More Expense Reductions

I moved away from my land line phone and DSL provider to Comcast. I got their Cable Internet and Cable TV package at $66.

I dropped our land line with DSL in favor of our cellphones.

Was:
Land line and DSL: $120/mo
Cable: $45/mo

Now:
Cable/Internet: $66/mo

We increased our cellphone plan to include international long distance and extra for an extra $30/mo to account for the extra dependence upon the cellphones.

Savings: $66/mo



In the Save a G game, I now need to reduce my costs by $918. Savings so far $82/Month.

Cheap Flights

I have to go on a flight to Europe. Have been checking around for the best airfares, here is what I found.

Since I was pretty much tied in by 2 factors, the time Feb 2008 and I have a 3 year old and no way I am not flying overnight when he is sleeping and I don't want to travel much longer than a direct flight would.

I checked all the usual sites (Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity etc.) but found the site with the suspect title of Cheapoair to be the best. The load times were very good on the site, decent control and the prices were the best but note that the final price is what you shop by (the fees and taxes are quite large)

Cheaper, not super cheap but $100-$200 with the options I needed.


One caveat, It had some suspect reviews online by some and great by others so I am hoping for a happy ending, not a sad tale.

UPDATE: A little more investigation found that Economytravel beat Cheapoair (These names inspire confidence, don't they) by over $100 for the same flights.

Starting Some Expense Reductions ...

I am attacking my utilities and phone bills first.

I will be moving to energy efficient light bulbs and fixing a few draughts in my apartment and watch my bill.

On the phone side, I will be evaluating Fring to see if it can dramatically reduce the phone bills and remove the need for a land line. We use the land line for international rates.

Not much to report until the first bills come in.

Another Income Source - I'm a blogger now!

I can't believe I didn't post this earlier.

I started a Blog! Its called "Financial Irresponsibility" (Duh!).



The reason for this is that bloggers can make good money. I don't expect to make anything near the quantity of cash they make but a few hundred extra a month would be nice.

I am doing this blindly. I didn't do hours of extensive research but what I did pick up was that "content is king" so I hope my little or large gains are both interesting and helpful to people. I chose finances because everyone uses money, wants money and needs money. I have a certain amount of experience over the past year that might be helpful and I know i would have read my blog a year or two ago when times were at their darkest. I also think that my project to save $1000 a month on expenses is valuable if I achieve my goal or get close. I could see people using this project themselves.

I don't have a lot of time with Jobs, wife, 3 year old and volunteering at a non-profit so lunchtime and little spare time blogging for dollars it is.

Updates on how to stumble through setting up a blog on the chance it might make a little cash coming up ....

Expense Initial Analysis

First problem I ran into is this is the Christmas period and income was increased due to a nice bonus and outgo was unusual due to the extra cash and the holiday spending.



But here is what I could work out:

Rent $1400
Bankruptcy Payment $1350
Sons School $650

There is half my money gone and not much I can do about those. Rent is cheap since we know the landlord and have an excellent deal, the Bankruptcy payment is what it is and my sons school is awesome and have no interest in either changing or decreasing his time there.

So the rest is going to Food, Car, Cable, Phone, Utilities, Clothing and Entertainment. Lets see how this breaks down.

Car: This includes upkeep, gas, insurance and parking. I spend $9 a day parking for 20 days in the month which equals $180, Gas is around $160, Insurance is $80 and upkeep averages to $50 so that brings car expenses to $470 per month. I bet we can do something there, especially on Parking and possibly gas.

Cable: This is the Phone, internet and cable package from Comcast for $99. Maybe I could drop the landline since myself and my wife both have cellphones. Our main consideration is we have family abroad so long distance has to be looked at. Last bill was higher by far than this so I will have to investigate.

Phone: Namely cellphones. I have to look into this. These get expensive and I have seen web services that can chop these down.

Utilities: Wife said the last bill was $120. It is winter and we have been using the heaters a lot.

So far, of my remaining $3000, $690 is accounted for with Food, Clothing, Cellphones and Entertainment making up the remaining $2300. That seems like a lot. This, I suspect, is the area we will make our greatest gains.

The plot thickens!

Save a G game!

OK so based upon me pulling in about $6000-$7000 Net income per month (for those of you who do not live in San Francisco, don't get too excited, it goes fast here), I have decided to see if by clever means I can reduce my expenses by $1000 per month.

Being a tech geek, I decided to harness the power of the internets for both information and services that may help me on my quest.

First up, I need a fair estimation of where I stand, where is my money going?

I went to a handy Web 2.0 review site called Webware and searched under "personal finances" and found a site called Mint.


















REVIEW: I can say I can be hard to please with services like this. I don't like to have to work very hard at any administrative tasks (This may be a reason I got into financial difficulty). I expect things like this to be simple, easy to setup and intuitive.

Mint delivers so well in this category. I gave it my email address and a password, gave it my bank account online log-on details and it went to work. It categorized about 66% of my bank account transactions over the previous 2 months and gave a nifty and fast method of mass categorizing the remaining third. Selecting the "Spending trends" tab brought up a full display of graphs and details regarding my spending and income. I can honestly say that the task of tracking my spending was 90% done in 10 minutes of using this site.

There is a section called "ways to save" but I did not have enough information for it to do its thing so I cannot comment on this function. Apparently it is in beta and will offer best credit cards, savings account and cellphone and other potential savings. Shame about that since that is the core purpose of my even looking for a site like this.

I was initially going to check out its competition but feel no need to search any further as Mint handles what I need so there may be better but I am pleased with this.

A

Got some Resumes out

Got 300 resumes out in one week!

Phone ringing off hook.













Mainly headhunters at first. I have a strong negative opinion on most if not all headhunters I have worked with. They are trying to parasitically get between you and the jobs already on job-sites so they can pocket a commission. The danger is that when they speak with you they are trying to slow down your own efforts so they can place you. If they help you fine but don't depend on them.

Then the real McCoy! I got three interviews set up.

Got the job! My income will go up from $85,000 to $100,000 and a approximate $15,000 Christmas bonus with full benefits. Score!

The Masterplan!

Alright, so here I am.

Post-Bankruptcy.

The current situation is that I have a monthly payment I have to make that matches "What I make" minus "What I need to survive". Not a bad scenario but things get tight and luxuries are limited.


I have about 6 months before my next evaluation of my income vs. expenses (After taxes are filed). So my theory is, keep increasing income and reducing expenses to buy me the elbow room to live a little looser with money. Sure my yearly evaluations will make me have a bigger payment but at the end of this I will have a chance to actually pay off my debts and have a nice financial scene when all this is done. You hearin' me?

Onto the first step .... new job, increase in pay!