Over this past Christmas break, I spent some time diving deeper into personal finance. By diving deeper, I mean reading blogs, books, and applying some of that knowledge to my own financial situation in order to save money. The money I saved was a result of examining my expenses.
As I mentioned in my pilgrimage problem for 2018, I don’t have extra cash flow anymore. To make things more complicated, I also booked $3000+ worth of air travel for 2018 using the extra cash I had earned in 2017.
Now, I’m not a financial bind or anything as a result of making it rain with plane tickets, but I needed to make sure that I started 2018 strong. I need to be better about how I manage my money so I can achieve my financial goals AND still go on more pilgrimages. For less.
How I Saved Money
I use a combination of two things to manage my money: Mint and a spreadsheet.
Mint is a popular web service and app that lets you connect your accounts so you can do budgeting and pay bills. I use it primarily as a dashboard to see where I’m spending my money and how much money I have.
I keep an Excel spreadsheet of how my money flows: what I earn, what I save, and what I spend for fixed and budgeted costs.
During Christmas break, I spent some time rebuilding that spreadsheet to better match what I’ve got going on in Mint and to make my cash flow more transparent to me. Once I rebuilt the spreadsheet, I pretty much went line-by-line on my expenses and asked myself if each particular expense was something I could reduce or eliminate entirely. I was able to identify a few and proceeded to take action on them.
Here they are:
Internet
I have AT&T as my internet provider. For months now, they’ve been offering me to upgrade to their fiber optic plan. They kept spamming me with a $50/month Internet 100 plan. I had been on their mid-tier plan paying $73 a month (including rate, rental, and taxes).
Since I was tired of receiving mail regarding this offer, and I was interested in saving money, I decided to give AT&T a call to inquire about this $50/month plan.
The call was easy—they only had to switch things on their end as my current AT&T router can already handle the higher bandwidth. In other words, I didn’t have to hurry and wait for a technician to come over to my house for my chihuahua to yell at.
Now, I’m paying $63/month (including rate, rental, and taxes). That’s $10/month saved for internet expenses! It’s not much, but it adds up over a year.
Two things I should mention though. I know the $50/month offer is a promo rate, and it will go up after 12 months. I set a reminder for the end of year to call AT&T and fight to keep the same rate. Lastly, AT&T has a contract in my neighborhood to be the sole internet provider other companies are not currently an option.
Podcast Hosting
I had a podcast last year while I was in Japan. I chose a mid-tier, $20/month plan to start out with, but I stopped at eleven episodes because I started grad school classes again.
At the beginning of the year, I decided to downgrade to the lowest tier hosting plan because I stopped uploading new episodes. Now I just pay $12/month to host.
Gym
Currently, I’m a member of 24 Hour Fitness. Thanks to a corporate rate through work, I was paying $47/month for a Super Sport level membership. This means that I can use any Super Sport level facilities across the country for that price. When I didn’t have the corporate rate benefit, it was $48/month for ONE LOCATION. What. Forget that!
My company switched out insurances starting this year, and the insurance plan I enrolled in has an added fitness benefit. This benefit is the Active & Fit Directory gym membership. Basically, I pay one low cost for membership into Active & Fit, and I have access to their entire directory of gyms that participate. My local popular gym chains participate: 24 Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, Anytime, Planet Gym, and more.
Obviously, when I found out that Active & Fit is only $25/month, it was no brainer for me to switch. $23 a month for gym access! AND I signed up for LA Fitness! How about dem (money) gains!
Unfortunately, I found out recently that 24 Hour Fitness is withdrawing from Active & Fit, and I’ve got til the end of the year to enjoy it. This isn’t a problem because I’ve still got LA Fitness. I just need to re-strategize the timing of when I go to the gym since I usually go at weird hours in the wee morning on the weekends.
TruGreen
Last year, I was assigned to work in Japan for six months. That meant that I wouldn’t be around to maintain my front and back yards. I hired TruGreen to do that for me where they added fertilizer, weed preventative, and other stuff to my yards every so often. For mowing, I hired some neighbors. For watering…well…I hoped that it rained enough.
When I returned home from Japan after my assignment completed, I let TruGreen come out maybe once or twice more.
At the beginning of this year, I cancelled their services knowing that I wouldn’t be on extensive international travel this year. I’m around to maintain my own lawn. Sunburn and ant bites, included.
I was paying TruGreen about $70 every time they came to my house, which was about every six weeks.
And now I won’t be doing that. Over a year, that’s a lot of money saved. Which is nice. But now I’m having to pay for bags of fertilizer and other things and spending my own time to do the work, but that’s okay.
TL;DR
- Called AT&T to save $10/month on Internet service
- Downgraded podcast hosting and saved $8/month
- Started a new gym membership program saving ~$20/month
- Canceled TruGreen and no longer paying $70+ every six weeks
Total saved per month = ~$60/month
Did you have any monthly savings victories so far this year?
JR is a full-time engineer working in the aerospace industry. Apart from having such a fly job, he flies unto the arms of Our Lady and the Church pursuing his faith and a relationship with Christ. Over the past several years, faith and flying via pilgrimages became a thing. When he’s not being fly, JR hangs out with family, friends, his chihuahua, and with thoughts of the next trip.