It feels like yesterday I was 19 and talking to Roland about having babies. I’m so glad he encouraged me to wait; 25 turned out to be a good age for us.
I knew before we ever got pregnant that I wanted to be home with our baby which meant we’d be cutting our income in half! And it’s not like my income was just “vacation” money or something. It took both of our incomes to pay our bills. We had lived paycheck to paycheck for most of our adult lives while we worked through school, and we just got to that sweet spot where we both had grown-up jobs (with grown-up pay) for the first time. As much as it sucked going from two incomes to one, it was really important for us to do it if we could. We had to find some ways to save before I left the workforce, and today I’m sharing what we did so that you can shave down some of your monthly expenses and save some serious money too!
1. Calling and asking for a better deal (We saved: $106)
Yeah, it’s that simple. We called my husband’s cellphone provider when his contract was up and got them to lower his monthly bill by $16/month to keep him from leaving. We also called our cable/internet provider and had our bill lowered by $55/month AND they upgraded our internet speed! I was ecstatic! All because we told them we were trying to save and would cancel our services unless they lowered the price significantly. Next, we called our car insurance provider. They were able to find additional discounts we qualified for and we enrolled in the Snapshot program. Our results netted us a $30/month savings. Finally, we called our electric provider when our contract was up and secured a lower rate, which saved us about $10/month. Every little bit counts! In total, a few phone calls saved us $106 a month without us cutting or downgrading any services—in most cases, they threw in extras we didn’t have before!
2. Servicing your AC and plumbing repairs (We saved: $180)
Guys, this one was HUGE for us. After I realized how much we had been throwing away each month, I kicked myself for not taking care of these things sooner. So we have a fairly old AC unit, and we had no idea when it was serviced last before we bought our house seven years ago….aaaannd we didn’t get around to servicing it until our AC went out one night. Let me save you the suffering and tell you it is 1,000,000% worth it to have your AC routinely serviced to avoid this scenario. Thankfully, our close friend is an HVAC technician, so he came out and fixed the problem right away. Not only did our house cool more quickly, but when we got that first bill after he came out…it was $60. The previous one was $200. I’d never been so happy to get an electric bill.
Other things you can do to increase your energy savings include weather stripping doors and windows and investing in a thermostat that allows you to preset temperatures to keep the unit from running all day.
The other issue we had was a leaky tub faucet. It was a very small, slow leak. But little did we realize our water bill had slowly been creeping up because of it (insert pun about money going down the drain). We replaced the cold water stem and voila! The subsequent water bill was down $50.
3. Refinancing & Consolidating Loans (We saved: $124.17)
This category won’t make sense for everyone (and you definitely want to run the numbers first and make sure your savings are worth the effort), but this can save you money monthly by lowering your payments AND it can potentially save you thousands over the life of your loan. In our case, we refinanced my husband’s truck from a 3.99% interest rate to a 1.99% rate. During our refinance, we opted for the extended warranty and roadside protection package because we were offered an exceptional deal. All said and done, our payments came out to $395 (down from $482.02)—an $87.02 monthly savings! Plus, we would be saving over $1,000 in interest over the life of the loan. We’re still making our original payment to pay the truck off sooner, but it’s nice to know we can make a lower payment if we’re ever in a bind.
We also took our credit card balances and transferred them to a credit union. This combined two payments into one, lower ($37.15 less) monthly payment and will save us buckets of cash in interest (our new rate is 12% lower!).
4. Cut back on eating out ($400)
Guys, this one makes me sick to my stomach every time I think about it. When I got my first “grown up” job, it alsmo marked the first time we both had full time, adult incomes. We finally had regular budgetary breathing room so we went out to eat All. The. Time. When I finally made a real budget, I was blown away by how much we spent eating out. We could have probably vacationed in Paris with what we had spent over the months dining out.
Those aren’t the figures I’m using here because we cut way back and were doing really well for a few years before we fell into some of our old habits (though not nearly as bad as before!). So *recently* we cut back by about $400 a month bringing our food budget for a family of 3 to $300 a month. I’m working on getting that even lower without sacrificing the quality and nutritional value of our meals (If you’re food saving savvy, share your shopping secrets with me! Teach me your ways…)
{Keep in mind: When we set out to do this, we had an excellent payment history and good credit. We are NEVER later with payments. If your record isn’t so great with a company, they may be less inclined to offer as many concessions. However, don’t let that deter you! Just being honest and telling a business you are having a tough time with high payments will probably result in many of them trying to work with you to find a happy medium. }
I hope this post has inspired y’all to see where you can find some savings hiding in your monthly expenses. If you try any of these methods, come back and let me know how much you saved!
In savings solidarity,
