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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What (if any) changes have you made in light of the economy?
I am always a budgetzilla (I am my father's daughter!), but since 2008 we've cut back heavily on eating out, unplanned spending, etc. At first I thought it was just because we were newlyweds, nesting, recovering economically for paying for the wedding and a new (to us) car since I totalled mine a week after coming home from our honeymoon.
In retrospect, that was also about the time the economy started to tank, so perhaps it was a little of both? I dunno. I do know that we've seriously made adjustments. What have you done? Are you in better or worse financial shape than you were say in 2007 or 2008? Are there any "adjustments" you've made that you think you'll stick with even if/when the economy turns around?
Re: What (if any) changes have you made in light of the economy?
We honestly haven't made too many adjustments. Mostly because we are in much, much better shape now than we were the past few years. MH (FI at the time) didn't have a job for 6 months in 2008. That's when we cut back a lot.....not much eating out, no new clothes, etc. Now we're in great shape, though I do think we're both very conscious of trying to build back our savings little by little.
Right now I feel like wer'e spending more than ever, though I think we're spending smartly. For example, neither of us has life insurance currently, and we're looking into this before the LO is born. So that's spending money, I guess, but on something we truly need (IMO). And we've been spending money on some simple house projects like new windows, a subflooring in the attic so we have more storage space, etc. Money well spent, though, I think, since we're adding value/energy efficiency to our house (and doing all of the work ourselves).
Both of are in a much better situation than we were a couple of years ago... or even last year! Three years ago, I was a student, Phil was here on a working holiday visa and we had 2000$ a month to cover all our costs. It was brutal! We lived in Victoria (which is on Vancouver Island) and the cost of living there was just outrageous.
Now that we're both employed and relatively settled, things are so much better. We don't own a house or a car (huzzah for subway systems!), so our bills aren't outrageous. Our rent is, but that's the price you pay for living in a gorgeous area in downtown Toronto.
Once we'd paid off the wedding, I went a little nuts on the spending. All that restraint for 3 years... I felt like I deserved something a little nice. Sigh. I went overboard, so now we're back to the same old habits. Less spendy McGee here!
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
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I don't think that it is the economy that has altered our spending. I think we just finally woke up to the fact that we were spending too much instead of saving. We looked at the eating out, the frivolous shopping for minor things. Even though it wasn't out of control, it was significant enough to get our attention.
Now we cook a whole lot more, bring our lunches to work, and have curbed the spending. We have begun to window shop and price things that we will need for the house and so our mindset has shifted to thinking about homeownership and all that entails.
We've always been frugal and pretty good with saving/investing. Lately, though, I've definitely been spending less on clothes, random coffees and snacks when I'm out, and I'm shopping second-hand more. My credit card bill (which is always paid in full) is pretty much just gas and groceries now! I don't think it was triggered by the economy -- more by having a child, being a SAHM for the time being, and shifting my priorities. I hope these positive improvements stick!
The biggest thing we've done is not eat leftover dinners for lunch. MH is a big leftover eater and would bring them to work or eat them for breakfast. I found myself having to cook a new meal nearly every night (he would help and cook a meal or two a week). Our food costs for 2 people were almost $1000 a month! That didn't include eating out!
So now we eat sandwiches/salads/soups for lunch. No leftovers allowed. MH has been having a tough time with it but it hasn't been much of a change for me since I'm not a leftover fan. Now when we cook dinner, we can stretch a meal over 2-3 nights. Our food costs have gone down by anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 a month, depending on whether we're travelling or hosting out of town guests. We rarely eat out - may be once every couple weeks. Other things we've done to keep food costs down are shop more at the swap meet and farmer's market, grow what we can at home (mainly herbs and tomatoes for the time being), and eat more vegetarian meals. The vegetarian meals have been tough for MH since he's in triatholon training mode but just eating one or two vegetarian meals a week keeps the Costco bill down by quite a bit.
One other thing I've been contemplating is cutting out our satellite bill. We don't have premium channels but our TV is connected to our computer and we can stream shows online or through Netflix. If we cancel our satellite, we can also cancel the phone line...
Duh, I should answer my own poll!
We're still as frugal as ever and for the most part are more financially comfortable since giving up our life as professional musicians and moving our here. That said, DH makes less money now because he's a fulltime nursing student (and SAHD). But we make it work. And it's great to have my salary, benefits, etc.
We have cut back significantly on "extras" but in retrospect, don't miss them. For example, we terminated our cell contracts and went with prepaid phones...I still have yet to use of the first set of minutes we purchased back in January. That alone is saving us $125/mo.
We buy a lot of stuff second hand (especially baby stuff) from consignment shops, eBay and Craigslist. And I shop around for the best deals online which takes time but can save a lot of money (especially on baby stuff).
We started grooming our dogs ourselves (saves $100/mo) and J cancelled his gym membership and works out at school or at home instead. We also have gone to cash only for things like eating out, grocery shopping and gas. It makes a big difference...when the cash is gone, no more spending!
We'll have two big loans paid off this year (car and a personal loan) so that will free up nearly $1K/mo. which we're really looking forward to...that said, we plan to stay on the frugal plan we've devised and use the extra cash to pay down some other bills (like the IRS) and add to our savings.
TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
hard to say - we are really just starting out as adults and jumped in full force, wedding, house, baby. 3 years ago I had just started my job and DH was just graduating from school. (sooooo glad we graduated when we did, the job prospects have just gotten worse and worse since then).
I guess we live w/in our means and save responsibly - we have large life insurance policies, aggressively save for retirement, and have started saving for Jack's college. My job is somewhat political so we always plan for the possibility I could get laid off so we bought something we could afford if one of us was every temporarily unemployed but we do depend on both incomes to maintain our lifestyle - both for the responsible savings and the "extras" (vacations, shopping, fun money). Other than our mortgage and my student loans we have never had any debt, so I can't say that we are better/worse than before and we haven't suffered job loss or salary changes so nothing seems different.
As far as saving $, we eat in a lot and I shop A LOT less than I use to - but that goes along with where we live. When I lived in Scottsdale I got caught up in dressing really nice and we went out ALL.THE.TIME and now I could really care less. I use coupons/shop around for baby stuff. I don't really use coupons for food/household items b/c we don't eat much pre-packaged stuff or mainstream household item brands. I do wait for sales though
In our day to day life, we haven't really made any changes - we both have VERY secure government jobs with guaranteed annual raises, excellent retirement contributions, etc., so although we're not exactly rolling in it (the downside of these super secure jobs is that they pay less than the same jobs generally do in the public sector, but the other benefits are worth it to us), we don't have any worries about losing our jobs or getting pay cuts.
However, the economy tanking DID affect our plans to move to the USA. Originally we had a 5-year plan that involved moving overseas in 2012. Now that's been pushed back to "whenever the economy recovers" since there isn't much point in us moving there if we can't get jobs.
As to sticking with (or not) adjustments, we have become more frugal in recent years - however, I attribute that more to maturity and to more financial sense these days. So yes, I think that the changes we've gradually made (we eat out less, monitor our spending, etc.) will stay.
So interesting that you posted this! A super common money saving tip is to take leftovers for lunch, so for years that's what we did...until I actually added it up one day and realized the same thing you did - it made waaaaay more financial sense to use those leftovers for another dinner and to buy other stuff (mostly sandwich-y things) for lunches. We save so much money this way - I don't know why everyone always recommends leftovers for lunch when it can definitely be cheaper not to take them!