Best ways to reduce family spending?

[Anonymous]

What are the best ways to go about this? We are living beyond our means and will need to make some tough decisions, but what are the best places to start for most people?

[Anonymous]

Write down and categorize your current spending.

[Anonymous]

Are you tracking your spending?

[Anonymous]

Childcare is very expensive, so it's a place that you can also save. Discretionary clubs or camps that are pricey. New clothes and restaurants.

[Anonymous]

Figure out each category where your money goes. Can you rent out a portion of your home? Get an au pair instead of a nanny? Stop eating out? Move to a smaller home? Pay off debt so you're not paying interest?

[Anonymous]

1. Start with the irregular big expenses (e.g., camps, car insurance, home insurance) and see if you can cut those. Come up with a structure for gifts/holiday spending that is reasonable for you--it's really surprising how much spending can go on in these celebratory events that really kills the budget. Let your kids know the gift plan.
2. Move to ongoing subscriptions (e.g., cable, streaming, phones, internet) and see if you can reduce there. Come up with a structure/rule for kids' activities that is fiscally reasonable for you.
3. Track grocery and household spending. Meal plan, eat from your pantry, eliminate food waste, reduce your meat and cheese consumption. Find recipes that are more budget friendly. If you eat out frequently make it less common.

[Anonymous]

A spending fast can also be a helpful reset. Take a month and don't spend money on anything other than perishable food and recurring required spending (insurance, child care, mortgage, etc).

For that month, don't buy anything on Amazon. Don't go to Target. Eat the random stuff in your pantry that's been in the back of the cupboard for a year. Have picnics instead of going out to eat. Visit a park instead of going to the movies. Try to be really mindful about when and how you think about buying things to identify patterns and whether what you are buying is really needed.

[Anonymous]

Never go out for a meal. No stopping at wawa either.

Buy fresh fruit and veg and meat. No prepared foods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. Start with the irregular big expenses (e.g., camps, car insurance, home insurance) and see if you can cut those. Come up with a structure for gifts/holiday spending that is reasonable for you--it's really surprising how much spending can go on in these celebratory events that really kills the budget. Let your kids know the gift plan.
2. Move to ongoing subscriptions (e.g., cable, streaming, phones, internet) and see if you can reduce there. Come up with a structure/rule for kids' activities that is fiscally reasonable for you.
3. Track grocery and household spending. Meal plan, eat from your pantry, eliminate food waste, reduce your meat and cheese consumption. Find recipes that are more budget friendly. If you eat out frequently make it less common.

I don't know if these changes will make much of a dent if OP is living in a huge house that they can ill afford. I'd start with the biggest item.

[Anonymous]

OP here - lots of helpful ideas here, thanks! What about insurance? We have had everything with State Farm for years. Any thoughts on this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - lots of helpful ideas here, thanks! What about insurance? We have had everything with State Farm for years. Any thoughts on this?

Get a local broker and shop your insurance. Once you have a broker make sure you stay on them to shop it annually or every other year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. Start with the irregular big expenses (e.g., camps, car insurance, home insurance) and see if you can cut those. Come up with a structure for gifts/holiday spending that is reasonable for you--it's really surprising how much spending can go on in these celebratory events that really kills the budget. Let your kids know the gift plan.
2. Move to ongoing subscriptions (e.g., cable, streaming, phones, internet) and see if you can reduce there. Come up with a structure/rule for kids' activities that is fiscally reasonable for you.
3. Track grocery and household spending. Meal plan, eat from your pantry, eliminate food waste, reduce your meat and cheese consumption. Find recipes that are more budget friendly. If you eat out frequently make it less common.

I don't know if these changes will make much of a dent if OP is living in a huge house that they can ill afford. I'd start with the biggest item.

Moving always incurs costs and if OP owns, they likely have low interest rates that they won't be able to get now. Seems like a lot of disruption for likely not much gain. OP didn't give a lot of info either so we don't know what their costs are. If you have multiple cars, getting rid of one can really change things too--and your car can fetch a good price right now.

[Anonymous]

-Stop eating out
-stop buying clothes
-stop taking weekend trips and do staycations instead
-no more pricey camps
-Shop at a cheaper grocery store.

[Anonymous]

I shopped Car Insurance and saved $1200 for the year.
We moved houses recently and I never set up house cleaning service, and realized - I actually don't need it - I can just do it myself once a month with a biweekly or weekly vacuuming
We are going to drop our landscapers next. We feel the same, that we can just do it ourselves with once or twice a year tree service.
I WFH and we just dropped down to one car, we gave a car to our DC, and thought we'd just do one car for a little while until prices came down, and realized we don't need a second car bc I don't have a commute.
If circumstances didn't create situations for us to challenge our thinking, we probably would have gone on spending as we've always done.

[Anonymous]

Private school
shop around for new insurance
Eating own
Really plan your Meals out and don’t waste food