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I think of myself as being frugal, and could save a good bit more by cutting out my little "daily pleasures" but the older I get the more these little daily pleasures mean to me.
So I continue with my frequent Starbucks and indie coffee shop visits, my plant purchases, Hello Fresh, etc.
Yes, it all adds up but unless one has limited disposable cash there is little reason to deprive oneself of the little joys in life.
We are already frugal, trying to find places to cut. We go out to eat for dinner once a month, maybe. We eat lunch or breakfast out if medical appointments dictate the timing. I was on a plan F Medicare supplement, dropped to a plan G to save money. If I ever have the money to go back to an F, I can because I was on an F after 2020. We just traded in our car that we owned for a lease that will save us an average of 5k a year.
Being retired means our budget is tight already and with the cost of food going up, our food budget is tightly managed even more than it was.
It gets harder to save money. It used to be, you could get the budget under control and coast along at that level. No longer. My electric bill is this month is $50 over the same bill a year ago and I used less electricity this month than I used a year ago. $50 more for less electricity used in April, a year later.
You would have to do a lot of budget cutting just to tread water.
Where I'm not frugal is in food and use of the thermostat, but I can live lean if forced.
Estimates:
Food: Current average food bill (lifetime average): $345 per month. I could eat okay for about half, so $172.50. That's enough to get four courses, but lends itself more to PB&J days. I hate cooking. Health insurance: $420.67 per month. I only deem it essential due to fear, but would love to cut it out entirely. Car insurance: $136.13. I don't have to have full coverage, so I could drop that to just liability for around $60 or whatever the inflated rate is since last time I was paying $52.36 for just liability. At $60, that's a savings of $76.13. Electric: I like to be at a comfortable temperature at all times, so I won't make cutbacks here. Zero savings. Internet/cable: I have cable for the NHL playoffs and a handful of channels I will watch occasionally, but I'm not into traditional TV watching anymore; I sometimes want it there to turn on as background while doing other things. Total bill for both internet and cable is $153.26. I can drop the cable for $82.49 in savings. Even there, I can drop high-speed internet altogether and just use my phone which is $35 per month. I could cut out the entire $153.26 if I needed to get lean.
Total savings (w/health insurance): $401.89
Total savings (w/o health insurance): $822.56
We currently save 15%. I could save another 15% if we cut out hobbies, travel, and the cleaning lady. However, all three of those things make life easier and more fun.
I could cut my grocery bill a little by buying less expensive versions of some items - coffee (the big one), canned tuna (I'm fussy about that, too), make iced tea at home instead of buying it in a bottle (should do that anyway), eat less meat (tough when you're on a low-carb food plan) or eat less expensive meats.
I could get a cheaper phone plan, cancel cable or at the very least get rid of the second cable box and cut Showtime from my plan.
I could cut out or reduce spending on entertainment, clothing, jewelry, and other extremely discretionary purchases.
Can't cut travel, with my mom in an assisted living facility 350 miles away, my siblings 500 miles away, and my boyfriend in Florida 800 miles away (if he'd just move in with me already we could save a ton of money! LOL).
I'm hoping for another cool-ish summer where I don't have to run the downstairs AC, only using the upstairs AC to cool my bedroom at night.
I'm already pretty optimized currently. I suppose I could cut out my family gym membership, but we use it and it probably saves money on medical bills in the long run. We could cut one or all of our streaming subscriptions (Netflix, Disney+, and Prime), but we get a lot of enjoyment out of them for only about $40/mo. Not worth it to cut it. Finally, I suppose we could get rid of one of our vehicles, so that would save about $700/mo between the vehicle and insurance and maintenance, but it would make like a fair bit harder given my wife and I both work and we have to drop off and pick up our child from school. Eating out less might save us $150/mo.
I suppose cutting out all of those things combined would save us $1,000/mo, but I currently put away $2k per month plus my annual bonus which is close to $20k after taxes, plus $1,500/mo of my mortgage payment goes towards principle (thanks to a 2.75% mortgage rate). Given we're already adding roughly $5,200/mo to our net worth, saving the additional $1k/mo would be pretty nominal considering what we'd be losing in quality of life.
I could cut my grocery bill a little by buying less expensive versions of some items - coffee (the big one), canned tuna (I'm fussy about that, too), make iced tea at home instead of buying it in a bottle (should do that anyway), eat less meat (tough when you're on a low-carb food plan) or eat less expensive meats.
I could get a cheaper phone plan, cancel cable or at the very least get rid of the second cable box and cut Showtime from my plan.
I could cut out or reduce spending on entertainment, clothing, jewelry, and other extremely discretionary purchases.
Can't cut travel, with my mom in an assisted living facility 350 miles away, my siblings 500 miles away, and my boyfriend in Florida 800 miles away (if he'd just move in with me already we could save a ton of money! LOL).
I'm hoping for another cool-ish summer where I don't have to run the downstairs AC, only using the upstairs AC to cool my bedroom at night.
This is a hard one for me. For me it's cold brew coffee. I buy the Chameleon branded cold brew. It is $10 per bottle. It's just so dang good though!
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