade or more if I'm good to it.

GreenBride624 · August 2014

You Need A Budget (YNAB) is a great budget program/app. We used mint.com for awhile & I didn't think it was user friendly. The YNAB app is great because I can input purchases & review the budget very easily.

booneybear · August 2014

I would go on a spending freeze, but then I feel the overwhelming need to buy all the shoes and the spending freeze becomes just a vague afterthought.

SnShne322 · August 2014

GreenBride624 said:

You Need A Budget (YNAB) is a great budget program/app. We used mint.com for awhile & I didn't think it was user friendly. The YNAB app is great because I can input purchases & review the budget very easily.

I didn't love Mint. We tried using that, but it felt too each to use improperly, or not utilize fully.

RiverPlate · August 2014

booneybear said:

I would go on a spending freeze, but then I feel the overwhelming need to buy all the shoes and the spending freeze becomes just a vague afterthought.

I tend to go on freezes like I diet. I do fantastic for a month or so, then I binge and buy/eat all the things.

Lauren620 · August 2014

SnShne322 said:

Lauren620 said:

I'm not doing a spending freeze, but I have cut way back on my online shopping. Especially when it comes to clothes. I also haven't spent anything on books lately, but that is more because I have a B&N giftcard and I haven't been reading much. We really need to cut back on what we spend on food and eating out, but I haven't been successful with the whole meal planning thing and H has no interest in giving it a shot. We are probably going to be getting a new car by the end of the year, so I might try to talk H into some sort of spending freeze before then so we can put more money away.

That's a big part of this, too. We've been really lucky that we haven't had a car payment in over 5 years. I'm hoping to save enough enough each month to pay for my car payment. Or save that much each month and put down on it too for when we do buy. I'm anxious about having a payment again, but we need a replacement vehicle and I want one that will last me a good decade or more if I'm good to it.

We have been saving for a replacement car for quite some time, so I really hope that if we do end up with a payment that our savings plus trading his car in will make it small and manageable. At least that's what I keep telling myself. We haven't had a car payment in 6 years so the thought of getting one now makes me want to cry.

We're also doing a lot of stuff around the house. Yet another reason why I should go on some sort of spending freeze. It's just so hard.

ajpufky · August 2014

The biggest thing is making sure you are both aligned in doing this spending freeze. If only 1 of you is on board it's not going to work, also set up time to discuss your progress, it's not a fun conversation to have but if you want this to last you have to keep it top of mind. I agree with the spreadsheet format to look at your budget but then again I'll put just about anything into spreadsheets!! In order to do this you need to know appx how much you are spending in certain categories every month as well as when those expenses hit, so sit down and figure that out. Things like TV, mortgage, cell phone bill tend to be about the same every month, but groceries, credit card bills, etc can change, I always estimate a little high on those things just in case. Once you have this locked down you can start to look at what categories you can start cutting back on. Something that I have used in the past to figure out what all was going on my credit card each month was the Toshl finance app, it's a great way to track spending as soon as it happens (coffees, lunches, books, etc) you can organize by either date or tags and you can choose to see either one month at a time or multiple months. If you are like me it's really easy to swipe your credit card and then get to the end of the month and go what the hell did I just spend all this money on?? Good luck!!

Passanie · August 2014

Not a spending freeze, but I was pretty surprised at how much money we saved just re-evaluating our bills. Called the cell phone company and asked to compare how much data we were paying for vs. how much we were using. Saved $40 a month by changing that (and part of that was them saying "hey, you're eligible for one free gig of data"). Same thing with garbage. We never fill up our can so we switched to the smaller one. It only saves $5 a month, but still, it adds up. Saved a bit when we combined our car insurance too. And recently canceled the mail portion of Netflix because we haven't used it in months. We can always restart it. And the library too -- if you get on the hold list as soon as you hear of a book you want to read, you won't have to wait very long at all. Also google Target's coupon site. That site has way better deals than that silly cartwheel app.

sassypants527 · August 2014

DH and I did this and it was very helpful: http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu Plus once you've taken the class one time you can retake it for free whenever you need a refresher. It is Christian based, but not preachy at all. I can't deal with preachy.

duxcaelo · August 2014

My H and I have been thinking about something similar, with saving a set amount first and trying to trim down to live off the rest.

I think changing money habits can be really hard, especially if it feels like one person is the only one making sacrifices to make the budget work. I think the best thing to start with is to make sure you are both working toward the same goal because then you can both try to work together to make it happen. Just some examples based on what you posted, is it to spend less money over all? To stick to a budget? To save a certain amount? All three?

I think you have gotten a lot of good tips on how to categorize and budget.

One crazy idea I had, but have never tried, would be to pull out five $100 bills from the bank on the first of the month and limit us to one for each of the weeks. We don't have kids yet, but that could be increased to $120 or whatever amount is bare bones. It sounds really hard, but I think it could be doable.

I would pay my non variables as expected, like rent/power/cell/cable/water/etc. For the variables, I would probably put fuel on the credit card (which I would pay off monthly), but any other expenses like groceries/coffee/dinner out/movies/nails/clothes/tools/etc. each week would have to come from that for both people and once it was gone, it was gone until the next week. Then after three months of doing that together as a team, I imagine we would have a better handle on what it is we both find important and can expand our variable budget as we saw the need to incorporate some of those things we'd cut out during that time (and to switch back to using the CC for the points). And it also seemed that should fully maximize savings during that time frame.

I agree with the meal planning tip as well; If your pantry is also like mine, you probably have a ton of staples to try to eat up as well. Go crazy, plan out all your meals weekly if you don't already. It might also prevent some of those dinners out.

NBR: Spending Freezes

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