Comments on: How to live on less: Priorities

By: Kilimanjaro Climber

Kilimanjaro Climber — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:24:30 +0000

You know when I am camping or hiking I realize how little we do need. When you are in the mountains all you think about is food, water and shelter. Then you come back home and realize you have some much junk.

By: Trish

Trish — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:27:34 +0000

Pam, I think Sarah’s referring to using gamefly.com vs. buying games retail. It is a huge savings and you end up playing more games than you ever would buying everything. I have an account too and swear by it.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:03:15 +0000

Over the years I’ve had several coworkers who keep running into money troubles, but I always see them carrying lattes, and find when I visit that they have digital cable at home. Those two items alone should be easy to give up and chew up about $200/month. I spend $5/week on flavored coffee creamer and $37/month on the Netflix six-at-a-time plan.

Of course I spend all the money I save on alcohol, but hey. Priorities!

By: Nancy

Nancy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:16:05 +0000

I did this recently. After many years of dancing around making a budget, I finally created one last week. It was far less painful than I had expected. A few things we do in our family to live on less:
(1) Since my husband refuses to carry a cell phone, we only have one. I use prepaid cellular and was able to get my phone for free. It is a bare bones phone, but I spend maybe $150/year on cell service when I used to spend $50/month.
(2) The other thing we have just started doing is limiting ourselves on dining out. We get a seet amount each month and once it is gone, it’s gone. We just started this a couple of weeks ago, but it is working really well.

By: Badbadivy

Badbadivy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:40:21 +0000

You can rent one video game at a time for $15 a month at Gamefly.com. I really wish my local library had video games, I could drop Gamefly too!

By: hsgbdmama

hsgbdmama — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:34:02 +0000

Check out your local library for movies and video games — at mine most movies and all games are free (which is a great “try before you buy” option) and new and popular movie releases are $1.50/week. This is much less than spending $4-5 at the video store, plus I know that the money is going back into our library system rather than a corporate coffer.

Since we have DSL (with no other high speed option available) we have to maintain our phone line, but we have eliminated all the add ons, and have as basic of service that we can get. Cable — dh will not get rid of it, and again it is a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment and we have only the basic service and have been fine with it.

I’m starting to eliminate some of my subscriptions as I find suitable replacements on the Internet, plus WSJ.com has made their opinion page completely free, so now I can eliminate that subscription.

It really does come down to looking at everything critically and asking:

* Is it really needed
* If so, is there a suitable, less costly or free alternative
* If it is dropped will there be costs elsewhere that will be increased and by how much (i.e., if Internet is dropped, will there be an increase in postage and gas costs, and will those ultimately exceed the cost of the Internet)

By: Pam

Pam — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:20:00 +0000

Please tell me how you can try every new game for $15 a month….Pam, South Bend

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:48:02 +0000

Very timely post. In this economy I’ve been looking for ways to save.

So yes I can:

No more bottled water & lattes. I”m spending like $10/day on these.

No more buying games. I spent over $300 last year on buying video games for only 5 games. At $15/month I can try every new game. Seems like a great way to save and still satisfy my gaming addiction

And I’m also going to start a little online savings just so I have something in case of an emergency.

But no cable box…hmmm….not sure if I’m ready for that. Maybe I’ll drop some of the prem. channels and save some that way

Thnx