budget Archives — Beating Broke

Start the New Year by Finding Money

December 26, 2022 By MelissaB 1 Comment

The last few years have been difficult for most people. First, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the country, causing many people to lose their incomes and livelihoods. Then, when the country opened up again, inflation took hold. The United States, and much of the world, battled inflation in 2022. As a result, money is tight for most people. If this is the case for you, I invite you to join me; I plan to start the new year by finding money.

Why Find Money in the New Year?

Like many Americans, I am struggling to stay within our grocery budget. Looking at the USDA’s cost of food, I see why I’m struggling. Grocery prices increased sharply in 2022.

In addition, fuel costs and interest rates on loans are up. Everything is expensive.

To give our family a little breathing room, I plan to start the new year by finding money.

How to Find Money?

You can find or reclaim money in your budget in various ways. For example, I found money in these ways:

Cell Phone Expenses

My husband and I use Ting to keep our cell phone expenses down. The monthly bill for the two of us combined averaged $40 to $45. Then we added our teenage son to the plan, and suddenly our bill shot up to $100 to $120 a month. After some sleuthing, I discovered I could limit how much data he uses a month. Once I added that limit, our bill dropped to our average amount, saving us $50 to $75 a month.

Cutting Streaming Services

We have several streaming services including Hulu, Paramount+, Disney+, Netflix, Peacock, and Discovery+. I have ended or paused them all except Netflix and Hulu, which I’m temporarily keeping to watch Kindred. When we finish that, I’m pausing it again. With this action, I save $35 a month.

In the new year, we’ll only have one streaming service at a time. So, after we watch every show we want on Netflix, we’ll end the subscription and subscribe to a different one for a few weeks or months. By rotating streaming services, we’ll pay no more than $6 to $18 a month.

Pausing Services

I have a monthly Audible subscription that costs $14.99. I have several books I haven’t listened to yet, and I have nine credits. Therefore, I’m going to redeem my credits and pause my subscription. I have plenty to listen to for the next few months, so why keep paying? I can pause the subscription for at least six months before I run out of new audiobooks to listen to, so I’ll save myself $90.

I also have a $26 monthly fee to Ancestry.com. Genealogy is one of my hobbies, but there are some months, especially in the summer and fall, when I don’t have time to warrant the expense. So, my plan going forward is to gift myself a six-month subscription in November when they go on sale. Then, at the end of the six months, I’ll cancel my membership until next November. That gives me the winter and spring months to do my research. Using this technique, I’ll save approximately $150 a year.

Evaluating Memberships

Likewise, I’m evaluating memberships to see if we should keep them or let them go, including the following:

Amazon Prime

We’ve been Amazon Prime members for years, but the price increases each year. We’ll need to pay $139 in February to renew our subscription. We’ve been members for so long I’m not sure what perks we’re benefiting from. In the new year, I will spend some time researching how much we spent on Prime, what savings we reaped (especially from Whole Foods as Prime members), and what we would miss if we let the membership go.

Life360

Life360 costs $20 per month. I like this because it’s on all of our phones, so if someone needs help, we know exactly where they are. In addition, Life360 offers emergency roadside service. I’ll likely keep this service for now.

Other Places to Find Money

There are two other places to look to find money. One applies to us, and one doesn’t:

Refinancing Our Home

I don’t know if 2023 will be the year for this, but as soon as interest rates drop, we’re refinancing our home. We bought our new home in September, and our interest rate is 5.375 percent. However, I’m not sure if 2023 will be the year. We might have to wait until 2024 to do this.

Negotiating with Credit Card Companies

My husband and I don’t have credit card debt, but if we did, I would call up the credit card company and make two requests:

Can They Drop the Annual Fee?

When I did have credit card debt, they couldn’t drop my annual fee, but they did offer to give me enough points that I could redeem them to pay the annual fee. This essentially made the annual fee free. It’s worth asking if they can waive the fee or make you a similar offer.

Can They Reduce the Interest Rate?

Interest rates are so high now that paying down the balance is difficult because so much money goes to interest. If you call the credit card company t*o ask to reduce the interest rate, remind them what a loyal customer you’ve been. They may say no, but if they say yes and drop your interest rate a few percentage points, you have more money to apply to the balance or to add to your budget.

Using Cash Back Sites

Another way to save money that a lot of people don’t consider is using cash back sites. Cash back sites are older, web 2.0 technology, but they work reliably to save money. How they work is you open an account with the site, and click through the site when you’re shopping online. If you buy something, the retailer send a commission to the site, who splits it with you. Its a reliable way to slash 1% to 3% off your budget. Good sites to check out are: www.rebatefanatic.com, www.swagbucks.com and www.dollardig.com.

Refinancing Our Home

Flip Old Comic Books

Do you watch Storage Wars? Or Antiques Roadshow? Those shows are about people vetting junk and forgotten items to hopefully find valuable collectibles to sell. You can use the same concept with comic books. There is a big market out there where collectors pay top dollar for certain comic books.

You don’t need to be a comic book expert to understand what makes comic books valuable or worth a few bucks. It should be rare, aesthetically in good condition, signed by a creator, written or drawn by specific creators, or feature fan-favorite storylines, amongst some other factors.

If you have a stash of old comic books or want to go looking for cheap ones to flip, there is a way to check their current market value online for free. Use a comic book price guide. The main idea is to check the value of your stash before you try and sell it.

Then, once you have a sense of the rough ballpark value, you just sell the comics to a dealer or you put them out on Facebook Marketplace, or eBay. Ebay is probably the best as its fee structure is lower than Amazon and you get more buyers than Facebook Marketplace.

Final Thoughts

Inflation is hitting most Americans. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do about the high grocery prices besides altering your diet to eat cheaper foods. However, you can start the new year by finding money and eliminating services and subscriptions you no longer need or use. Doing so will give you extra cash to increase the grocery budget, pay down debt, or give yourself extra wiggle room.

Read More

Our Favorite Small Ways to Save Money

Save Money with Buy Nothing Groups

How We Save Money with Ting as Our Cell Phone Provider

4 Ways to Find Extra Money to Put on Debt

MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

How YNAB Changed Our Finances

February 21, 2022 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Years ago, when my husband and I were first married, I had a budget binder. It was simply a spiral notebook, and on each page, I put a different budget line item such as “groceries” or “electricity.” Each time we were paid, I put a certain amount in each category. When I paid a bill, I deducted the amount from that category. It was a tedious process, especially in a category that had a lot of deductions, like groceries. In desperation, I started researching budgeting software. I tried several before finally settling on You Need a Budget (YNAB). There are so many ways that YNAB changed our finances!

What Is YNAB?

You Need a Budget (YNAB) is a budgeting software based on the envelope system of budgeting.

The YNAB Principles

The YNAB system has four principles.

Give Every Dollar a Job

Using YNAB, you should budget every single dollar that you receive. Doing this helps you map out how to spend your money. If you have $40 left in your grocery category, you might need to have a small shopping trip and eat up the items in your pantry so you can keep within your budgeted amount.

Embrace Your True Expenses

Your true expenses are not just the ones that are due every month. You also have to budget for those expenses that you only pay once or twice a year like car insurance, property taxes, home insurance, and car registration. You should also budget for irregular expenses such as vet and medical bills.

Roll with the Punches

Your budget is flexible. If you only have $40 left in your grocery budget but your food costs $75, you can move $35 from another category to cover the overage. Things happen—roll with the punches.

Age Your Money

The age your money principle refers to how long it takes you to use the money that comes in. If you have money coming in that you don’t have to use for 30 days, your money is 30 days old. The longer you use YNAB, usually, the older your age of money is. Currently, our age of money is 73 days.

YNAB Trainings

YNAB has many free training videos, so you can watch those to learn more about the principles in YNAB and budgeting. In addition, the creator of YNAB, Jessie Mecham, wrote a book, You Need a Budget: The Proven System for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle, Getting Out of Debt, and Living the Life You Want, that you can also read to learn about the YNAB system in-depth.

How YNAB Changed Our Finances

I started using YNAB over six years ago, and the program has revolutionized how I handle our finances.

Electronic Version of My Budget Binder

At its core, YNAB is an electronic version of my old paper budget binder.

Easier to Use than Paper

However, using YNAB is so much easier! All of those calculations I used to do on paper? YNAB does them automatically.

More Flexibility

Plus, when I put in an expense, I have the option to split the cost into several categories. So, if I spend $70 on Amazon, I can split the expenses into separate categories such as $45 for groceries, $15 for toiletries, and $10 for spending. I love that flexibility, and the process is so much easier and quicker than doing it by hand.

YNAB Is Portable

Plus, I can always consult my YNAB budget on my cell phone. I never carried around my budget binder previously, so I would have to guess how much I had left in each category.

Create a Budget Buffer

Besides being easier to use than my clunky budget binder, YNAB taught me new budgeting principles such as creating a buffer. When you first start using YNAB, you’re encouraged to create at least a one-month buffer. That means that slowly you start covering next month’s expenses with this month’s money. Say, at the end of the month you have $150 leftover. You don’t go out to eat to celebrate. Instead, you take that money and put it in some of your categories for next month. Then, slowly, you keep adding until you have all of your categories for next month covered with this month’s money.

Having a buffer gives you an automatic one-month emergency fund and gives you a sense of security. It also makes budgeting easier. You can pay all of your bills at the beginning of the month instead of waiting until you get your paychecks during the month because the money is waiting to do its job.

Can See Your Finances in One Glance

What I love most about YNAB is that my husband and I can see our finances at a glance. Since I do all of the budgeting, YNAB allows my husband and I to sit down every one or two weeks and together look at where we stand financially. My little budget notebook never made much sense to him, especially because he’d have to flip through 20 pages to see the amount of money in each of our categories.

Easy to Track Net Worth

The best feature is the net worth feature. Often when we feel like we’re not making much progress financially, we look at our net worth and see that we are improving our bottom line. We sit down together at the end of each month to go over our net worth.

YNAB’s Price Increase But We Kept It

Recently, YNAB had a significant price increase. I thought about searching for a cheaper budgeting software. However, my husband said no, he wanted to stick with YNAB. He feels it is a valuable tool that makes budgeting and money management easier for me. In addition, he loves how easily he can keep up to date with our finances thanks to the program. He feels that YNAB is well worth the price, even after the price increase, so we’re staying.

Final Thoughts

YNAB has changed our finances and made them so much easier to manage. If you’re looking for budgeting software, I highly recommend You Need a Budget.

6 Unexpected Baby Expenses to Budget For

How to Feed Your Family on a Low Budget

P.s. if you’re looking for a good all around quality site to review while you’re working with YNAB, consider Moneycrashers.com. I’ve been following them for year – and their advice is generally really solid.

MelissaB

www.momsplans.com/

What Will You Do with the Final Days of 2021?

November 22, 2021 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

I’m on several personal finance and healthy eating groups on Facebook. Routinely, right about now, newbies to the groups post about their big plans in January. In January they’re going to start paying down their debt, saving more, eating healthier. They jump right to January even though, as of today, there are 39 days left in 2021. That is 5.5 weeks left. Don’t throw in the towel on your goals just because we’re approaching the holiday season! You can still make a positive impact on your life in the next 5.5 weeks!

How We Self-Sabotage at the End of the Year

Let’s be honest. Many of us can do some significant damage to our lives in the last few weeks of any year. We tend to lose control and let loose. Then, we have to pick up the pieces in the next year. I used to exhibit that kind of behavior every year!

For instance, one year, my husband and I overspent on Christmas gifts. Our budget was extremely tight, and we needed three months of the new year to get out of the hole we had dug! Three months for one night of Christmas Eve shopping.

What Will You Do with the Rest of 2021? — Photo by Food Photographer | Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

I used to do the same with my food consumption. Starting at Thanksgiving, I would give up and eat all of the good things with abandon. One year, I gained 10 pounds from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. I was gaining at a rate of two pounds a week for five weeks. That’s ridiculous!

What Will You Do with the Final Days of 2021?

Luckily, I’ve gotten older and wiser. True, we are entering the holiday season, which can make reining in our budgets and our food consumption a bit more difficult. However, Thanksgiving is only one day as is Christmas. We’re talking two days in the remaining 39 days of the year.

You still have time to make this year different.

Mind Your Budget

Imagine that, for the next five weeks, you stick to your budget. You don’t overspend. Then, when you start 2022, you’re starting with a clean slate. You’re not in the hole from overspending. How great would that feel?

Enjoy on the Holidays

Likewise, feel free to celebrate on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Enjoy the drinks, the food, the company. But just enjoy the food and drinks on that day. If you love pumpkin pie, eat a slice (or two) on Thanksgiving, but then eat normally the rest of the days. Your body can handle one day of indulgence. It can’t handle 39 days of indulgence!

Final Thoughts

Far too many of us self-sabotage as we enter the holiday season. We worry that we’ll miss out. We think that we don’t have any self-control during the holidays. But that’s not true. Instead, we need a mind shift. Indulge on the actual holiday, but the rest of the days, live your normal, typical life. You’ll be so much happier on January 1^st if you do.

4 Frugal Ways to Keep Kids Busy During Christmas Vacation

What Christmas Expectations Are You Setting for Your Children?

MelissaB