Madison MoneySports - Personal Finance Thread

[V1GiLaNtE]

I've been working on reducing monthly costs and things that I have and don't use. This is both a finance and wellness thing.

Donated about half of my closet that didn't fit or I didn't wear so I can work on getting decent clothes for once. Selling my video game consoles, parts I have lying around, random things that I don't use. Tossing what I don't want to sell. Really trying to minimize things.

My insurance came out to be $300 for 3 cars last month, so I did some shopping and now I have it down to $90 a month with Geico for the track car and the truck. Paid off my phone, dropped my plan and took off insurance and dropped my phone bill from $130 to $60 a month. Cancelled Netflix a while back and I'm in the process of trying to find where I'm also spending money without realizing. Fast food is probably the biggest.

Good for you! You've probably found how freeing it is to offload "stuff". I've been working through minimizing my things for the last 7 years or so. Continuously curating my possessions and selling or donating things I never used or probably won't ever use. It really forces you to be honest and real with yourself and not emotional/sentimental about things. Like I used to have a box full of random computer cables because I told myself "I might need these one day" when in reality they had been traveling with me since college. Time to go!

I was tracking my spending for a long time utilizing a spreadsheet, but recently just downloaded the app "Every Dollar". I'm curious to see if that will be a better system for me. You're headed in the right direction figuring out where your money is going. This will help you long term to reduce your spending.

I went sober for the month of April knowing that I was spending like $200/month on booze and wanted to challenge myself both from the financial POV and wellness POV. Having wrapped up that challenge I'm definitely going to dramatically reduce my alcohol consumption and maintain a more mindful approach to drinking. I got to save more money and not feel like ass.

My challenge for May is to allow myself 1 "non-essential" purchase at a dollar cap of $50. For example an upgrade for the 4Runner, a new book, any sort of gadgety item, etc.  Basically forcing myself to really evaluate something and my need/desire for it. Can I do with out it? 

Check out /r/personalfinance for some great reading!