Since rent is expected to increase, I'm going to take my 401k contributions to 15% pre-tax instead of the 10% pre / 5% after tax contributions I was making before. I'll check my paycheck in two weeks to see how much more money I net. PayCheckCity has an excellent calculator for this.
Mint.com has some recommendations on how to save more money, such as moving to an E*Trade Checking account (which I've already done), and let us know that Starbucks and Peets Coffee are our most frequented merchants. I'll have to talk to the wife about that again.
Cleaning up clutter. I have lots of stuff lying around the house that I could probably put up on Craigslist. I'm too lazy to pack stuff up to sell on E-Bay. I figure I could gain another $200 or so selling all this crap I haven't been utilizing. Better yet, I might be able to donate and take an itemized tax deduction... except I don't expect our itemized deductions to top the standard married filing jointly deduction this year.
Showing posts with label frugal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frugal. Show all posts
Friday, May 2, 2008
Goals for May 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Cutting costs
Tallying a list of my recurring monthly costs...January 2008 - March 2008
- Cell Phone Family Plan: $125/month
- High Speed Broadband Internet: $125/month
- Utilities: $100/month
- Public Transportation and commuting: $175/month
- Cable TV: $0/month - antennaweb.org - hulu.com
- Eating out and Entertainment: $400++/month
- Netflix: $22/month
- Rent: $2500/month
Taking the time to actually write down and list my expenses really is eye-opening. We're lazy and like to eat out a lot -- and not fast food either. Neither I nor my wife cook much. So how can we motivate ourselves to eat at home more often? Tallying up our meal costs will surely be eye-opening to her as well, but still $400 doesn't seem that expensive. I should probably restart Microsoft Money and put our credit cards into there so we can actually get some charts on our spending habits.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
