Tuesday, February 2, 2016

5 Things You Spend Too Much on (and How to Save Thousands!)

One of the saddest realities of living in America is the simple fact that nearly two-thirds of us have less than $1,000 in savings. That means the average American can’t afford a sudden medical expense or car repair without taking on costly debt. How did we get ourselves into this position? For most of us it’s because we spend too much on things we imagine we need. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are five things Americans spend too much money on and how you can cut your costs and save.

Your Cell Phone Plan

There was a time when having a cell phone meant getting a top-of-the-line device for almost nothing but paying exorbitant, extortionary, highway robbery level monthly fees to keep the device. It doesn’t work that way anymore. In fact, if you pay more than $50/month for your cell plan you’re probably getting ripped off. Fortunately The Bill Stark Blog readers know how to save hundreds on their cell phone bills.

What changed to drop cell phone bills from $100/month to as little as $20? Simple: a merger. Or rather, the lack of a merger. Back in 2011 T-Mobile and AT&T, then the #4 and #2 sized cell plan companies in the States, wanted to combine forces creating one giant monolithic entity. The government put a stop to the merger and in an effort to stay competitive T-Mobile took a page from the Russians and decided to burn everything during its retreat. Translation? They introduced “screw you guys” pricing to their cell phone plans offering plans at half price and with a willingness to pay off your contract with your current carrier! Cell plans were forever changed and discount providers started springing up everywhere.

What does that mean for you? If you’re paying over $50/month on your individual cell phone plan you’re paying WAY too much money. Learn how to save hundreds on your cell phone bill here. Or, if you’re ready to switch, you can get a special discount at Cricket Wireless courtesy of yours truly here, or if you prefer get a similar discount at Ting here.

Television

Another industry that has gone through a huge amount of disruption over the last decade is television. In the bad old days if you wanted more than the four channels you could get over the airwaves it was going to cost you about a million dollars each month for cable television or, if you lived in the boonies, a satellite TV package. That’s not the case anymore thanks to Reed Hastings and the crew over at Netflix. Now cable TV subscriptions are at an all-time low thanks to a brand new, millennial powered TV consumer: the cord cutter.

Cord cutters got tired of paying $100/month for television packages when for $10/month they could get an amount of content from Netflix so large a single human couldn’t possibly view it all in one lifetime. By saving that $90/month they save over $1,000/year! (For some really fun math consider this: taking that money, putting it into the type of stocks you should buy when you buy stocks, and letting it grow for 10 years you’d have approximately $16,000 in wealth. Not bad for “only” having millions of hours of TV to watch on Netflix!). The end result is what many experts call a “death spiral” in which cable television companies lose customers so, to make up profits, they start charging their existing customers more money. That leads to more customers leaving, which causes new price increases, which leads to more customers leaving, and repeat ad infinitum.

More companies have joined the Netflix racket, and our choices in content keep going up. If you’re not happy with Netflix’s offerings you can use Hulu instead. Not good enough? How about Amazon Video? All of these services are great and at a steep discount compared to traditional TV providers, just remember to keep an eye on how this impacts your most powerful financial tool: cutting $100 in spending to add $125 puts your further behind than when you started. Pick a service or two and try those on for size.

Check out Netflix here, Hulu here, and Amazon Video here (word to the wise: Amazon Video may require an Amazon Prime membership, which is a bit on the pricey side).

If subscription video services still aren’t enough for you there are two more options to allow you to cut cable and satellite television while saving overall. The first is a cable antenna which allows you to pick up all of your local over-the-air TV signals. An antenna is a simple one-time fee, and they can be purchased pretty cheaply. They’re a great fit for people who like watching their local news and sports. From my home near Seattle I can pick up over a dozen channels all for the $20 I spent on my antenna years ago.

The second option allows you to stream all content from a computer, including some tablets and mobile devices, straight to your TV. These digital media players are things like Google’s Chromecast, Apple’s Apple TV, Amazon’s Roku (though you also need a Prime subscription to make the most here too), and more. You simply plug them into your TV (which must be HDMI enabled), take 5 minutes to set them up, and then you can stream all of your favorite internet content directly to your TV.

Eating Out

One of the killer lies about the most powerful financial tool available to you is that it prevents you from enjoying your life because you’re not “free” to spend whatever money you want on whatever you want whenever you want. That’s nonsense; instead you’re simply verifying with yourself what you do want before you spend your money on things you don’t want. For the average American household? That’s 18 meals (and then some!) cooked outside the home every month. At an average cost of about $13 per meal, we’re talking about spending over $230/month on eating out!

So when it comes to overspending? Where we eat is ground zero. It’s not a matter of never eating out, of course. It’s simply a matter of setting our goals and sticking with them. Instead of $230+ in dining out spending each month, cut that number down to $150. Save the $80 a month by eating at home a half dozen more times than normal. Your cost in groceries for a half dozen meals is much lower than that $80 meaning you get to put the rest into savings (which savings? That depends on which of the 10 steps you’re on!).

“But Bill, I don’t know HOW to cook!”

Nonsense. At your fingertips right at this very second is the sum total of human knowledge in the culinary arts! This is the perfect time to learn! Cooking for yourself is a triple whammy of upside that includes learning a new skill, saving yourself money, and eating more healthily. It’s self-improvement on steroids!

Here are three basics everyone should know how to cook:
·         A simple spaghetti dish, low-cost and tasty (try this recipe)
·         An easy slow cooker (Crock-Pot) dish; I’m cooking this chili while I’m writing this article!

Eating out once in a while is fun, and it’s okay to enjoy the occasional restaurant meal. But when we’ve got debts to pay off and savings to put aside for retirement we’ve got to be honest with ourselves about what our goals are. That means taking the time to learn some tasty meals that we’re comfortable cooking on our own over time. (Full disclosure: it may be tougher at first as you learn, but it gets so much better so stick with it! And start with the simple recipes I listed above; you can’t mess ‘em up!)

Debt

Of all the four-letter words my mom said I wasn’t allowed to say growing up, debt has to be the worst. It’s pretty much the worst roommate you’ve ever had, poking his head up every month to say, “Yo dawg, can I borrow, like…all of your money?” And you absolutely, 100% know that asshole plans to pay you back $0. Man, screw that guy.

So stop paying so much in debt every month! If you haven’t already, figure out which of the 10 Steps you’re on and then GET ALL OF YOUR HIGH INTEREST DEBT PAID OFF! Anything over 5% is burning your money every month, but paying extra towards it means cutting down the amount you pay in interest, the fee the person who lent you money gets for giving you the original amount. How does it work? So glad you asked!

Meet my friend Sarah.




Sarah didn’t know about emergency funds or cushions in college and picked up a bit of credit card debt when her car broke down. At the time, $5,000 didn’t seem like a lot of money but at 15% interest and a minimum payment of $80/month she’s just not making much of a dent in the total debt she owes. By following some of the tips in this article she manages to save $50 each month on her cell phone bill, $90 by switching to Netflix instead of cable TV, and $50 (after groceries) by cutting down how often she eats out. That gives her $190 extra to put towards her debt. What is the impact to her overall costs for that debt?

Here’s the difference in Sarah’s total amount of interest paid.




By putting the extra $190 towards her debt and paying $270/month to her credit card Sarah pays a total of $723 in interest. Under the original plan? She would have paid $4,788! All told Sarah is looking at saving $4,065 in interest. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? By paying extra towards the principal on her loan Sarah cuts down on the amount of interest she owes long term, netting her thousands in savings. In fact, had she not made those extra payments by cutting back on some of her expenses she would have paid in interest nearly the same amount as the original loan. Allowing someone to make 100% profit on your hard work? Absolutely not! Start paying yourself instead and get out of your debt!

Groceries

Alongside maintaining a healthy relationship with eating out comes buying slightly more groceries to offset going out as much in the first place. But if you’re not prepared grocery stores are essentially food casinos designed to eke every last dollar of value out of you that you can. There’sactually an entire science dedicated to getting you to buy more in grocery stores and feel good about it! So how do you get the most value for your dollar? Go in prepared!

The most important thing you can do before going grocery shopping is eat. It’s timeless wisdom so well-known Snickers turned it into an ad campaign because it’s true: when you’re hungry, you’re not yourself. Normally you wouldn’t buy a case of Little Debbie products, but on low blood sugar 36 Swiss Rolls seems like a perfectly reasonable idea. Make sure you haven’t skipped any meals or have a snack before heading to the store so the organ making your purchasing decisions is your brain, not your pancreas.

The second key to saving money at the grocery store is going in with a plan of attack. Taking fifteen minutes to figure out what meals you want to make for the week and creating a list of ingredients you’ll need ensures you stick to essentials instead of straying into the expensive territory of dumping impulse buys into your cart. Plus, taking the time to create a list means you can look at specials from your grocer that can help you sculpt your meal plan with cost-effective food choices. Asparagus is out of season? Buy Brussel sprouts on sale instead. Chicken breasts on sale? Pick up the ones you need for this week’s meals and maybe stock up for next week’s when they’ll be more expensive. Have a plan before you head into the store and stick with it!

Get to saving…


Americans trap themselves into spending more than they make and forcing themselves into living paycheck-to-paycheck. You don’t have to be one of them. Cut your spending on the items listed above (and if you have debt, pay it off using this method or this one) and free up your cash flow. Don’t be one of the millions of Americans stuck with less than $1,000 in savings!

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