I’m not sure if it’s just my house or if this is a common problem (I’m guessing the latter), but summer is dog-gone expensive! From kid’s extracurricular activities to birthdays to holiday parties to vacations to expensive hobbies (golf!), summer can get a little painful on the pocketbook. Our family also has gazillions of medical bills since our son has been sick for the past 8 months straight and little things like home repairs and license plate renewal all hitting us at once. Sitting down to balance the checkbook and pay our bills lately gives me instant hives and an asthma attack.
I’ve decided to try a new thing on the blog to help me start creating some consistent posts. Each month (or whatever time period ends up working), I’ll choose a specific topic and create a blog series on that topic. Naturally, since money is hot on my mind right now, we are starting this month with a series on saving money! All month long I’ll be writing about different strategies to save money and balance the pocketbook. My focus will be on things you can implement immediately. While I think it’s wonderful to do things like refinance (or downsize) your house or find a new job that brings more income, we all have bills due next week and by pinching some pennies now, the hope is that we can breathe a little easier next week (not a couple months from now when the refi finally goes through).
First things first, let’s talk some basics. The very first thing you want to do when money feels constricting is to track your spending. Put on paper (or in digital form), every single penny that you spend. My preference is to setup a simple Excel Spreadsheet that allows me to log every single transaction of our finances and categorize it in a specific column (food, auto, home, childcare, etc). This allows me to see at quick glance how much money we are spending in each category of our budget to see if there are spots in which we are over spending. I like using Excel for this because it’s simple, easy to use, and allows me the flexibility to change things to look exactly the way I want.
Once you’ve been tracking all of your spending for a few weeks, you’ll probably start to see areas in which your family can slim things down. My family’s biggest struggle is with food! We spend a lot of money feeding our family, and we don’t even go out to eat that much. This is always an area where I look for ways to trim expenses (stay tuned in this series for some food budget trimming ideas).
- Ditch the cable bill. We haven’t had cable in over four years and we rarely miss it. Instead we subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime (Instant Video) streaming services. I am not suggeting that you subscribe to all three of these services like we do, but pick one or two that your family is likely to use the most and go for it. The ability to watch whatever we want, whenever we want, and on any device, anywhere we have a Wifi signal is definitely worth the $7.99/month.
- Netflix – this is the best choice if you have kids in my opinion. Our daughter is (sadly) very addicted to her Netflix shows. They have tons of cartoons and kids shows including a lot of Disney movies. Young kids will not be bored with Netflix. For adults, they have a fair amount of movies (generally older movies) and a good deal of previous seasons of popular shows. Netflix also has some exclusive shows like Orange is the New Black which are incredibly well done.
- Hulu Plus – this is my favorite simply because it provides current season shows. For all of the shows I watch, the current weekly episode is usually available the very next day to watch on demand, whenever I’m ready for it. They also have some decent movies to choose from and a small selection of kid’s shows. However, their kid content isn’t nearly as good as Netflix.
- Amazon Prime Instant Video
– I love my Amazon Prime for the free shipping, music and the lending library, but we haven’t done all that much with the TV streaming. There are some shows (Duck Dynasty to name one) that I’ve only found on Prime, but otherwise the Amazon Instant Video is pretty similar to the offerings we already had with Netflix and Hulu. But if you don’t already have Netflix and Hulu, definitely check into Amazon Prime
simply because the added shipping, music, and book benefits make it a great deal.
- Check your cell phone bill. Personally, we haven’t looked at our cell phone bill and plan in years. I have our account set to auto withdraw from my account and I don’t even think twice about it. However, we never go over on any of our plan features (minutes, texts, data) so our bill remains the same price each month.
- If you do find yourself paying more each month for overages then take a look at your bill and the available plans to try to find something that more reasonably fits your needs.
- Or, on the flip side, if you never use any of the minutes or data in your plan, check to see if there is a lower option that you can switch to.
- And while you’re checking into it, look at the competing providers to see if you can get a similar plan for a lower price.
- You might also consider joining up with your extended family to get on a family plan with a shared, lower monthly price.
- Are you amazed at how much money you spend on transportation each month? This is one of our biggest areas of spending and we only have one car payment. Automobiles cost a whole lot of money!
- Gas – gas prices these days are astronomical and I don’t think they will improve anytime soon. For now, we need to wise up and start making smarter decisions, like:
- Gas Price Apps – before you fill up, pull out your smart phone to find out where the cheapest gas station is nearby. Here are some popular apps (the links are for iTunes, but Android has many of these apps too): Gas Buddy, Cheap Gas, Gas Guru
- Walk or bike to nearby places. We literally live across the street from the mall and less than a mile away from a grocery store. Want to know how often we walk to these places to do our shopping? Yep, that would be almost never. I can complain about the lack of crosswalks and sidewalks in our town all I want, but there really isn’t an excuse. If you live within a mile or two of stores you frequent, ditch the car keys and move your feet.
- Plan errands for time and distance efficiency. If you find yourself running lots of errands, combine them all into one trip instead of spreading them out little by little all week. There’s no reason to drive around town every day of the week when you can put it all together, plan the shortest route and get it all done quickly and efficiently.
- Insurance – Be careful with this one. You want to save money, but unless you are independently wealthy, you don’t want to skimp on coverages and you don’t want Joe’s insurance shack with the customer service department in a foreign country. Unless you have $1000 in the bank at all times, just waiting to be burned, don’t raise your deductible to astronomical amounts either. However, there are hundreds of auto insurance companies out there, call around and find the company that can give you a great price with great coverage and great customer service.
- Gas – gas prices these days are astronomical and I don’t think they will improve anytime soon. For now, we need to wise up and start making smarter decisions, like:
These are just a few ideas to get you thinking about your family’s money situation and areas in which you might be able to cut back to make room for the fun, extra expenses of summertime. I’ll be back later in the week with more money saving ideas, starting with the food budget!
Question for discussion – Is summer more expensive for your family too or do you think it’s one of the cheaper seasons of life? What is your family’s biggest money struggle area?
Join the discussion!