So, I am spending too much. I am going to list my budget below but....I looked at our statement and we are spending so much money on FOOOOOD! Ordering in and drive thrus! Plus groceries. I have to get a handle on this. Especially since we have debt repayments now. But I broke my leg/ankle in 3 places a few months ago and damaged ligaments. I had surgery and am just now able to walk and cook and work. But sometimes at the end of the day, I don't want to cook! So what do y'all do when you don't want to cook? Sometimes I am just too fatigued to stand anymore.
Income = $4000 total after taxes and insurance
Mortgage = $1225 - includes insurance and taxes
Car = $400
Insurance = $153 for 2 cars with full coverage
Electricity = $285
Water = $115
Trash = $76-$80 Dumpster service
Dish = $99
Netflix = $15
Internet = $95 Trying to find cheaper service
Cell phones = $165
Gas for cars = $200 (aprx $50/week)
Groceries/Food = $160
$250 = misc or savings - includes dog food
Debt = $781 eek
My expenses total $4019 which is $19 over my income. I can fix that. But what about Christmas? And I am trying to build an emergency fund. That is what I need, right?
Where is it all going???
July 13th, 2020 at 05:14 pm
July 13th, 2020 at 06:58 pm 1594666712
- Make a list of 10-20 meals your family likes. Think about which are easy, medium, hard to make. Think about what could be frozen if you made a double batch? What could you do ahead? Having a ‘prep time’ where you cut up veggies for the week while baking 6 chicken breasts and browning Hamburg or sausage can yield several meals. I bake and freeze chicken breasts, and also fry a few pounds of ground beef with onions or sausage and and peppers. If you do this for a few weeks, you have the start of several meals.
- for speed, I use canned gravy, canned chili, canned soup as abase, then Doctor it up. It isn’t as cheap as ‘from scratch’ but it is way cheaper than take out.
- if wanting to eat as soon as you get home drives takeout, make a meal one night, heat it up the next while you cook for the next day.
- Rotisserie chicken, microwaved baked potatoes, bagged salad, canned corn is a quick meal. Plus the next day you can have salad and leftover chicken or chicken salad.
- pats, jarred sauce, frozen meatballs, bagged salad is another quick meal. Pasta is often on sale. If you are very hungry, serve salad while the pasta cooks.
- make a list of the 20-40 things you most often buy. Then track the price you pay. Think about whether it would be cheaper if you bought store brand or a larger size that you split up, then watch for sales and buy two of items you often use. You don’t have to go to multiple stores every week, but make a little time to check ads before you choose where to shop. Walmart and Target often have good prices on line. I u
- buy fruits and vegetables on sale. Think about where you can use frozen or canned veggies. These often go on sale.
- Center meals on veggies and carbs, then add meat. Stir fry, stew, soup are good for this.Twitter y
- don’t waste food. Plan a ‘clean out the fridge’ day each week. Use almost over the hill vegetables in omelets, soups.
- take leftovers for lunch. Or pack a sandwich or salad.
- eat breakfast at home, or pack something to bring with you.
- have ‘breakfast for supper’ once a week - pancakes, sausage, bacon, eggs. Eggs are a very cheap source of protein,
- make your own granola, cookies from a mix, granola bars. Watch for sales on oatmeal.
- divide week nights into themes - soup/salad, pasta, Mexican, crock pot, leftovers, stir fry, pizza. You vary the actual meal but start with a plan.
- stop drinking soda. If your tap water isn’t good, get a Brita filter pitcher and fill reusable bottles instead of buying it.
- air popped popcorn is a cheap and quick snack. The $20-30 you spend on a popper is easily recouped.
- I buy a lot of food at CVS. between their sales and coupons, I find their deals amazing.
- don’t buy coffee/tea - get a thermal mug and make your own.
July 13th, 2020 at 07:06 pm 1594667165
If you are spending too much on food, the best recommendation I can make is to concentrate on eating up your leftovers and never throw food away. You'll save a ton.
July 13th, 2020 at 07:06 pm 1594667197
July 13th, 2020 at 07:16 pm 1594667761
As far as food...you list $160 a month for groceries? For how many people? That's actually not that high.
July 13th, 2020 at 07:45 pm 1594669514
You need to nail down that $250 miscellaneous figure. That's way too much to be unaccounted for.
I agree with the others about doing food prep in advance and freezing meals or prepped ingredients for meals. For example, once a week we'll cook a package of chicken and then have it in the fridge for the rest of the week. DW might take a piece to make chicken salad one day. I'll take a piece and make a bbq chicken sandwich another day. We'll use another piece on a pizza one night, or make quesadillas another night. But the hard part of cooking the chicken is all done at once so it's easy to throw together a meal using that chicken.
July 13th, 2020 at 07:52 pm 1594669974
That will remove one payment and reduce your $781 debt service cost, which is actually $1,181 counting the car.
Then you can continue to pay the minimum on everything except the next lowest until that is gone. Keep doing that and one by one you knock out debts and reduce your monthly expenses. Each time you pay off a debt, you can put a portion of that payment toward building your EF. So if the Care Credit is $50/month, maybe you put $40/month toward the next debt and $10/month toward your EF.
July 13th, 2020 at 08:44 pm 1594673097
We were spending more on food because we weren't paying debt. So the money we should have been paying to debt we were paying on eating out. I was just blown away by looking at the statement.
The $250 is for dog food, household supplies like detergent or toilet paper, and the rest is hopefully going to savings. I don't have a budget for it.
July 13th, 2020 at 10:13 pm 1594678426
- Do you get a large tax return? If so, figure out what you actually. Need to pay in taxes and modify the amount you have withheld each month to increase the amount in your paychecks. If you don’t know how to calculate, let me know and I will give you more information. If you let the government hold money for you while you pay high credit card interest rates, you are wasting money. Some people are very afraid of ‘owing’ taxes but there are no penalties for owing reasonable amounts. Plus you don’t have to wait for a refund, worry about it being garnished, or losing it to fraud.
- do you qualify for a zero. Interest rate credit card? Preferably one with a low(like 3 percent) balance transfer fee, a cash bonus for opening and transferring a balance, plus cash back if you use it. Only transfer what you can pay off in the grace period unless the. Interest rate is lower than what you are paying.
- call your credit card companies and ask them to lower your interest rate. If you pay on time each month, they should be in ‘helpful covid’ mode. Even a few percent would help. The call is free. If the first person says no, ask for a supervisor.
- set an amount to put in savings each week - even if it is one dollar. Don’t use the mindset ‘I don’t know where it goes.’ Every dollar should have a job. My mother had a saying ‘don’t ask your money where it went, Tell it where to go.’
- check with your city/town about whether they need election workers, if you and your partner both did this, you could earn a few hundred dollars - even if you used a vacation day, this is quick money. With early voting, there might be night or weekend work. And we need honest people working at the polls! The
July 14th, 2020 at 12:49 am 1594687742
July 14th, 2020 at 05:08 am 1594703300
These are some of my easy (and fairly cheap) go-to's:
Pasta with garlic and parsley
Pasta with tomato sauce
Grilled cheese sandwiches & tomato soup
Quesadillas & some kind of veggie (sometimes just shredded lettuce or chopped avocado)
Bean burritos
Loaded fries (fries topped w/canned chili & cheese)
Tacos or taco salad
Breakfast for dinner: oatmeal and toast, or pancakes and hashbrowns, or even just cereal sometimes! Usually with some fresh fruit.
July 14th, 2020 at 08:44 am 1594716292
I can relate on the leg injury. I tore my menescus (in my knee) in two places back in April, apparently when I was at home working out. I ignored the injury at first, not realizing how serious it was, so I was still limping around months later, which is when I finally saw an orthopedic surgery, who naturally wanted to do surgery. The injury is perhaps complicated by an old ACL tear in the same knee. I'm halfway through a course of physical therapy now to see if I can avoid surgery. I have seen some improvement in both pain and mobility, but I still can't walk like I used to, just around the house. So I'm feeling discouraged about it lately.
July 14th, 2020 at 02:03 pm 1594735413
The car is next, but I know no one wants to hear that they can survive with a cheaper car.
I'd personally ditch the Dish and shop around cell phone service. There are a lot of much more affordable cell services these days. We personally use Ting ($15 per line, for our usage), but there's many others.
What about Christmas? I guess put that in the car category of no one wants to hear it, but Christmas is not a necessity. The true spirit of the season has nothing to do with consumerism. Christmas is probably an entirely separate post. How you navigate it depends on expectations of those around you and what parts of it are truly important to you, etc.
July 14th, 2020 at 03:28 pm 1594740480
July 14th, 2020 at 08:17 pm 1594757829
"the rest is hopefully going to savings."
I think this is where you need to do some work. Have you ever heard the expression "pay yourself first"? Just as you have a line item in your budget for electricity or internet you should have one for savings. Treat it as a bill that must be paid every month. If you pay everything else first with the plan to save whatever is left, there won't ever be anything left.
July 17th, 2020 at 02:46 am 1594953996