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?

They are super expensive. Call Allstate I guarantee you will save at least $1000 if you bundle house and car. I bet you don’t even realize how much they Jack your rates each year.
Call cable/fios and ask for a cheaper package. Say you will cancel. Same with cell/internet and Alarm system.

I would start with major monthly expenses. Call each company that sends you a bill and ask for a better deal. Once in a while, this works. Do this every year.

Otherwise, I agree with "track your spending for a month" and then see what you can cut.

Don't cheap out on expenses that result in long-term savings. Do preventive maintenance on your house, car, etc. Skipping that is penny wise and pound foolish.

Context matters. Making $50k and spending $55k is very different than making $500k and spending $550k. Anyone who's truly struggling doesn't have landscapers and isn't eating out. If you have landscapers, that's a pretty obvious place to start.

Organize. You already have most of the stuff you want to buy.
Write things down. The next month you can clearly see that you could have gone without such and such a thing.
Make a budget. If you go over it one month, you got to cut down on spending just as much the next month.
Write down every time you wanted to buy something, but didn't and how much you saved.
Come up with 10 things to do that are free. Going walking in neighborhood/trail and picking up trash gloves, bag) is a good one in my book. I also tell the kids that we are going to look for treasures. See what you all find that people have lost. You don't have to touch them, pick them up and bring with you, just make a note.
Simplify your life. Don't make it more interesting by going from a restaurant to a store to amazon spending money. The crap is going nowhere. China makes more of it. Consider stores to be the storage for your things. There's almost nothing we need that can't wait besides medicine.
Sell your scrap gold. Cold is gold. Invest the money in top 10 s and p stock on a down day.
Use youtube to learn something for free. Macramee is cool if you have young kids- something for hands.
Best place to start is so different for different families. We live on $4k a month after taxes, because we really don't need much. My home already full of crap.

For us, spending on our kids is an escalating cost— youth sports, equipment, fees for extracurriculars, plus money for them to socialize: movies, magic mountain, food. Plus, clothes (we have girls).

So I would start there. Plus, your food/dining out budget, followed by your home maintenance budget and your car expenses.

Good luck.

Kind of stupid question and stupid answers. Is water wet? Yes, water is wet!!

I find that cars are serious money suck. Are you within a mile of a metro or bus? Do you have more than one car? Are you leasing? Have a car payment? Do you have more car insurance than you need?

Anonymous wrote: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.

This is a good suggestion. I do think Amazon presents one of the biggest spending hazards - way too easy to spend.

Anonymous wrote:where is your money going op?

Exactly this. How can anyone answer OP's question without any facts. You're asking us to make a lot assumptions. People's answers are going to be projections.

Anonymous wrote: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.

What's the best way to shop for insurance?

Don’t go out to eat, ever.

Anonymous wrote:Millennials like to say that it's not their daily Starbucks that makes them struggle financially, but all those extras add up. Daily Starbucks, lunch out, drinks at a restaurant, 4 streaming subscriptions, highest data cell phone plans, monthly highlights....it adds up quite quickly.

Determine what is a need and what is extra. Pick something important to you to keep so you're not miserable, but see where else you can cut back.

+1

Yes, not spending $10 at Starbucks is not going to make your rich. But many are spending $10/day, 5 days/week---that is $200/month just for Starbucks. Add in eating lunches out ($15/day *20) is another $300, going out to dinner with friends or for drinks another $250-300/month. That alone is $800/month and almost $10K/year of non-essentials. It would only cost them $150-200 to make coffee at home, pack lunches, cook dinner, invite friends over and have drinks at home. Those are all wants, not needs. So until you are saving for college for your kids, your retirement, have a 6-9month fully funded emergency fund, etc. you have to scale back your "wants"

Anonymous wrote:Millennials like to say that it's not their daily Starbucks that makes them struggle financially, but all those extras add up. Daily Starbucks, lunch out, drinks at a restaurant, 4 streaming subscriptions, highest data cell phone plans, monthly highlights....it adds up quite quickly.

Determine what is a need and what is extra. Pick something important to you to keep so you're not miserable, but see where else you can cut back.

Hmmm....it's my boomer parents who won't cut the cable cord despite the ridiculous price tag and refuse to buy secondhand anything, but sure, let's stereotype millennials....

Millennials like to say that it's not their daily Starbucks that makes them struggle financially, but all those extras add up. Daily Starbucks, lunch out, drinks at a restaurant, 4 streaming subscriptions, highest data cell phone plans, monthly highlights....it adds up quite quickly.

Determine what is a need and what is extra. Pick something important to you to keep so you're not miserable, but see where else you can cut back.

where is your money going op?