June 28, 2018
Our Expenses are Getting a Trim
A year or so ago Chris (my fiance) and I cut our expenses. Then, we stopped focusing and they started to grow like weeds. Diets are easiest to follow when both halves of a couple choose to be on one. It’s the same with money management. I disdain harping and nagging. I might do it for a bit, then I shrug my shoulders and say, “Fine. Laissez les bon temps rouler for us all then.” After all, permissiveness is more fun and a bit addictive.
We’re back on a financial diet
We are working on getting Baby Step One of Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover (https://amzn.to/2tM5fIu) done: $1,000 in Emergency Savings. That’s right, $1,000 that just sits there not being spent on dinner, drinks, or subscriptions. Oh my the subscriptions! In the past week, I have cancelled $277.39 worth of subscriptions.
It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that I had so many. One thing that is working very well for Chris and I is talking about the money we’ve spent without getting into the blame and judgment game. We’ve both done plenty of stupid with zeroes on the end. In this post, I’m focused on mine, because it is my blog. Going on a financial diet is better done with a focus on solutions and the future. To paraphrase Ramsey, the past is the past, leave it there.
My Subscriptions:
- Asana Rebel ($19.99) I subscribed to test this app for my blog audience. I love that it offers 5-minute yoga workouts, because they’re great for those moments during the day when I feel cloudy and think I need a snack. A yoga flow is almost always better. However, I’ve taken classes on DailyOM, purchasing a full 21 lessons at a time for $10 with unlimited access to them – no subscription required. The beauty of yoga is that you can do the same routine and continue growing over time.
- Audible ($16.16) I’ve used this audiobook subscription service for a long time and I love it. Yet, I can live without it until we have emergency savings stashed and get our debt snowball rolling.
- Amazon Prime ($12.99) Chris and I both had a Prime Membership. I think I signed up on one of those free for the first month offers, because there was something I wanted to buy and I didn’t want to log out of my account and into his. Then, I forgot to unsubscribe. That’s a stupid move with zeros on the end of it.
- Canva ($12.95) Blogging business expense. I used Canva to design my logo and my business cards. Since then I’ve barely visited. Yet, each month to keep access.
- Graze ($13.99) Blogworthy snack food and a free trail sold me on this one. The snacks were interesting, healthy, and for the most part tasty. Worth it? To me, not really. Maybe if I had more disposable income. Happily, I only paid for 2 months.
- Kindle Unlimited ($10.80) Once again, free 30-days and a book I wanted to read on it. I thought I’d access it, quick read the book, then ditch it. Instead, I forgot it existed until I was going through my bank account.
- Medium ($5.00) Medium is like Facebook for readers and writers that can pay if you sign up for their Partner Program. The program doesn’t cost anything to be a part of. Like many social media platforms there’s a lot of quid pro quo. On Medium, it’s all about the clap. If you clap for me, I’ll clap for you. In order to clap for others, a subscription is required. So, I subscribed. Right now, I really don’t have the time to read through a bunch of other people’s stuff and decide whether or not to clap for it. Plus, I’m feeling disenchanted with online relationship building via social media. Who is it serving?
- New York Times Cooking ($5.00) I wish I had more time to use this subscription. I love the recipes, the details they delve into about the history of the recipes at times, the comments by other users. I’ll miss it, but I don’t need it. There are plenty of recipes and interesting foodie details that I can get for free online and at the library.
- Rent the Runway ($171.52) With this subscription, I could wear thousands of dollars worth of designer fashions at a fraction of the cost. I wore the designs of Badgley Mischka, Kate Spade, Diane Von Furstenberg, Proenze Schouler, and several others. I LOVED the clothes, the purses, and trying new clothes every week, 4 items at a time.
- Scribd ($8.99) Scribd gives access to hundreds of thousands of books to read online and to listen to. I had both the Scribd and the Audible subscriptions, because sometimes a book would be available on one and not another and I am a book lover.
If we just save that cash in 3.6 months, it would total $1,000.
But Wait! There’s More!
Chris is either reducing, or cancelling our cable subscription. He has to call to do it and I think we all know what fun calling cable companies can be. The only thing we watch on cable is football. That’s it. He and I have been watching Parks and Rec on Netflix. The kids like some shows on Hulu. And, when the kids are with us Netflix and Amazon are used for finding a movie to watch together. I don’t know how much we’ll save there yet.
I have gone two weeks without darkening the door of a salon, so that’s another $110 in savings for this month. If I make it a whole month, I’ll save $220.
For some reason we’ve been paying for Dropbox ($9.99) twice.
Our daily coffee run was costing us between $8 and $20 each morning. The variable being whether or not we bought bagel sandwiches. My love for fancy coffee does run deep. I think I might still have a mocha, or iced macchiato a couple of times per week. Time will tell.
Are there subscriptions you can’t live without? Have you gone on a financial diet before? I’d love to hear about your experiences. Please send me an email at melissa@40fitnstylish.com.
