"Extra" money seems to get spent pretty quickly. Save receipts and track your everyday expenses for a week to see where it all goes, and where you can potentially cut back. Some quick ideas:
- Do you smoke? Quit. Even a pack a day is what, $5-6 now? Almost $200 a month.
- Do you go out drinking/partying every weekend? Those cover charges add up, never mind the drinks.
- Do you go out for lunch if you're working full time? Brown-bag leftovers.
- Speaking of leftovers, do you cook your own food, or do you buy pre-packaged "heat & eat" meals?
- Do you buy specialty coffee, or food/drinks from a vending machine? Yeah, it's only a couple of bucks... every day... but over a month it adds up.
- Do you buy bottled water? Get a filter and use your own bottle.
- Are you clipping coupons and shopping sales at the grocery store?
Then there's the monthly bills. Obviously some are fixed (rent/mortgage, electric, water, gas) though you can save a bit by conserving. That leaves phone, cell phone, CATV, and internet. Look at your plans and see if you can get by with less minutes or even dump the service entirely. We ditched CATV for NetFlix (cartoons and movies), and news we can find online. Instant savings $90/month. Same for the cell phone - do you use all your minutes? After realizing we had thousands of rollover minutes we changed plans to one with fewer minutes and the bill went from $95 to $55 BUT our phones are used very minimally.
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