Taking Stock of Your Monthly Spending

In dealing with most things in my life, I wouldn't generally consider myself an apathetic person. In fact, I'm fairly on the ball when it comes to taking care of my responsibilities at home, or to my friends. But for some reason, when it comes to money matters, I sometimes adopt a lazy attitude about my finances and how I can be saving more money.

I don't mean being a budget hawk or anything like that, where I'm counting every cent (oh those good ol' college days), but being conscious of where my money is going and where it is being wasted. Really, sometimes money just seems to disappear like picnic baskets in Jellystone Park. Minus the bears, of course.

As an example, my wife and I recently noted two areas where we could tidy up our monthly spending. The first was home phone. While having a home phone line can be useful for a variety of reasons (such as home security), we decided recently that we just weren't using it that often and might consider changing our plan. Likewise, our electricity contract just went up last month, so it's time to start looking around for a new rate. Guess which one of those we've done. Neither. I'm not really sure why that is, but I guess it's just easier to retain the status quo than it is to actively search for better deals.

So, here are some easy, non time-consuming things to help take a quick stock of your monthly spending:

• Interest rates. What is the interest rate on your credit card? Have you asked for a rate reduction lately? You can also re-finance your home or your car in order to take advantage of new, better interest rates than you might currently be paying.


• Entertainment. Are you paying for too many TV channels that you don't watch? Are you paying too much for the TV channels that you do watch? Assess what parts of your TV and Internet usage requires the package you currently have from your provider. And if you're not satisfied, search for lower rates. Even if you are satisfied, look around and see what else you can find. There might be something better.


• Energy. Do you know what your current electricity rate is? If you live in a deregulated state like Texas, you can search for a better electricity rate than you currently have. There are some plans as low as 9 cents per kWh at the moment. If you're paying 12-13 or more, you could save as much as 40 dollars a month or more at that rate. In addition, you can install a programmable thermostat, or any number of other energy saving items.


• Memberships. Just last month, we downgraded our Netflix membership to 1 disc instead of 2, because we were barely watching the ones we had. Taking a look at club memberships, magazine subscriptions, and any kind of subscription based service can yield great results. If it's a service you do in fact want to keep paying for, see if there's a tier you can downgrade to that will give you the best of both worlds: savings and service.


• Food. Something that I started doing recently before trips to the grocery store, beyond just making a list, was planning out actual meals. Often, I found myself coming back from the grocery store having spent 100 dollars on food - but only having 3 nights' worth of dinner. Shopping around pre-planned meals helps you to be more efficient with what you're buying, and saves on spending money going out to eat when you don't have anything you want at home.

How often do you look at your monthly spending? How much money do you think you could be saving?