Not Made Of Money

Every so often, I like to check over all our expenses to see if there are any money leaks. By that I mean I check to see if there are any items we are paying for that we no longer need or want. For example the original Dish Network plan we were under no longer exists, so they have conveniently bumped us up to the next level. However, it contains many channels we don’t watch (and don’t want) and of course the fee is higher than when we originally started. So we downgraded to the more basic package and the savings was over $20 per month ($240 per year). You can see that small dollar amounts add up when taken in an annual perspective.

Some of our money leaks are seasonal. This Summer we are spending lots of time in the pool and that means using a lot of towels to dry off. After identifying that we were going through tons of towels each day, (that laundry was piling up) I trained the kids to hang up their towel after using it so it will dry and be ready for the next time. Here are some ways I go about identifying the money leaks:

1. Analyzing bills as they occur. We don’t blindly pay a bill when it comes in the mail. We look it over and see if there is anything that we can get rid of to lower the cost.

2. Evaluating expenses. I recently switched to once-a-month shopping for household necessities when I noticed all the frequent trips to the store to purchase something we had run out of.

For us just having the mindset of constantly monitoring the expenses helps to identify money leaks pretty quickly. Of course, running month end Quicken reports by category helps too!

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