<p>mom60–I can relate. Paying for music lessons all the way through high school was a major expense that we no longer have! The allowance we give her is less than the money we spent on lessons…</p>
<p>We don’t do data plans. Cell is $150/mo for four people, and we could drop another $15 if S2 and I reduced our text limit.</p>
<p>We drive cars til they die. We hope the 2000 Odyssey with 178K miles will last til S1 graduates. Would be even better if it made it til S2 graduates, but the plastic parts are dry-rotting at such a rapid rate that while the transmission is fine, we won’t be able to to open the doors!</p>
<p>We are very well insured, which enables us to sleep at night should something horrible happen. That’s a decent chunk of change. Guys did not get licenses in HS – that was savings right there, though neither was in a big hurry to do so anyway.</p>
<p>We bought our house in 1998, have not tapped into the equity. Spent much less on housing than our income would permit. </p>
<p>Our big splurge is vacations, though we do them on the cheap. We’d rather travel far away and pick up bread and cheese at the farmer’s market for lunch than go to a nearby beach and rent a luxury condo. Between my United Visa and DH’s FF miles for work, we seldom pay for plane tickets.</p>
<p>Both kids got into tippy-top HS programs within an outstanding public school system. Could not have done better with the private schools.</p>
<p>We’ve always lived like the kids were heading to horribly expensive colleges. Not that we saved a ton earmarked specifically for college, but our ongoing expenses are low. We do throw $$ at the 401(k) plans. We refinanced to a 15 year loan a while back and the house will be paid off a couple years after S2 graduates.</p>
<p>Count me in also as one who would rather pay for family memories than have a huge estate when I go. DD is in the Peace Corps. She told us this weekend that everyone in her small village has seen our pictures and they will be very disappointed if we don’t come. I would scrub floors to make this trip possible (I don’t think I’ll need to, but I would). She so much wants her new friends to meet us…that is priceless to me. I have to say…my kids very often do get things from us…special little surprises that are worth a lot to them now. I wouldn’t change that for anything.</p>
<p>thumper1 - what about the countertops? Are you saying that you are willing to give up your countertops in order to see your daughter? I am sure she is going to be very happy to see you.</p>
<p>Abasket: dinner out 3 x week? Hmmnn, figuring that you probably do this without splurging, if you figure $50 each time (3 people?), that’s $7800 in a year. That could pay a lot towards private school…</p>
<p>I wish I could do the cheap cell phone idea, but my phone is like my office. And cable–without it all I’d get would be one snowy channel from Mexico! I know, we tried it!</p>
<p>Yes, we as a society really do spend too much. If the grocery stores would turn off 1/2 their lights, stopped supplying plastic/paper bags, and turned down the air conditioner (year round where I’m from), food would cost a lot less. On a warm day, we have to bring jackets to go the store!</p>
<p>Wow, I’ve certainly learned about cell phone prices. Thanks! We have a family plan, and with the kids needing unlimited texting, it certainly adds up. When they’re on their own dime, will get a pre paid, if that is all it costs.</p>
<p>Spend $60/mo on satellite, $50 on Internet, $150 on family cell phones. Plus another $35 for land line. None of that bothers me nearly as much as my daily Starbucks. It’s an addiction. I want to get rid of the landline, but we have DSL through the phone line. I can’t get a straight answer from anyone about whether canceling phone service will affect whether we can get Internet. Anyone know if this is the case?</p>
<p>And of course, the #1 expense is tuition. After making a payment yesterday, I just realized only 9 more to go!!!</p>
<p>DH regularly contacts cellular, cable, etc. services asking, “Remind me why I’m contracting your service?” The conversation is always pleasant and always results in extra perks at no cost or reduced cost for continued service. I see it as win-win. They retain a long time customer and we get the extra value on our investment with their service.</p>
<p>Phone companies usually offer DSL without a phone number (dial tone) with something called Dryloop DSL. The Dryloop service will typically cost something like $10/month. If you’re paying $50/month for internet + $35/month for landline, you might check the prices at your cable company. My local cable company will give me 12 mb internet + phone for about $56/month for a year or two. My DSL service is only 3 mb and sometimes that’s a problem but we’ll live with it at the low price they’re giving us.</p>
<p>Counting down, are you sure you aren’t me? 
House, car, philosophy… yup - me!
We do pay a lot for communication: $175 a month for 3 phones/unlimited text, landline and internet. Remind me why I need a landline??? Should I drop it?
And we may go to prepaid cell phones next year. Really, it is DS’s use of phone for texting that is the big use; DH and I are not big phone talkers! And, since DS will be gainfully employed in some form or another (surely :eek:), we won’t need to continue the family plan.<br>
We are pretty frugal on the car front, but gave 10-year-old camry to DS and bought a new Scion XB; it’s roomy, loaded with all options we want, relatively fuel efficient, good camry engine, no-haggle pricing, drive out price (including tax, title, license) at $19K. I have difficulty imagining myself paying $30,000 for a vehicle - ever!
Mindboggling how much we spend on…yes, I think I’ll chime in with the insurance category. By the time you add in home, car, umbrella, health -that’s a significant chunk o’ change!</p>
<p>I decided this year to try to pack a lunch for work instead of eating out. I’ve eaten out for lunch almost every day for the past five and a half years at work. I’ve noticed that my cash spending has decreased significantly, we’ll just have to see how much my grocery bill goes up in the long run. It’s definitely going to wind up being cheaper this way. I’m allowing myself one day per week to eat out for lunch. That seems reasonable.</p>
<p>Thumper-- love your post–
“…She told us this weekend that everyone in her small village has seen our pictures and they will be very disappointed if we don’t come.” What a fabulous opportunity!
I don’t know where your daughter is, but I hope you can do some creative transportation planning so the cost isn’t too over the top.
Have a wonderful time!</p>
<p>Every once in a while we spend a month or two writing down everything we spend money on. Budget busters include:</p>
<ul>
<li>The daily indulgences - coffee, muffins, lunch out. This adds up as Fendergirl has noted.</li>
<li>The monthly indulgences - dinners out! A huge expense. Couple glasses of wine times two people and those dinners go into the 100 per range. Do this once or twice a week and this is serious money. DH is ready to delete our cable altogether and the phone land line and just use cells and the computer for TV. We do splurge on Netflix but that is one of the miracles of the universe and well worth it since we can afford it.</li>
<li>The surprises - $2500 deductible and 80% reimbursement type medical coverage and your kid breaks a bone = thousands. Car repairs jump into the thousands easily. Dental bills. House painting every x years. Need a buffer savings of many thousands just for those expected unexpected events.</li>
</ul>
<p>Overall our biggest budget buster is restaurant food whether fine dinners or daily coffees. We save a lot by limiting that. We also try hard to choose an inexpensive restaurant every other time out.</p>
<p>Basic concept of living well below your means trumps all. If you don’t have the cash for it and a big buffer in the bank, don’t buy it.</p>
<p>We put everything on Quicken and pay for nearly everything with plastic (frequent flyer miles, we pay it off in full, and most importantly, we see where we spent the $$ vs. cash burning holes in our pockets). Boy, it really is startling to see where the $$ goes. </p>
<p>No coffee addictions here. We prefer our caffeine cold. 
We both take in our lunches on a regular basis. The grocery bills have dropped since the guys are gone, but we are eating better for less $.</p>
<p>Our other major expense is medical bills. My ongoing care is not cheap, so we are very thankful DH has options for good insurance. </p>
<p>We have discussed dropping the landline ($40/mo.), but DH needs to have a wired line in case of emergencies. We have cable, but no premium channels. We get our internet through the cable co., which also offers a small discount for the bundling.</p>
<p>Check to see if your employers offer a discount for wireless phone service – both DH and my BIL get a 15% discount on the case rate through their employers!</p>
<p>Quicken is a computer program right? Did you purchase it or is there something available online for little/no cost?? </p>
<p>I would really love to log our cash flow for a couple of months. Admit that this is something we’ve never really done - followed a strict budget to know where the money “seems” to go.</p>
<p>I had a chat with one of my managers back in the 1980s - a coworker was making a ton of personal calls to Europe (his wife was an international reporter) and I asked her how she looks at costs. The had a bunch of budget categories and only looked into something if the amount exceeded a certain limit. For phone calls, the amount was a few thousand a month. This was back when phone service was far more expensive compared to today. We provided very high level engineering support services to customers around the world so we rang up big phone bills.</p>
<p>I generally manage in a similar way. I look at inflows and outflows and if I see a problem area, then I take a look at it. I work harder at recurring costs than one-time outlays as I often have little choice on the one-time outlays. The recurring costs can go on for years or even decades so a little work up-front can pay huge dividends down the road.</p>
<p>One thing that I got from The Millionaire Next Door or The Millionaire Mind is that you make money by using capital to generate income streams that take very little effort. Examples of this are owning stocks in companies that pay dividends. You then take the cash from these income streams and then create more income streams and so your money is working for you in a compounding way. The corollary, of course, is to minimize expense streams (I didn’t get this from the books) as they are the opposite of what works well at accumulating wealth. We have to live, we have expenses, and everyone needs to do fun things from time to time or even on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I used Quicken many years ago but gave up on it in frustration with the bugs. You can upgrade every year and some bugs are fixed and there are new bugs. I called it quits when it screwed up the downloads in my brokerage accounts and I couldn’t recover. From then I just look at the big picture and drill down to problem areas. I figure that it’s better to spend time and energy making more money than to deal with knowing where every penny goes. I do review bank statements and credit card bills but only on a static basis and it’s less than a minute for each. I do not look at my wife’s credit card statement unless the amount exceeds what I consider normal. She would let me know if she spotted fraud on her account.</p>
<p>I just had a look around for free money management programs and found GNUCash. I may give it a try. It’s free and open source and runs on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows.</p>
<p>Well, I installed it and played around with it. The headache with these programs is entering in the data. Maybe I can get my daughter to do it - she’s taking accounting this semester and it would be good practice for her to manage accounts. I’ve been trying to get one or both of the kids to manage our financial portfolio - neither is that interested.</p>
<p>I have used Quicken for many years. The only time I have trouble is when I upgrade… so I do it pretty infrequently (usually when I get a new computer, and the old one just won’t run any more, or when it stops downloading my account info from my credit card providers). And I make sure to take a backup before the upgrade just in case… usually I end up on the phone with them over something during the upgrade (last upgrade was smooth without help, though).</p>
<p>It takes some work, and it is really more for tracking stuff that flows through your accounts. Although you could enter in all your cash transactions if you were waaayyy more disciplined than I am. But you have to assign categories to expenses to really see where things are going (then you can report on them).</p>
<p>Not sure if there is an online version of Quicken, but I am never keen on having all my financial details floating around in “the cloud”. So I buy the version to download to my computer. As mentioned above, I do not buy every upgrade, I probably upgrade about every 3 years.</p>
<p>Satellite/Internet/Cell Phones>$400 a month Private school tuition this year is $2K a month. We are ditching the Satellite and going to Netflix’s $8 a month plan and ditching the Satellite and current internet service including our VOIP. Don’t do Starbucks unless it’s a work function (expense report) or someone wants to meet there.</p>
<p>Hoping to realize a $200 a month savings through those changes, can’t wait till June when the contract’s up.</p>