Cutting Costs: Silly Expenses!

The great thing about budgeting is that every $1 of income is accounted for. Do you know where all your income goes? Yeah, we didn't either! We had some things set-up to be paid automatically with our credit card each month. This is convenient, however, if you aren't checking your bills each month, a price increase or fee might sneak in on you. Here are the "silly expenses" we found when we started digging into our bills for our latest TMM Journey. Go ahead and laugh- We did!

1)Water Delivery- We started this when I was pregnant with Nathan. We were tired of buying bottled water and wanted healthy water,too. Our city water isn't the greatest tasting! We swear when we started this, it was closer to $25mo. When we made our budget, we found it was up to $46! The cost had just gotten lost with our other credit card purchases and didn't stand out each month. What did we care, it was being paid for. Little did we know, over time, there were water price increases and "energy fees" added on. Sadly, we were only using about 15gal mo. so it avg to almost $3gal! SILLY! Needless to say, we canceled delivery and invested in a water purifier pitcher until we decide if we need to get a faucet system or not. Yearly Savings: $552!

2)Landline Phone- The great thing about phone companies is that they can take a $50 phone plan and make it $70 after all their taxes. We weren't even using it all that much. And in the meantime, we racked up 3,000 roll-over minutes on our cell phones. SILLY! We cut our landline phone to the bare bones plan and are using our cell phones for outgoing calls now. Yeah, it's not always the greatest reception but check out the Yearly Savings: $540!

3)Mutt Mitts- What the heck is a Mutt Mitt,right? It's a glorified doggie-doo bag. Rich faithfully walks Homer twice a DAY and with bad timing, can have to carry "doo" for 7-8minutes. It didn't seem like much $ until we figured yearly costs. SILLY!Now,he'll be using grocery sacks or something else free! Yearly Savings:$120!

Total Yearly Savings: $1,212! Sounds like a lot now, right? But then we looked at it this way..almost SIX car payments! By cutting out all these "sillies" we are now 6mo. closer to having our car paid off. All just by cutting out simple conveniences. And we've just gotten started into itemizing everything. Who knows what else we'll find!

So, I encourage you to take a good look at your expenses and cut out all your silliness,too. It will pay off, literally! :) Wait until you see what you find! Feel free to share your findings/stories in the comments field. We can all learn together!