Do to know what to cut if you had to?

I was chatting with a friend over the weekend. She told me she’s worried about finances as her company is threatening layoffs. I asked her if she had thought about what to cut from her budget. She was surprised at the question and I had to give her ideas such as streaming services, eating out, other subscriptions, etc.

I put this question to the FB Tightwad Gazette group I’m part of. Some people had no clue. A lot of people did know what they would cut. My budget is pretty streamlined, but more careful grocery shopping would definitely be one thing. My only streaming service is $5/month for PBS Passport, for example.

So what would you cut from your budget if your finances took a turn for the worse?

Geez, we have craptons of things to cut.

* I would start with cutting all art buying.

*Follow it with cutting any further buying of flower show containers and hard supplies since I have a basement full of it.

* Follow that with cutting Amazon Prime, which would flag me to cut way down on ordering stuff that may look necessary but is not always necessary

* no more new iris cultivars at $65 each; no more new lily cultivars

*i suppose we could sell our condo

* Dave Ramsey would sputter at us having 4 vehicles plus a farm tractor and would demand we sell at least three of them

….and on and on…we have a lot to cut but the above list is the fat, a LOT of fat as you can see

I could continue to buy clothes at Goodwill, though, but woild need to curb shopping there regularly since I buy flower show stuff there and home decor fabrics.

Here's my list:

• All non-nutritious food: sodas, for instance, and expensive desserts (A bag of our favorite cookies costs almost $6).
• Subscriptions
• I'd put a moratorium on non-essential clothing purchases and would thrift the "essentials"
• I'm with IL on this one--no new plantings, boo hoo. Lobby for gift cards from my favorite nurseries for my birthday and Mother's Day
• I'd have a tough talk with DH about selling the boat. I know that sounds like a no-brainer, but you don't know DH and his boat.
• Cut out joyrides in our gas guzzler truck, and only use my Prius.
• Cut back on how much we spend on entertainment--make our kids chip in on all the food and drink they consume when they come up (They do contribute now, but I would expect even more and I would insist DH stop ensuring we have enough liquor for them. )

That's a good start. I'm sure there's more, like cutting cable and going solely to a streaming service.

Much is necessities OR would be a lot of effort to reduce and most of the time it's not worth all the extra effort (like going to many different grocery stores every week chasing deals) but:

- no thrifting stuff for amusement
- no buying plants for amusement (and I have just a tiny plot that I garden, plus a few potted plants)
- no acquiring a few more kitchen or less often household items
- eating more soup (this might be odd, but it seems to have reduced my grocery budget significantly)

So I've done this and more (like not even buying clothes barely and I don't have excess clothes to begin with) when unemployed but it does become INCREDIBLY tedious. Like I start fantasizing hard about finding an extra $100 or even $40 or something, like I have some mystery tax or other refund coming that I don't know about, maybe I'll get a gift, maybe some money got lost in the sofa, maybe .... I start daydreaming about it, and of course it never happens, THERE IS NO MAGIC MONEY. And unemployment still of course didn't pay enough to live off of and I depleted savings, so mostly unemployment sucks, I'm glad I'm not unemployed :D And it's part of why I acquire things I might generally use when I'm not unemployed (like some kitchen items ha) as well because I can. So I'm not sure one really ends up more frugal from it. I'm not a hoarder though.

If I was for sure to lose a job soon, I might stash more in bank savings than retirement also. Maybe I'd try to sell on ebay a few items I'd otherwise just donate.

Just out of habit, we already live close to the bone. My only splurge is buying seeds and a couple of online subscriptions which will get canceled when I can get back outside to garden again. Got rid of Prime and Netflix long ago. We only eat once a month or so but that could go. The curious thing is we save much more money retired than when we were working even with income cut in half.

We could cut way back on grocery shopping and use menus and lists. In fact, I want to do this!

No shopping on Ebay for a year.

Get a gift card for a hundred dollars and use that to shop at Amazon and don't buy more than one card a month.

Like pinkytoe, I think we are already pretty close to the bone - for the most part. We have no subscriptions, cable, or streaming services - so nothing to cut there. I believe we are already on the cheapest internet/provider now, so nothing to cut there. I'm thinking it would have to come from reminding family members to take short showers, wash full loads of clothes, turn off lights when they leave the room (2 minute rule), etc. The usual thing that I feel we have the most control over is groceries. Shop more sales and make meals at home accordingly.

On the other side of the coin, it would be to start trying to sell stuff.

We can always economize on groceries, I just haven’t felt the need to do that. But our food waste is minimal.

First to go would be digital subscriptions like Prime or Netflix or other online magazines and such. I could probably sell some things on eBay that I don't use much and too good to send to Goodwill. No dining out. I'd cut the landline and get a Tracfone if I hadn't already. Review insurance policies for changes in deductibles to reduce rates. Commute or shop by bike if possible. Switch to a plant based diet and start a vegetable garden. Build a cold frame to grow vegetables in cold weather. Depending on how deep the cuts had to be I could trade down on house and car. Pretty sure I could not buy clothes for a very longtime.

My state has the most generous unemployment benefits in the nation the last I checked. I would be fine. My income would go down some, but I would save on all the commuting costs (about $70 a week or so for gas alone, plus more frequent car service and repairs).

There's a lot of fluff in my budget. First to go would be my wine club memberships. I only belong to three and SO to three, but each one is roughly $200-$300 4x per year. Next would be "luxury" food. I'd be eating a lot more beans and scouring the multiple grocery stores near us to find cheaper alternatives to the kinda pricey Icelandic yogurt I eat for breakfast and fancy cheese I put on my salads every day for lunch. We'd also stop, or at least cut back, on our Friday night dinners out. It's the only night we don't typically cook at home but we easily spend between $100-$150/week on those because we don't really think about cost. As far as streaming and subscriptions go, all of the streaming TV is paid for by SO since I don't watch TV except with him. I have pandora- $6/month, AllTrails-$16/year, Wapo-$20-something/year, iCloud $1/month. $10/month on average isn't much to cut so I'd probably keep all of that. I think that's it, so not a lot to reduce because really the only areas I splurge are food and wine, and travel. And travel isn't an ongoing expense so if I had to cut back on expenses I simply wouldn't plan any more.

The only other BIG expenses we have are the various renovation projects we've been doing but they were all paid for with cash on hand so it's not like we've put ourselves in debt that will still have to be dealt with if our finances change. We're doing a minor upgrade to the kitchen/downstairs bath next week that will probably run about $20k but after that we will be completely done with all planned projects except the master bath and that is going to have to wait until at least next year's bonus since this March I don't expect to get a particularly large one for various reasons. Overall, though, our house is solid, so there isn't much that will likely NEED to be done so if money gets tight we won't have many unexpected house expenses.

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Originally Posted by happystuff

I'm thinking it would have to come from reminding family members to take short showers, wash full loads of clothes, turn off lights when they leave the room (2 minute rule), etc.

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Supposedly LED bulbs which is most of what most people use these days (me too though I have one fixture that isn't) use so little electricity that it's hardly worth thinking about (I suppose might be virtuous to do out of principle, but I suspect we are talking pennies in terms of savings). Big appliances of course do use a decent amount of energy.

Interesting responses, thanks.

I think more than half the battle is just knowing what you could cut if you had to. Like the friend I chatted with that inspired this post, a lot of people seem to not have thought about the topic much, if at all. For sure enjoy whatever you’re spending on, but if you have to cut it, you have to cut it.

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Originally Posted by Tradd

Interesting responses, thanks.

I think more than half the battle is just knowing what you could cut if you had to. Like the friend I chatted with that inspired this post, a lot of people seem to not have thought about the topic much, if at all. For sure enjoy whatever you’re spending on, but if you have to cut it, you have to cut it.

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That's exactly why when I do my budget two of the major categories are "needs" and "wants". So if I have to cut back, all I have to do is chop the "wants."--and I always know exactly how much I have to earn per month before I go over the edge into a strictly needs-based household economy.

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Originally Posted by ApatheticNoMore

Supposedly LED bulbs which is most of what most people use these days (me too though I have one fixture that isn't) use so little electricity that it's hardly worth thinking about (I suppose might be virtuous to do out of principle, but I suspect we are talking pennies in terms of savings). Big appliances of course do use a decent amount of energy.

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Growing up my parents were obsessive about "TURN THE LIGHT OFF" when one left a room. I've finally gotten out of that habit since most of our lights are LEDs (we still have a few compact florescents, but the only old school incandescent is the light over the stove) and the amount of electricity they use is so minimal in comparison to incandescents like when I was a kid. In my office I could live without the lights, at least on sunny afternoons, but I always turn them on in the morning and leave them on until I'm done working. It's just part of the ritual that helps me keep work life separate from home life even though I work at home.

I seriously need to cut back my personal spending as I don't have any income coming in. Right now most of my money is going towards paying doctor co-pays and reaching my deductible, then my out-of-pocket medicals expenses. Part of me is in panic mode about where my life is right now, and the other part is grateful for all those years of scrimping and saving so I can finance this.

My car insurance is due next week - I've always paid 6 months at a time but now that I am driving the much-nicer car my mom gifted me, the insurance is a LOT more than my old Suburu Forester. I owe $565 next week if I pay it all, or $94/month if I pay it monthly. I think mentally I will just suck it up and pay the total so I don't have to see the $94 get withdrawn every month.

I am going to negotiate with K. about reducing by a little the amount I give him every month to help pay for the mortgage/cell phone expenses. I am also going to negotiate what I pay on one of my medical bills monthly and have them add to the running total without the monthly payment going up because I now I am going to have two more hefty bills coming in soon for some testing that I had done in the last two weeks. I'll probably put those on a payment plan as well for now.

I think I am going to end up in over $5000 in medical debt when it's all said and done. It's a VERY uncomfortable position to be in and I am having a hard time dealing with it.