THESINGLEFRUGALTON

Yesterday I talked about how living within your means isn’t enough , but that you need to live below your means. The first step to living below your means is of course figuring out how to live within your means!

Here are some ideas on how you can work towards this:

• Take a long hard look at home phone and cell phone bills. Is there anything you can cut?
• Examine your utility bills. Do you notice a pattern of when usage is higher or lower? Find out from your utility company if they have peak rates and low rates - if so, see if you can save by doing laundry or running the dishwasher for the non-peak rate times.
• Write down everything you spend for thirty days. Don’t do anything differently, just spend as you normally would. At the end of 30 days look at what you have spent, and where you have spent it at. Make a list starting with what you spent the most on to the least. Does your spending reflect your priorities? Is there anything that you could find a less expensive version of?
• Declutter. How many times have you bought something you thought you needed or didn’t have, then found one just like it a few weeks later? The more clutter or stuff we have in our homes, the more likely it is for us to buy the same item twice, or have items break or wear down more quickly.
• When you decluttered, did you find you had a lot of things that were still good items, but you had multiples of you didn’t need? Sell them either on Ebay, Craigslist, or a garage sale.

The above ideas will help you get started moving towards living within your means. But, if you have credit card debt, then you may need to use some more drastic measures in order to lower or get rid of that debt. Tomorrow, I will share some ideas on how you can start to lower your credit card debt and continue towards the first goal of living within your means.

Related Posts:
Why Should I Live Below My Means?

Why Should I Live Below My Means? My Answers

Trackback URI | Comments RSS