The balance between paying down debt and savings

[iris lilies]

@Tybee

Did you find any subscriptions to cancel?

have you heard of that commercial service that will cancel subscriptions for you? It’s advertised on Podcasts. Whenever I hear them, I think good Lord, do people have so many subscriptions you can’t track them?

I just canceled a streaming subscription to STARZ yesterday. I had signed up for it two days prior. There’s nothing in that channel that’s worth, watching other than the one production I signed up for.

I have two permanent streaming subscriptions, Prime and Netflix. Those are huge and provide tons of content. Those, plus an occasional dip into HBO Max or one of the British subscriptions works for me.

As for text subscriptions, I subscribe to National Review and I think I’m going to start up a subscription to the Free Press.

at the moment I have a subscription to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that is free and will kick in a cost in about a month, but I’m not sure I’m gonna go with it. Still, I will say this for the STL PD: they apparently are not covering national news much at all and I think that’s where they should be, concentrating on regional news.

we also subscribe to our town’s weekly newspaper.

[Tradd]

have you heard of that commercial service that will cancel subscriptions for you? It’s advertised on Podcasts. Whenever I hear them, I think good Lord, do people have so many subscriptions you can’t track them?

I just canceled a streaming subscription to STARZ yesterday. I had signed up for it two days prior. There’s nothing in that channel that’s worth, watching other than the one production I signed up for.

I have two permanent streaming subscriptions, Prime and Netflix. Those are huge and provide tons of content. Those, plus an occasional dip into HBO Max or one of the British subscriptions works for me.

As for text subscriptions, I subscribe to National Review and I think I’m going to start up a subscription to the Free Press.

at the moment I have a subscription to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that is free and will kick in a cost in about a month, but I’m not sure I’m gonna go with it. Still, I will say this for the STL PD: they apparently are not covering national news much at all and I think that’s where they should be, concentrating on regional news.

we also subscribe to our town’s weekly newspaper.

IL, if you were in a financial tight spot, would you be willing to get rid of all or most of the subscriptions to free up money? I was talking to a few friends at church yesterday about this. One guy said he would love to just slash this stuff, but the whining of the wife and kids would be relentless.

[Tradd]

I cancelled Apple News+. It was really nice, but I think I’ll just go back to getting my local news from the radio and everything else from BBC Radio or their website.

[iris lilies]

IL, if you were in a financial tight spot, would you be willing to get rid of all or most of the subscriptions to free up money? I was talking to a few friends at church yesterday about this. One guy said he would love to just slash this stuff, but the whining of the wife and kids would be relentless.

Of course. I didn’t START any of these subscriptions, with the exception of the local newspaper, until I had a couple million in the bank.

I can be black belt frugal when necessary.

I laugh about our cable-less life for decades. We never wired our former house for cable TV service because we did not use it, but I always worried about that for selling it. But by the time we sold it, cable tv service was outdated, there was no need for it.

we do have cable TV service in Hermann though, because the surrounding hills block any broadcast waves coming in. I do not watch it, but DH does.

[Tybee]

oooo! Keep us informed and how much you like your new doctor. I called mine “a direct care physician “because that’s how she advertises her services. I pay a little less than $1000 a year. She expanded her practice and it covers a few towns now. The last few times I’ve been to the doctor office I see the nurse practitioner, but that’s fine with me, I’m not a very sophisticated user of healthcare services.

The last time I talked to her via email she said she was booked about a week out. That’s not very much in my mind. I can always get into see a nurse practitioner within a day or two.

Will do. Mine is what you called yours--she is also a "direct primary care physician." She does some procedures free such as knee injections. It is a hundred dollars a month. I have to call and make an appointment to discuss the results of all these tests I've had this year.

[catherine]

My issue is that the way it makes me feel and the way it makes DH feel are totally different. To try to get him to understand the impact debt is having on our quality of life (particularly mine, because I'm the one working to service it), I went onto Ramsey's free "EverydayDollar" site, where you can construct your budget in a very user-friendly way. I input the money we will be getting in in November, and I prefilled the fixed expenses for him, and I asked him to simply go in and fill in the discretionary expenses, matching the expenditures against the income.

Well, he came in whining that he in't understand it. "Why are things so hard?? What's wrong with paper and pencil??" I told him, of course paper and pencil are fine, but that means you have to constantly adjust manually which is a major pain. "I think we should do this together." he whined.

Not to continue the hijack of Tradd's thread, but to folow-up on this earlier post, DH and I had a 2 hour budget meeting last night!! And we didn't have any fights. We did use the EveryDollar Dave Ramsey free budget program, because it's a lot more user-friendly than my YNAB program. We went through every category discussing it, and his takeaway was exactly what I hoped for--that we are spending beyond our means.

I thanked him and hugged him and while I know there will be a fairly steep learning curve if we manage to continue collaborating on this, it's all good! We'll have a much better chance of digging ourselves out of the hole and working towards a reasonable retirement, financially-speaking.

And actually this does tie back to the OP because today I am going to work on getting rid of some subscriptions.

[Tybee]

oh thank you for the report--just this morning I have been working on November in the Everydollar app and was thinking I would ask my husband to help me with my budgeting--I am just budgeting my money on there, not his income and not what he pays for4--but maybe he will get an idea of just how far money does not go these days--like I am paying 24% of my income on medical stuff.

I like the feature that gives you those percentages of what categories you are spending in.

[Tradd]

Not to continue the hijack of Tradd's thread, but to folow-up on this earlier post, DH and I had a 2 hour budget meeting last night!! And we didn't have any fights. We did use the EveryDollar Dave Ramsey free budget program, because it's a lot more user-friendly than my YNAB program. We went through every category discussing it, and his takeaway was exactly what I hoped for--that we are spending beyond our means.

I thanked him and hugged him and while I know there will be a fairly steep learning curve if we manage to continue collaborating on this, it's all good! We'll have a much better chance of digging ourselves out of the hole and working towards a reasonable retirement, financially-speaking.

And actually this does tie back to the OP because today I am going to work on getting rid of some subscriptions.

I would NOT consider your posts a hijack of my thread! It’s good to hear from people in similar situations.

Frugal Queen has another video on budgeting while you’re paying down debt. I write everything out yesterday, including things like car/renters insurance that aren’t paid monthly. I was sort of astonished at just how few things I have to pay. I did NOT include diving as that comes out of what is left over and for the next six months, the only diving expense would be gas to get there and air fills. Maybe once a month.

Payday today. Threw about another $1K at the debt. The amount is very low 5 figures.

[Tradd]

I forgot to add:

Christmas is taken care of. $30 spent on a gift for my teenaged goddaughter. I’ll throw in a nice blank journal from my stash (she writes a lot). Christmas cards/stamps already done. They were budgeted for months ago. I am spending T’giving and a Christmas with goddaughter’s extended family. I will spend maybe $25 for each holiday on food I bring with me.

[Tybee]

Wow, that's great planning Tradd. And congratulations so much on another 1k at the debt!!!!