Comments on: Challenge Everything

By: J. Money

J. Money — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 20:27:58 +0000

In reply to Jen. Niiiiice!!! You are on fire, way to go!! Love hearing this!

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 19:10:05 +0000

Love this concept! it has motivated me to make a few calls. Got interest rates reduced on 2 cards. When I called Discover, they would not reduce the rate. Guess who I am using the debt snowball process on first! Reduced my cable bill, cell and the escrow on my mortgage was just reduced. I have extra money in my account so I can payoff those pesky credit cards bills sooner. I am so motivated to dump that debt.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 02:36:23 +0000

In reply to Mr Average Finance. Yup! Not sure if one side is definitely better than the other (cutting expenses vs growing income) but I know that it helps *immensely* paying attention to both :)

By: Mr Average Finance

Mr Average Finance — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 19:55:30 +0000

I have seen “The most important thing to note is that cutting your spending rate is much more powerful than increasing your income.” passed around a couple of blogs now ands its quite powerful. Another good tactic is that even if your income does increase, keep your spending the same and save/invest the extra.

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 16:58:35 +0000

In reply to J. Money. Ask you neighbor if you can give them $15 a month for thier wifi password... Or a case of beer every other month!!! Instant savings.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Sat, 18 Oct 2014 18:36:00 +0000

In reply to Jennifer G.

NICE!!! That will be a crazy chunk of mine to be used towards your goals going forward – way to keep on top of this stuff and really dig in to shave stuff down… To me it’s one of those things where once you get the mindset right everything else starts becoming a no brainer. So best to take advantage now while you’re hot and before you lost motivation/mindset later! ;) Keep going!

By: Jennifer G

Jennifer G — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 21:31:45 +0000

We are in the process of challenging our expenses too. I just found your blog (again) today. We also recently switched my phone to Republic Wireless (saving $47.50 over Virgin Mobile which we switched to a couple of years ago from AT&T, which didn’t save us much, I think about $20 a month, but we went from extremely limited dumb phones to unlimited everything smart phones). I figured we would try out RW’s 30 day return policy, if I didn’t like it I could return to V. Mobile. I LOVE it, so hubs will be switching in a few weeks too (we are saving up for his phone). Once he switches, that will save us $95 a month.
We are also in the process of building our media center. We are under contract with our “cable” satellite until Thanksgiving. But we will be cutting it as soon as we can, and once we do, that will be another $125 a month.
Hubs had a really bad run-in with a herd of pigs a couple of months ago and then a run in with a huge deer a couple of weeks ago. If the car is totaled (and it looks like it will be) we will use the insurance check to pay off the loan and whatever is left from it (hopefully around $2000-$2500) we will repair our other cars (we never sold our 1998 Jeep, so hubs has started driving it again and I drive a 2001 Avalon…both paid in full). Once that is all said and done, there will be another $162 staying in our account. (as well as saving on our car insurance because we will be insuring 2 cars instead of 3…though with 2 recent wrecks on the policy, it might not go down very much)
We unfortunately have quite a bit of credit card debt, so all those savings we will see, will be put toward paying off our credit card for a while. But once it is paid off, we will be looking at close to $1000 (combined) not leaving our account each month. We are enjoying the challenge and will love seeing that debt disappear too.

By: J. Money

J. Money — Sat, 06 Sep 2014 19:29:42 +0000

In reply to Jordan. Thank you so much for sharing this with us! SO AWESOME!!! The perfect example of taking action and getting future benefit for months and years ahead. That's a lot of extra money every month to be put to good use! What are you going to do with it now? :)

By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 22:05:12 +0000

Hi J. Money,

Thanks for the awesome article. It is very inspiring, and it convinced me to start challenging everything as well.

Since reading this article, I have done the following:
1. Satellite TV – reduced by $15 ($60 down to $45) by switching to a lower package that still has our preferred TV channels, but I am working on convincing the wife to drop completely :)

2. Cell phone – reduced by $90 ($160 down to $70) by switching my phone line to Republic Wireless $10 plan and moving my wife to a single line plan with Verizon ($60) – I am trying my hardest to stick to the $10 Republic plan but may have to go to the $25 plan whenever we go out of town away from my usual wireless networks :-/

3. Internet – reduced by $25 ($55 down to $30) by doing a quick online chat with a representative to ask them how I can lower my monthly payment because I have noticed another competitor offering lower cost/higher speed. They quickly gave me a monthly bill credit. Maybe I should try this with my satellite bill as well! :-D

Total savings so far: $130 per month

By: B @ Uni Student Life

B @ Uni Student Life — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 08:50:47 +0000

As a college/university blog owner, I find that its hard drilling down on fellow students about cutting down on useless expenses. I believe that a few youngsters really don’t think about saving till its too late. As such this generation (me included at times) appears to only live for the now, and not the future!

Great post, really insightful into your financial timeline!