Bills Bills Bills

 Hello Hello! 

So we're moving (this time, only across town- thank God) and I finally had to sit down, embarassingly for the first time ever, to go through line by line and update billing information for anywhere our address was on file. This being an already tedious process, I decided to make more work for myself and itemize out our bills. I can imagine that there are a good amount of people out there who also don't do this. Each month, I get paid and by the end of the month, the money is gone. I am really struggling to understand how this hasn't been bothering me until now... Like, its disturbing. I've written about crafty ways to save money and about a couple of my bills, but I literally have never actually gone through them. This could probably be a social and psychological experiment in and of itself, but we'll save that one for a rainy day. 

I know, I know. You're sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to see a line by line execution of my monthly bills. Let me just start by saying that I am embarrassed that I didn't catch some of these things and have been unknowingly paying for them for MONTHS. LOL. The money leaks are EVERYWHERE. Here you go- for your reading pleasure: 


Things we need to live (in our little world): 

Rent - $ 2800 (It's California... yuck)

Wireless phones - $280 (Jesus. don't worry- we've leased the newest phones so we get to pay for them monthly in our plan. Also, were unnecessarily paying for insurance....)

Internet- $120 (So we cancelled our cable a few months ago because of an old fashioned stand off with ATT... I didn't realize that they were still charging us $15/ month for HBO Max... which we also have through HULU. cool. 

Dog Insurance- $60. Yep. Gotta have it. 

Car Insurance- $120 - OMG. I updated the actual mileage I drove last year and my bill went down after this by FORTY DOLLARS. It was not easy to find where to update, but I highly recommend it. More on that later. 

Water delivery service- $80 - The water here is gross, but this is probably unnecessary. 

HULU plus Live TV- $80 - This makes a little bit more sense- love this service. 

Water and Power- $130 (in the summer its like $250...Yikes)

Renters Insurance - $20 - I definitely over insured our belongings... just in case. 

Nordstrom bill- $242... oh the outfits of my 20s....probably have already given them all away, but I still have the balance to show for it. Rookie mistake. 

Paypal bill - $182 - don't ever fall for the paypal credit scheme. ever. 

MMMKay. that pretty much rounds it out. For my parts ONLY, I pay $2522/ month. Oh I forgot my car payment which is $420..FML. THREE GRAND IN BILLS PER MONTH. 

With that said, my take home pay is 7K... so where is that other 4K going? 1K of it goes to paying my Mom back. That leaves 3... That usually goes to my Amex bill. What am I left with? ZERO. 

So we're moving... and after my reassessment of the basic bills, we are in a much better spot: 

Hulu- took off no commercials and saved 10/month. 

Internet - switched to spectrum - 65/ month (saving $55)

Car Insurance - changed the mileage driven on my car in the app - saved $40. 

Water and Power- new Landlord pays water- and it's all gas powered- thinking this will save us A LOT. 

Rent - New Rent is 2600 - that's $350/month right there... 

NO MORE WATER DELIVERY :) 

So after those simple changes, we're saving north of $600/ month. And our new apartment is larger and nicer than our current one. That's $7200/ year of money that we'll have to use for something better- like our future. 

I also gave up online shopping for Lent... so far so good. fingers crossed. 

There's hope. Take a look at your finances and look at the cracks. Where can you save? All I can say is that if I can save, ANYONE CAN. 

XO 

V



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