Financial Housekeeping
Just as you should clean out your closets or garage periodically, it is also good to examine your financial house as well and clean things up. By this I mean you should examine some of your monthly expenditures and see what you can eliminate.
Probably the biggest culprit of this is the old gym membership. Back around Thanksgiving and Christmas you noticed the pants were a little tighter than they should be. By New Year’s Day you had made that famous resolution to get back in shape. Then like ducks flying south for the winter, you flock with all the other people to the gym in early January to get your membership. Now it is summer and you have not seen the gym in weeks.
I am all in favor of working out and getting in shape, but if you are getting no use out of something, you need to cancel it. If you do not want to cancel it, then make time to get back in the gym and use it. Many times a gym or health club will also charge a joining fee, so you could lose that too. But let’s say the joining fee was $200 and your membership is $50. While you could lose that $200 if you can cancel your membership, you will still break even in 4 months if you cancel now and save that $50 per month. The joining fee logic is rarely a valid reason for not canceling your unused membership.
The other areas that you should target are your TV and phone (land line or cell phone). Do you have premium movie channels that you are paying anywhere from $10 to $15 per month extra on? When is the last time you watched them. If you are watching less than 3 movies a month, you can rent movies cheaper than that.
Are you paying for features on your phone you do not need? In the past, if you had DSL you had to have a land phone line. However, many providers are no longer requiring this but they do not advertise this fact (because they want you to keep your land phone line!). Personally, I just got rid of my phone line, although I still have my DSL internet connection. My bill went from over $50 per month to $25 so I just saved $300 per month. That is food for a month for family of 2.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to advocate eliminating something you actually use on a regular basis. So often people do not worry about those expenditures that fall in the $10 to $50 dollar range, but those are where you really can usually save several hundred dollars in a year. You work hard for your money, so there is no reason to be giving it away. I encourage you to do your financial housekeeping soon, and start enjoying the money you are saving!
Just as you should clean out your closets or garage periodically, it is also good to examine your financial house as well and clean things up. By this I mean you should examine some of your monthly expenditures and see what you can eliminate.
Probably the biggest culprit of this is the old gym membership. Back around Thanksgiving and Christmas you noticed the pants were a little tighter than they should be. By New Year’s Day you had made that famous resolution to get back in shape. Then like ducks flying south for the winter, you flock with all the other people to the gym in early January to get your membership. Now it is summer and you have not seen the gym in weeks.
I am all in favor of working out and getting in shape, but if you are getting no use out of something, you need to cancel it. If you do not want to cancel it, then make time to get back in the gym and use it. Many times a gym or health club will also charge a joining fee, so you could lose that too. But let’s say the joining fee was $200 and your membership is $50. While you could lose that $200 if you can cancel your membership, you will still break even in 4 months if you cancel now and save that $50 per month. The joining fee logic is rarely a valid reason for not canceling your unused membership.
The other areas that you should target are your TV and phone (land line or cell phone). Do you have premium movie channels that you are paying anywhere from $10 to $15 per month extra on? When is the last time you watched them. If you are watching less than 3 movies a month, you can rent movies cheaper than that.
Are you paying for features on your phone you do not need? In the past, if you had DSL you had to have a land phone line. However, many providers are no longer requiring this but they do not advertise this fact (because they want you to keep your land phone line!). Personally, I just got rid of my phone line, although I still have my DSL internet connection. My bill went from over $50 per month to $25 so I just saved $300 per month. That is food for a month for family of 2.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to advocate eliminating something you actually use on a regular basis. So often people do not worry about those expenditures that fall in the $10 to $50 dollar range, but those are where you really can usually save several hundred dollars in a year. You work hard for your money, so there is no reason to be giving it away. I encourage you to do your financial housekeeping soon, and start enjoying the money you are saving!