Why Are You Still Spending Money On That?

life hacking Mar 11, 2022

When is the last time you evaluated all of your recurring monthly expenses?

Many of us are aware of our monthly expenses, but we haven’t evaluated them in awhile.

What do I mean?

Our family realized years ago that there is so much money to be saved by regularly evaluating what we spend each month.

Asking questions like:

  • Am I still using this?
  • Do I still like this?
  • Is this still worth it?

You could basically give yourself a raise by eliminating monthly expenses that aren’t useful/satisfying/worth it anymore.

It’s so easy to get in the pattern of just paying for things because we’ve always had them, rather than evaluating if they’re even worth paying for anymore.

My wife and I still regularly have discussions about this.

Years ago we recognized that we rarely watched TV, especially cable TV. But I had been paying $100+ per month, every month, for cable TV that we hardly used. Why?!? Because that’s what we had always done. We cut it soon after evaluating it & it’s probably saved me thousands over the years it’s been cut.

Another example was haircuts. I’d paid $30/mo for a haircut for as long as I could remember. But all the hairstylist had to do was pull out some clippers, put the right guard on them, and run it over my head. I knew my wife could do that and it would save me $360/yr. We bought some clippers and I haven’t been back to the hairstylist since.

Homeowners and auto insurance was the same thing. For a long time I used one company but never shopped it around. I just paid the bill every month & never evaluated it. Once I evaluated it, I switched providers & it saved me hundreds.

What about groceries? As we were evaluating groceries, we thought, “If we buy these things in bulk at another store, we’d save so much money. Why aren’t we doing that?!?” The reason was that we just hadn’t taken the time to think about it. Once we did, we started making a bulk run every now & then and have saved a bunch of money.

Gym memberships are the best example of this. So many people pay monthly for a membership they never use. Why? Probably because they hope to use it eventually. That’s not a good reason to keep it - ha! Cancel the membership & join once you’ve proven you’ll use it.

The point here is NOT that you should cut cable, do your own hair, or change grocery stores - haha! The point is that you should evaluate your monthly expenses regularly and make sure you’re still using them, you still like them, and they’re still worth it.

This exercise can result in an immediate raise for you & your family!

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