July 2009 Weddings
LauraR326
member
Dear Community,
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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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
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.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How do you save?
I'm all about saving money these days. I guess thats what a new car payment and daycare expense will do to you. How do you save? Do you have tips for people like me who is trying to save every penny?
Sidenote: In no way am I saying we can't afford the payments we have. I'm just trying to cut back on unnecessary spending that we don't really need to do if I can find ways to cut back. I come from a family who was always going check to check. My parents never taught me "money saving skills" and with them both passed away its not like I can ask them now.
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Re: How do you save?
My parents are the same way, Laura. I can't think of any two people worse with money than my mom and dad. I find every way I can to learn as much about finances and NOT be like them as much as possible.
That being said, we have cut out most of our unnecessary expenses.
We no longer have cable. I get discounts on our cell phone plan through my work. We dropped Comcast altogether and went with a local internet company who charges much less. We wait on haircuts until we visit my parents. (My mom used to be a cosmotologist.) We shop around when it comes to things like car insurance. We don't replace things that don't need replacing, and do an semi-annual cleaning of the house to pick out things we don't need and sell them on e-bay to pad our savings. And the number one thing I guess we do is just not buy things we can't afford. We had ~$25,000 worth of credit card debt combined when we first got together and now we don't owe anything. I will never go back there again.
Also, with our new circumstances, (the baby), we are looking at moving back to Maine, for two reasons. One, my mother and grandmother have offered to provide childcare, and two, COL is much less in central Maine than it is in Burlington, Vermont. We want to buy a house and we are coming to the realization that with all of the things we have coming up in our lives, although we have plenty of money for just the two of us, a baby is going to strap us financially in more ways than we are comfortable with. Plus it will be nice to be closer to family.
ETA: We also turn down many nights out on the town with our friends in favor of saving money. While they go into CC debt, we are free and clear. And if that makes us look uncool, then so be it.
M has a spreadsheet of our budget. It lists every bill we pay and how much we pay per month (even if we don't pay it monthly, he just divides it out) so we have a monthly expenses total. Our checks get direct-deposited into our account and M has it set up so that bill money gets automatically pulled to a separate account the day after payday. He goes into the account every two weeks and moves half or more of what's there to savings. It's sounds more complicated than it really is.
More practically, I've just learned to be a good shopper. Buying stuff before you really need it leaves more time to look for deals. Like, I bought a new, awesome ski jacket on clearance over the summer for $20 -- I found the same jacket in Macy's last week for $160. All those dresses in my closet? Only one of them was more than $20. The card store in the mall went out of business so they last week they were open we went over and bought all the cards we'd need for the year for 75% off. I always keep an eye out for things I may need down the line.
Cooking more from scratch has also cut our grocery bill significantly.
Kate's Recipe Box || Relatively Bookish
T manages our money, except when he's deployed, then it's my job. I was raised the same way as you, my parents always lived check to check and my mom still does, and she's always worried about money and paying bills. So, that being my guidance growing up I had no idea about managing money or saving when I got to be an adult and made some crappy decisions in my teens. I learned the hard way that saving money was important and credit card debt sucked.
What I've learned from T and how we do it is the money goes directly to savings. His paycheck goes right into the savings account. Then only a certain amount gets transferred later into checking to pay the bills and for a little bit of spending money. That way, we aren't sitting there with the whole paycheck immediately in checking. Also any investments come out directly from his paycheck too, like contributions to an IRA or other retirement account. If the money isn't there to begin with in the checking account, it's just less tempting for me to spend it and way easier for our savings to grow.
We use coupons on a regular basis. We also cut out eating out. Not completely, but we used to go out to dinner a couple times a week. That is a huge savings. We cut out our cable too (except during basketball season). That is at least a $100/month savings. I make my own laundry detergent and household cleaners. That saves a ton! A load of laundry costs less than $0.01 plus water.
Shopping around for car/house insurance can save you a ton of money. It can be a hassel, but it is well worth it!
If your employer allows you to, set up a dependent care flexible savings plan to pay some of your child care expenses. That money comes out 100% tax free. They cap it at $5,000 a year and the rest can be written off on your taxes. (I'm not sure if that $5,000 cap is a state thing or a federal thing).
Go to consignment sales for stuff for Lucas. Just Between Friends and Rhea Lana are my favorite. I bought 5 pairs of jeand for Parker last fall for $3. They have sales twice a year. The spring sale has mostly spring/summer clothes and the fall sale has mostly fall/winter clothes. They also have strollers, toys, books, movies, maternity clothes, etc.
We don't live on an extremely tight budget, but we prioritize the money for the bills we have to pay and savings right off the bat. I handle the money in our house, and what works for me is having all of my money compartmentalized. We do most of our banking with ING Direct which is online only. So, when I have a new bill or thing I want to save for, I open a new savings account with them,and every month a certain amount of money goes into each account. So, our car payment (plus extra we're saving for our next down payment), insurance, tax, mortgage, and savings money goes into the accounts automatically. I know it's no different than having one account and using a spreadsheet to show you what money is designated for what expense, but for whatever reason, this works better for us.
We also fund DH's Roth IRA (he's a teacher so we do this in addition to his pension) automatically every month, and my 401K gets funded before I even see my paycheck.
For vacations, we use all of our *extra* money, and have a separate account for that too. So our tax refund, my bonus, money DH makes for running clubs at school, etc... gets put in that account.
After we do all of that, whatever is left is in our checking account and is basically used to pay off our credit card bill each month. We pay for everything we can on our card so we can get the points towards traveling, but we pay off the balance every single month. We never pay any interest.
We're lucky because we both grew up in homes where our parents were good with money. Although, sometimes we think that maybe our parents saved too much, and didn't take time to enjoy life, so we really try to find the balance. DH jokes that i have "daddy issues" when it comes to money because my dad was (is) so strict with it, So that's one of the reasons why I handle the money, and while we pay all of our bills and save a significant amount of money, we don't strictly budget everything down to the last dollar.
Thanks for the links! A consigment sale is coming up next week and Lucas needs some bigger summer clothes!
I absolutely love Gail Vaz-Oxlade and use her interactive budget worksheet to figure out our bills and if we're going over in certain areas. She color codes her worksheets and it shows you the percentages that she recommends for different areas (transportation, life, debt, savings, etc.). Then, as you plug in your numbers, it shows you what percentage you're actually spending. We started using an envelope system a few weeks ago and weekly or biweekly, I go to the bank and take out the amount of money that the worksheet suggests (there's a place where it talks about using money jars and divides it up into weekly amounts for you), put it in the appropriate envelopes, and DH and I use it until it's gone. I highly recommend checking out her page:
http://www.gailvazoxlade.com/resources.html
We've learned to use an app on DH's phone when we're grocery shopping so we add up the amount (plus estimated tax) of each item we put in our cart, in order to keep within our $80 weekly budget. We rent more movies On Demand, rather than going out to the movies. We limited the amount we go out to eat drastically, shopprf around for cheaper car insurance, and I gave up some things for awhile (pilates and chiropractor) in order to help us. It comes down to Wants vs. Needs right now (usually lol).
I highly recommend building up an e-fund too for emergencies! Even $50 a paycheck can make a huge difference, and you can have it direct deposited out of your check into whatever account you choose (ING Direct online savings has a .8% rate right now and I can send you a referral if you'd like) so you don't get tempted to spend it!
My parents are fanastic with money. They plan for everything, have never lived beyond their means, and will always put needs before wants. They raised me that way and although I've slipped up along the way (ex. having a balance on my credit card-something they would never do), without their guidance and influence, I would muchhh worse off.
DH grew up very poor and his family never had money for wants. It was more about making sure that they had food and things like that. Christmas time he would only get one gift, if anything at all, and when we talk about our childhood it makes me realize even more how really blessed I am. I thought that growing up that way, he'd want to save up as much money as he can. Instead, it's the opposite. He's not great at saving money b/c he never had money to save. He's an instant-gratifcation type of person and if he wants it, he'll more than likely buy it. When he was working full-time, he'd see money in our joint account and think it was okay to spend $100 here and there b/c we had the money...but he didn't realize that money was in the account b/c we had an upcoming bill.
Clearly, I do all the budgeting in our family and now move any money I'm saving for bills into a different account lol. Our e-fund is set up online for this reason...hard to access. I read an article about how sometimes people who are poor don't know how to save b/c they're used to spending everything they have and I think that really resonates w/ him and his family in Cleveland.
Check out mint.com. Dan is mister finance guy so we're all about the budget in this house. You can synch up all your accounts and credit cards to the website and it tracks your typical spending. We looked at that to get a better idea of where we were spending (and wasting) our money for a month or two and then figured out where to cut back.
I've only allowed myself one coffee out per week. Instead of getting breakfast on the run during the weekends, we make it at home. We're only allowed one night per week to eat out (unless we have plans with friends and then that doesn't count!). We try to only buy what's on sale at the grocery store outside of the essentials.
Some months we do great and others we're over but at least we're able to see what the funds are going more closely.
All the previous posts are excellent! We basically do the things others have listed but I'll list our tricks anyway...
I use mint.com for budgeting. It is a free tool that you can build a budget with and it tracks your spending. In addition, our philosophy since getting married is to live off of M's income and save mine. This worked very well for us for 2 years, but then we made the decision to save 1/2 of my income and use the rest to pay for M's unexpected medical bills and to pay more on our car loan to pay it down faster. We've been very fortunate to be able to live like this and I know that living off of one income is difficult for many people.
Last year we made even more of an effort to cut costs. We dropped our cable (much to M's disappointment but he's survived) and I cut our grocery bill in half with coupons. We cut eating out to once a week date night and set up a strict lunch budget. I am also a big time clearance shopper. I never buy clothes at full price. Ever.
Finally, I earn gift cards for eating out and to put away for Christmas shopping by taking surveys, mystery shopping, and through things like mypoints. I can give you more info on those sorts of things if you are interested.
As it all breaks down right now with our concentration on paying off the truck and medical bills, we save one of my paychecks and $100 that is set up to be an automatic transfer from checking to a savings account. Obviously, not everyone can do that, but I believe that everyone can find places to cut and save.
Oh and I third mint.com. Love it! Allowing budgets to be set up and then to track and categorize spending has been very helpful and easier for me since I'm lazy than going through and doing the old school Excel spreadsheet way T used to do. I also agree that shopping sales and using coupons, especially for groceries, etc are a great way to save.
I also never buy anything full price, all clothes are always sale/clearance, and I've been working on trying the same with baby items. I've been scouting Craigslist for things as well as already found out when my local MOM sale is and made plans to go. I also price shop like crazy before buying something. I check Amazon, retail stores, etc and figure out who has the best deal.
I know our biggest could be cut expense is eating out, especially while traveling. We've worked on it while at home, we eat out maybe once a week or so, but since we travel so often (like right now) its harder to reel in when you don't have a kitchen and such. I try to cut back and bring easily made in a hotel room with the coffee maker (instant oatmeal) or if there's a mini-fridge or microwave to have for breakfasts and lunches in the room so we only end up eating dinner out. It's worked out pretty well, at least on this trip so far, and in past times.
Just a few things I do, I suppose...
I wash my own car
I paint my nails (but do splurge on pedicures in the summer)
Don't go out for coffee
Don't often go out for dinner unless it's a celebration, or we also hit up restaurants that don't have servers so we don't have to leave a tip, etc.
When we're saving for a vacation, I use my tutoring money towards the trip. I don't touch that money to use it on anything else.
I don't ever buy clothing full price - usually I wait for double markdowns and store the clothes for the next year.
We don't hire a gardener or cleaning service. We even wash our windows.
I don't know how it works for you living where it's "summer" all the time
, but you can save a lot of money by buying things for Lucas at the end of season sales.
For example, my mom got a Columbia snowsuit for Mackenzie for next winter that was regularly $80 on sale for $20! I also bought a bunch of swimsuits at the end of last summer for her for less than $5 a piece.