Author Topic: Punching myself in the face  (Read 2101 times)

SugarMountain

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Punching myself in the face
« on: January 29, 2013, 03:29:21 PM »
Over the past couple of weeks I've spent a few hours putting together a spreadsheet of pretty much every dollar I spent in 2012.  Most of the data is straightforward, since the money either comes out of my checking account, or is on a single mileage credit card.  This was the most expensive year of my life, between a wedding, a 3 week honeymoon in Europe, and major renovations at my house.  But those are all essentially one time events, so I'm not going to beat myself up too badly there.  The wedding & honeymoon were awesome and the renovations just shift money from savings to home equity.  No, what I'm going to beat myself up over are some of the following lowlights:
- Dish Network $1300.  This is ridiculous.  What's even more ridiculous is I didn't even live at the house for 1 day this year as the renovations were going on.  Need to get this down asap.
- Internet $600.  See above.  I used the email address, at least.
- I need to break it down to the next level to get the real number, but approximately $2500 on lunch.  LUNCH!  I eat out pretty much every day at work and spend between $6-15.
- ~ $.52/per mile *before depreciation*.  Two German cars are awesome, but seriously.  *facepunchfacepunchfacepunch*  At least with the Allroad I need to drop comp & collision.  It got hit a couple of years ago and I cashed the check for about 2/3rds of the value of the car and never got it repaired.  So why am I still paying collision when if I get hit again (it was a hit & run on the street), I wouldn't get very much before they total it.
- $660 for a YMCA membership that I used exactly 0 times in 2012.  We have a gym at work.  My wife has a lifetime membership at 24 hour and I could join that for $30/month.   A couple of years ago I used this probably on the order of 200 times a year.  Need to either get back to that or drop it.
- Netflix $103.20 for the 1 CD plan (at least I wacked down the 3 CD plan).  We have not watched either movie I've had out for the course of the year.

I also have a fair amount that was just "cash" spent on who knows what.  (There is some overlap with the lunch spending there, I'm sure).

Creating the spreadsheet is a bit painful, but very worthwhile.  Now, if I can actually act on some of this...

savingtofreedom

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Re: Punching myself in the face
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2013, 08:38:34 PM »
Bob - good for you for doing this exercise.  Awareness will help your spending in 2013.  I still need to go through this exercise and continue to whittle down my expenses.  It is painful at first but you will be amazed at what you can save. 

Congrats on the wedding!!!

I also need to work on the eating out. We don't do it that frequently but it adds up very quickly.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!