It can be easy to feel overwhelmed with your budget, and like you have nothing else to cut. But sometimes, we’re simply looking for more wiggle room in the wrong places. Here’s how one woman found an extra $400 a month by reprioritizing her spending.
Making it work is brought to you by wealth simple which gives everyone access to simple affordable investing on cruise control something i’ve been struggling with over the last two months is that my life has gotten more expensive i haven’t moved my rent is still reasonable compared to rent prices in new york city and my utilities haven’t gone up but this year
For the first time i had to start paying for health insurance not only does that mean i’ll be paying about two hundred fifteen dollars a month but i’ll also be paying for doctor’s appointments that i’d been putting off which are not cheap on my insurance i am also dealing with a car expense that had not kicked in until the beginning of this year which is another
Two hundred dollars a month overall my cost of living has increased by about four hundred and fifteen dollars a month obviously this stresses me out last year though i wasn’t always crushing it on the income side when i first went freelance at the beginning of the year part of my rent was funded by airbnb tenants i was actively keeping my expenses low and i was
Still able to save diligently this year with my new expenses i’ve had to make some quick changes to make sure i don’t fall behind and put things on my credit cards that i can’t pay off here are four changes i’ve made to deal with my increased cost of living number one i calculated how much more and actually need to earn to cover my new expenses if my cost of living
Has increased by four hundred and fifteen dollars i would have to make an additional seven hundred dollars a month which factors out to about four hundred sixty dollars after taxes to cover the expenses one of the biggest mistakes i made last year was not factoring tax in whenever i calculated my earnings if i needed an extra three hundred dollars for something
I would make it my goal to make an additional three hundred dollars unfortunately when i get a check for $300 i automatically deduct a third which is what my accountant recommends i take out to go toward taxes so three hundred dollars actually becomes two hundred dollars while this is a sad truth it’s important to accept it and factor it into your budgeting and
Saving strategy if you’re a freelancer i then followed through and increased my earnings when necessary around the beginning of every month i figure out how much my earnings will be for the coming month this means calculating how much i can make based on work i’ve promised to clients and how much i need to earn to comfortably cover my expenses including my new
Expenses and any unexpected ones that pop up with room for spending money and money to put in savings if the first number isn’t high enough to cover everything the second number comprises i find more work to do and add an extra project to my docket it’s number two i look through my budget meticulously and found a substantial expense i could cut i went through my
Checking account statement and my credit card statement and i tried to find a money draining culprit that i could slash i was successful i was paying 130 dollars a month for a storage unit because i moved from a large place to a smaller place and had furniture i couldn’t part with but couldn’t fit into my apartment i got the storage unit on sale for $100 but in
The last few months they’d started aggressively raising the price on me i decided it would be best to spend the money upfront to run to u-haul and save money on the storage unit in the long term with the help of a few friends and my boyfriend we took one saturday in early february and cleared out the storage unit i split the furniture between goodwill my place and
My boyfriend’s place my roommate and i are still trying to figure out what to get rid of in our overcrowded living room but on the plus side that’s a hundred and thirty dollars i can now use towards my new expenses number three i also made unnoticeable changes to my monthly budget while combing through my budget i also tried to identify spending areas that i could
Trim down i did this about six months ago so my food entertainment and utilities budgets are already fairly low but after the holidays i got more relaxed about adhering to those budgets than i should have i decided to tighten up by taking away a not too noticeable amount for my food and entertainment category about $60 to accommodate this budget cut i did one no
Eating out week in february and also did not spend on entertainment and it worked perfectly for my budget for anyone trying to cut their food entertainment budget down just a little bit i definitely recommend skipping eating out and going out for one week out of the month i’m going to try and do it again in march number four i transferred money from my savings to
My ira so it couldn’t be tempted to dip into my savings i left enough money in my savings account for a hefty emergency fund and put the rest in my roth ira but it definitely makes me feel shaky that i don’t have that lovely cushion i could always dip into however i don’t want to accommodate to my new expenses by taking them out of my savings account and by taking
A large chunk of my savings out and relocating it i won’t have that temptation i’m equally glad that i moved my money because i don’t want to rest on my laurels when it comes to savings even though my new budget has presented some challenges i want to make sure i’m not throwing my savings plan out the way in order to accommodate my new expenses by ensuring that i
Can’t see a portion of the money i saved last year i can guarantee that i won’t let myself off the savings hook finding wiggle room in your budget is easier when you have a plan in place for the money you save for instance with wealth simple you can finally open up the investment account you’ve kept putting off and start taking care of your future wealth simple is
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4 Changes I Made To Find An Extra $400 In My Monthly Budget | Making it Work By The Financial Diet
