| A few things you can do to reduce costs, my family does this and hope it helps others. - Gardening/yardwork - We do all this ourselves, its exercise and gets you outside, plus you have made something better in the physical world(I work in software so get extreme satisfaction from this!): savings per month/year ($240/$2880) - Cleaning - We also do not have cleaners, our house is not particularly messy and we clean as we go, this saves us money by not hiring a expensive house cleaner: savings per month/year ($200/$2400) - Shop around for home/car insurance, our home insurance rate was jumping to $5600 a year, we looked around and were able to bundle with a well known company and got it to $2600 a year. Also its cheaper to pay in full, plus if you are a engineer or manager you get a discount: savings per month/year ($250/$3000) - Switch to lower cost cell phone plans, went with Tmobile over Verizon on a family plan and saved a decent amount: savings per month/year ($60/$720) - Avoid doordash and other takeout services, they tack on a huge fee with every transaction(ie. 25-30%) that saves you money if you either head out to get food or just make it at home, assuming 5-6 dashes per month and cost per dash being $100: savings per month/year ($150/$1800) - Make your food at home, kind of obvious but food eaten out is usually 2-3x cost of making the same thing at home. When we do eat out I have been getting 1 glass of an alcoholic beverage as its usually the most expensive thing on the menu, also avoid appetizers. Those two things usually cuts the bill down by 30%. Assuming eating out 10 times a month and average bill is $100(very conservative for a big city) you end up with: savings per month/year ($250/$3000) - Avoid Cable and other high cost entertainment packages, they are usually over $100 a month and are mostly commercials anyways. if you like sports I usually get peacock as its quite cheap, also HBOgo(or max) has live sports now and both are around/under $10 a month. savings per month/year ($100/$1200) These things don't add a huge burden to your life and when added up allow you to save more money. All of these cost savings are what my family actually did and it saved us roughly $15k a year and in general are all more healthy alternatives to what would cost money. |