Best Way You Have Saved Money on Monthly Expenses

[Anonymous]

Thinking small here. What have you done that has made the most impact on one of your monthly bills?

[Anonymous]

Making my own lunches and dinners. We only eat out when we're with friends.

[Anonymous]

We just switched from Comcast internet to RCN. We're goign to get 3x the speed for half the cost. I hate comcast, so this feels like a victory. The extra $35 a month is just extra.

[Anonymous]

Cricket wireless. They use ATT's network but cost $20 a month for 3gb.

[Anonymous]

- No more random stuff from Costco - Saved $100-$150/month
- Cut down my random 7-11 visits for whatever - $50/month
- Switched my cellphone plan (3 phones) and saved $50/month.
- Got rid of FIOS TV, saved $60/month?
- Stopped eating out too often. Saved $300/month
- Took care of my own yard last year. $1200/year
- Refrained myself from buying craps on Amazon. Stay...away.. $2000/year
- No more Black Friday shopping $1000/year
- Switched to stay at home job. Gas saved $200/month
- Stopped smoking - $200/month

[Anonymous]

Bulk shopping at Costco. I go every two weeks and buy fresh and frozen veggies (fresh for week 1, frozen for week 2), meat (fresh and frozen, but some fresh like ground beef ends up being frozen and then used the second week), sandwich bread, deli meat, sliced and block cheeses. About once every 3 months, I restock the pantry at Costco with all the macaroni and cheese, fruit cups, k cups, individual snack bags, and also paper goods.

[Anonymous]

A lot of little things!
Can I say one abstract thing? Thinking of budget categories in the bigger picture. Perhaps looking at the monthly X budget or the annual Y budget and seeing it differently than weekly/monthly. When you think of X budget (say groceries) as a larger whole, you realize all the little mistakes you make.

For example, eating out. Seeing what we spent over 4 months, I realized we could have gone out to a fancy child-free restaurant every week, and paid for a short babysitter. Instead we were racking up $10 at ice cream shop, $20 at chick fil a, $25 at takeout, etc etc. Seeing the big picture shows me it's possible to live better. If I wanted to spend the same (I don't, I want to spend less), we could be trying out that hard-to reach restaurant once a month. Therefore, I choose to just eat at home more, but know it's possible to make a dream come true if we feel like it.

Similarly on eating out, lately, we start out the month with $0 in Restaurants budget and a bigger amount in Groceries. If we eat out, it comes out of groceries (we then track it in restaurants). This is just a trick we play to tell ourselves, eating out comes out of 'eating.' It is ALL the same--feeding ourselves--but we can do it more efficiently if we keep that money in Groceries. A choice to eat out is just limiting our ability to stock up/make awesome homemade meals.

[Anonymous]

I started using cash for discretionary spending. I take out $200 per week for groceries, gas, shopping, parking, lunches, etc (basically everything except mortgage, daycare, utilities, insurance, medical expenses, and a monthly Amazon subscribe and save shipment of household items), and when it's gone, it's gone.

I usually still have money left over at the end of the week.

When I was putting things on a card, I was easily blowing through $500 per week.

[Anonymous]

-Switched from FIOS to Comcast. Have the 2 year teaser rate. Will switch to another provider when that is over.
-Simply more mindful when I grocery shop. I cook from scratch and feed our family of 4 all meals in the house except one night out to dinner on $175/week
-re compete your insurance on home and car. We switched to state farm and not only saved money, but saved AND moved to an umbrella policy with more coverage!
-i'm embarrassed to say, but we went through an exercise for 2 months where we combed through every single expense and put it in a spreadsheet and we shaved off $1,200 of monthly recourring expenses!

[Anonymous]

Remembering to take my birth control every night.

[Anonymous]

Stopped going to Target.

[Anonymous]

Automate savings--retirement, college, whatever. You won't be able to touch the money (at least, not easily), and likely you won't miss the money, either.

[Anonymous]

I've read in a few threads that you can save by cutting down on meat.....what do you buy/eat instead?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've read in a few threads that you can save by cutting down on meat.....what do you buy/eat instead?

We don't eat much meat, some weeks none. Instead we eat lots of bean dishes. Its much cheaper to eat beans and veggies than meat and veggies. We did it for health reasons, but it saves money, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've read in a few threads that you can save by cutting down on meat.....what do you buy/eat instead?

For meat, I buy whatever the store has marked down that has to be sold by that day. If I go after 2pm, they mark down the prices even more.