Once a month I make it a point to watch Rachel Cruze (Dave Ramsey's Daughter) video blogs. I'm not one to keep up on a regular basis, but I like to hear what motivating ideas she has for ways to stay on budget and stick with your money goals.
6. Day 6: Figure out where to cut back on entertainment. Yikes, this one was hard too. She suggests looking at buying coffee out (starbucks), gym memberships, subscriptions etc. to cut back on. The only one of those we have is Amazon Prime which we actually get our money's worth out of easily as we take advantage of all they have to offer (including backing up our cell phone photos, prime T.V etc.) Since we run a pretty tight ship, we decided to cut back on clothing budget for the time being. Not only do I not need any clothes until I'm post-baby, but Lorelai also is pretty set at this point.
I've never looked at gas cards before or paid much attention to the best deals. We've now looked at our most likely attended gas stations to find ways we can save with club rewards and signed up for their rewards program. Specifically we looked at Shell and BP. I'm excited to see if this has an overall effect on our budget later on down the road.
So that is a summary of our first week of the 14 day Money Finder Challenge! Give it a try to see where you can save money! I'll be sharing the second week soon!
This month, she mentioned the 14 Day Money Finder Challenge. It is a once a day challenge for you to find a way to save money!
The challenges are easy. For example the first day is to simply log into your online bank account. Let me review the first week with you:
1. Day 1: Log in to your bank account. I love how easy it is to log into our bank account. We use only 1 checking account and a separate bank for our savings accounts. I literally log into my bank account every single day, because it is the same bank that holds our mortgage, so I'm in there a lot with our goal to pay down our mortgage as fast as possible. We believe viewing your bank account every day is a great way to keep your money goals top of mind.
2. Day 2: Write down your take home pay. We have this programmed in our budgeting tool (Every Dollar) that we started using in February. Now this was a little trickier for me, because I only budget the take-home pay from my primary job. We really only visit the income from our side businesses at tax time (because we treat this as bonus money that is not budgeted, but used to pay down our debt). So I had to go through and get an average of my take-home pay for those jobs too.
3. Day 3: Do something generous. For this we sent a giftcard to a friend!
4. Day 4: Put $20 in an envelope and hide it out of sight. This was a weird one for me...but I did it anyway.
5. Day 5: Write down your monthly entertainment expenses. Gosh, this is so tough. We have months where we may see 2 Broadway shows and a movie..and months where our bank account looks like we never left the house. We budget for $60 on entertainment, and then give us a generous Misc. budget of $200 if we need to dip in for other things. A lot of our "entertainment" is also going out to eat, which we budget for $125 (although usually do not come close to that unless traveling).
6. Day 6: Figure out where to cut back on entertainment. Yikes, this one was hard too. She suggests looking at buying coffee out (starbucks), gym memberships, subscriptions etc. to cut back on. The only one of those we have is Amazon Prime which we actually get our money's worth out of easily as we take advantage of all they have to offer (including backing up our cell phone photos, prime T.V etc.) Since we run a pretty tight ship, we decided to cut back on clothing budget for the time being. Not only do I not need any clothes until I'm post-baby, but Lorelai also is pretty set at this point.
7. Day 7: Save on Gas. How much do you spend on gas? We budget $235 for gas each month, but in reality our gas has looked like this:
December: $191.43
November: $190.45
October: $209.97
September: $243.86
August: $263.17 ($60 oil change)
July: $196.80
June: $266.61 ($30 oil change)
Which averages to $223 a month. Shockingly close to our average budget of $235 considering I haven't gone back to do the math on that before.
December: $191.43
November: $190.45
October: $209.97
September: $243.86
August: $263.17 ($60 oil change)
July: $196.80
June: $266.61 ($30 oil change)
Which averages to $223 a month. Shockingly close to our average budget of $235 considering I haven't gone back to do the math on that before.
I've never looked at gas cards before or paid much attention to the best deals. We've now looked at our most likely attended gas stations to find ways we can save with club rewards and signed up for their rewards program. Specifically we looked at Shell and BP. I'm excited to see if this has an overall effect on our budget later on down the road.
So that is a summary of our first week of the 14 day Money Finder Challenge! Give it a try to see where you can save money! I'll be sharing the second week soon!
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