3 Ways to Lower Your Monthly Budget
Your house, your vehicle, that silly habit you have called eating – it all adds up much faster than we’d like. And these expenses, while we consider them the largest expenditures we have, are really only the tip of the iceberg.
What really blows up our budgets are all of those small bills and seemingly insignificant purchases we spend throughout the month. We typically don’t even give these small purchases a second thought. Alone, they seem to have little impact on our overall spending, but that couldn’t be more wrong.
You don’t have to be an accountant to realize it’s the small things accumulating that really drain our budgets – without us even realizing it.
Life is expensive.
Luckily for you, we are here to tell you that it is actually possible to keep your finances in check without having to make any really significant compromises to your lifestyle (or your sanity).
Below, we’ve outlined some of our top 3 tips on how to lower your monthly budget – take a look!
1. Spend Time in the Kitchen
Did you know that eating out at restaurants or ordering delivery is almost 5X more expensive than grocery shopping and cooking your own meals?
Now you do.
Whether you eat out so regularly because you aren’t a fan of cooking, you feel you don’t have time to cook everyday, or your cooking ends up looking more like a science experiment gone wrong – there’s a solution for that.
Just because we are recommending you cook meals at home, it doesn’t mean we are saying you need to produce 5 star meals every night of the week. There are hundreds of recipes out there that are both super quick to whip up and simple enough that anyone can do it – trust us!
2. Unplug
This tip has two different meanings.
First: if you aren’t using something, turn it off. There is no need to have the heat cranked when you aren’t home, to leave lights on in every room in the house, or to have the TV on in the background if you aren’t even watching it (which we are all guilty of).
Try turning things off and see your electricity bill shrink.
Second: cutback on screen time. It’s not only healthy for our wallets, but it’s healthy for us in general as well.
Go spend time outside, or read a book, rather than watching 4 hours of TV per day. Opt for a more basic cell phone plan – I mean, does anyone really need unlimited data anyways? No. You can survive a few hours without checking your social media – we promise.
3. Inspect Your Insurance
You more than likely have home insurance, life insurance, vehicle insurance, health insurance… the list goes on.
Basically, we pay insurance for everything – and insurance isn’t cheap.
However, there are a few different things you can do to help cut back on insurance rates.
Our first tip for lowering your insurance costs is to cut back on unnecessary coverage – for example, take a look at the comprehensive and collision coverage you currently have on your vehicle. Depending on a few factors, such as age, value, and whether your vehicle is financed or leased, for example, you may be able to save quite a few dollars by cutting back on the comprehensive and collision coverage you are paying for – as it may not even be worth what it is costing you.
A second piece of advice we will offer you is to bundle up! Speak with your current insurance provider about the various options and discount rates they may provide for bundling your policies with them – and if their deals aren’t great, don’t hesitate shop around!
Get Saving
Living isn’t cheap – but we also don’t want to give up the comforts, conveniences, and certain luxuries we may be used to. That’s where our tips from above come in handy. While the changes we’ve mentioned may seem small, they can have a large impact on your over all budget without having too much of an impact on your daily life. It’s never too late to give them a try!
*This is a collaborative post.
