We get it: you’re nervous to read this one. But what if we told you that creating a healthier budget isn’t about deprivation? Because a good, healthy budget doesn’t focus on what you can’t have, it focuses on what you can sustainably have.
With that in mind, it’s time to start slicing and dicing with five things you should probably trim from your budget, even just a little bit.
Unused Subscriptions
This one’s simple and arguably easy because you aren’t using them. It’s most likely that you just haven’t gotten around to it or keep forgetting to cancel. But those businesses hope that they’re blending in with the rest of your finances so they can keep bleeding you dry — stay ahead of it and get rid of apps or subscriptions that no longer serve you.
Excessive Dining Out
Notice we’re using the word excessive; it’s great fun to go out to dinner, but the costs add up fast if you can’t figure out a way to put a ceiling on them. And you don’t have to cook every single meal at home to start doing this, either.
Start small by packing your lunch a few days a week or perform a light intervention to check your fridge for leftovers before you order pizza. Look for ways to make eating at home more appealing, and you’ll naturally see your restaurant spending go down.
Unnecessary Services
These are services you use, but they don’t add much value, or there are cheap/free alternatives that do basically the same thing. You’ll also probably find a few that are “luxury” services you could easily do without. Do you have a home phone line you never use?
Are you only getting groceries delivered when you could easily pick them up yourself on your way home? You don’t have to cull the lot of them, but this is at least a place to be more honest with yourself about what you want versus what you need.
Impulse Purchases
Let’s get real: there’s no way most impulse purchases are even making it into your budget. Those small, spur-of-the-moment buys might not seem like much on their own, but they’re notorious for destroying even the most well-intentioned budgets.
You can do one of two things here, though. The first is to eliminate impulse purchases from your budget, like with everything else on this list, or you can take the more practical route and create a separate budget category specifically for them. You’ll be surprised by just how much setting aside $50 for random nonsense every month can save you from spending $200 on similar nonsense.
High-Interest Debt
This usually isn’t something that you can just “cut” from your budget, but you can certainly redirect a lot of the above spending into paying off this debt.
The money you’re paying in interest on credit cards or high-rate loans is essentially being thrown away. By prioritizing paying down your most expensive debt, you can free up a huge portion of your monthly budget that was previously just being released into the ether.
