I cannot understand how people's budgets are sooo small. I want to get there, I really do. Right now, we are at at least $50k a year - probably more.
I'm finally starting to track all of my spending but my DH and I have separate finances so I can only work my own half of the budget. I spend at least twice as much as him anyway, because of kid expenses (he's stepdad).
I will get there!!!
Giro - I hear ya! I've cut my budget a LOT from over 5000/month down to 3900 per month. (My house is paid off) I need to get down to less than 3000/month to retire in 2017, so Im still workin' it.
Here is what Ive done so far:
1. Analyzed all spending. I used Fidelity expense tracker because I already have a fullview account linked to everything. I already had all past spending data in the system going several years back. I just had to spend a few hours digging into the transactions and editing the categories.
2. Once I had the categories set up, I compared my spending with with MMM family to see where mine was way out of line.
3. Then, I started knocking down budget, one category at a time, starting with the big ones.
Heres what I found so far:
My grocery spending was way out of hand. Sometimes I spent up to 1000/month on Groceries. Now Im spending around 400 or so. Cutting this was much easier than I thought it would be.
My property tax is over 6K where MMM is like 2K. I called my tax collector and she sent me forms to fill out to file for a STAR reduction in tax. I wont see it this year, but next year I should see a 700$ reduction.
Also MMM house insurance is 410 a year, and mine is over a thousand...so I called our insurance agent and ask him to do a policy review of ALL our policies, home, auto, umbrella, and give me some options...higher deductible? Shop Around? I found out that DH had an active policy for a couple of old "classic cars" that he doesn't even drive anymore!
I feel Ive made huge strides in cost cutting, and have been amazed at how painless some of the cuts really were. So dont give up!