It’s not enough to just not charge, in order for debt avoidance to work, I also have to control spending. Bearing in mind that I’ve only been at this 2 weeks, here are the things I did in September to avoid incurring additional debt and send more cash to the bottom line for repayment of existing debt:
Item or Action – Savings
Cancelled Netflix – $14.99 / month
Cancelled SurveyMonkey Pro – $19.99 / month
Cancelled old premium blog – $13.90 / month
Converted Audible subscription from Gold to Light – approximately $14.00 / month
Negotiated lower basic cable rate for same service – $6.00 / month
Negotiated lower daycare rate – $20.00 / week
Converted Friday pizza / chicken finger night from Papa John’s to Dijorno and Frozen nuggets – $25-30 / week
Quit buying wine – $30.00 / week
Took kids to McDonald’s after therapy, instead of Applebee’s, and ate my own food at home – $100 / month
Skipped lunch out, 2x per week – $9.00 / week
Overall savings to be realized in October – roughly $501.
Holy crap! All this time I’ve been thinking I spend maybe $200 – $300 per month, and while that may have been all that went on the card (my lunch, the wine, daycare and cable were all, and have always been, cash expenditures), itemizing it this way has really made me sit up and take notice.
We have an extensive DVD collection, premium cable, and TiVo, so cancelling Netflix was a no-brainer. The SurveyMonkey subscription was for me for work, because it made my job easier, but the company never reimbursed me for it, so I’m done. If they want me to have it again, they can subsidize it. The old blog was not necessary. Having a branded domain and email for what is, essentially, a vanity project (never even tried to monetize it), just doesn’t make sense when you’re trying to cut corners, so out that went.
My older son has dyslexia. I converted the Audible from $14.99 per month to $9.99 yearly primarily so I could keep him acquainted with an interest in books that he didn’t have to struggle to read. I have multiple credits built up, and have only ever purchased audio files for him, so I feel perfectly justified in keeping this for him at the lowered rate. He also requires therapy twice a week to remediate his disability. The therapy is difficult for him on numerous levels. The promise of going out afterward has sometimes been the only thing getting him through it. But we’ve cut the going out from twice to once per week, he’s perfectly happy with McDonald’s, and I can eat at home. Better for my wallet and my waist, and he still gets his reward for working hard.
My basic cable promotional rate expired last month. I have them on autopay and hadn’t realized it until I opened this month’s bill and found it $10 higher than I expected. I called to find out why it had jumped, and that’s when they told me about the rate expiration. So, more as a joke than anything else, I asked if they could give me another promo rate. The customer service rep asked me to hang on, then came back and said she could lower it by $6 per month for a year. I didn’t expect her to actually be able to do that. You bet’cha I took it.
My office is converting from a 5-day to a 4-day week, and I’ll be working at home on Fridays. I’ll have the boys ride the school bus home rather than drive over to daycare to get them. When I let the owner know about the new arrangement (Evgren’s kids not there on Fridays), I, again sort of joking (but cable lady had taught me to be hopeful), asked if he could lower my rate for the day they weren’t there. He took off $10 per child. It’s not much, but he didn’t have to do it at all, and I was more than happy to accept that as an excellent deal for me.
I never did eat lunch out much, but I’ve decided to give up the occassional Wendy’s burger altogether, so that $4.90 for every combo meal I don’t eat. Pizza Friday’s is a habit we’ve fallen into, but, again, the boys don’t care if it’s Papa John’s, as long as the food tastes good to them. It was just more convenient for me to have it delivered, or so I thought. So I spend $4.00 on a frozen pizza and $6.99 on a bag of chicken nuggets that will last at least three week, and I wait 20-30 minutes to cook it all in my own oven instead of waiting for the delivery guy to show up and roll over my flowerbed. No biggie.
Buying wine was my one big, personal vice. I used to buy 2-3 bottles per week, sometimes going as high as $20 for a bottle, but mostly looking for highly palatable, $10-$12 bargains. I paid cash for this – never could justify this hobby on credit – but I haven’t bought a bottle since Panic Day. I don’t miss it yet; hopefully I can keep it up.
On to things I won’t give up if I don’t have to – Audible, premium cable, and TiVo. Audible I’ve already explained. As to premium cable and TiVo, we already don’t go out to movies in the theater, and I’ve vowed to quit buying DVDs (except, possibly, at Christmas), so our family entertainment nights in the cooler months are going to consist of board games and whatever suitable we can find on TV. I have one TiVo with lifetime service already, so my second only costs $6.95 per month, and premium cable ensures I’ll be able to capture at least something kid-friendly during the week. I’m asking myself and the kids to give up a lot of things in a very short span, and we’ll need to have something to look forward to as a family if we’re going to stick with this over the long haul, so I’m hanging on to these for now.
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