Originally Posted By: Boomer
KInd of a tangential arguement but....the Wall Street Journal did a large survey some years back and noted that one characterisistic of people that have accumulated wealth is that they have extremely low subscription costs to electronic services. Low internet service bills, VERY cheap phone service, etc. This is on place where people throw away their retirement, their children's college education, etc.
It is a good habit to get into to MINIMIZE these services. I have a friend who went out and spent a huge sum of money on, I think, an I-Pad and then showed me that by holding it upside down in his kitchen with a certain program, it showed the night sky in whatever position he held the gizmo! I told him I'd go outside and look at the sky for nothing. If you can't agree on how money should be spent now, it ain't gonna get any better.
Boomer is right about this part RE: minimise service spendings. I've been keeping my spending as low as possible, examples:
(1) both myself and wifey opted out our national cell carrier for some smaller, more reasonable cell carrier services.
As a result: wifey currently pays 40bux+tax/mnth for unlimited text, voice and internet (on 3G, but not highspeed, no need for that part); I pay 15+tax/mnth on bare bone services (100mins daytime, 50txt/mnth). Occasionally I see my bill goes slightly beyond 20bux/mnth but that's mainly when I'm travelling outside and have to rely on roaming.
(2) we opted for a family deal of real analogue phone line (for security alarm monitoring), internet and internet-tv. TV is a bare-bone service of 26bux/mnth +tax, phone is about 26bux/mnth+tax, internet is 42+tax/mnth, which is paid back by wifey's company (she does quite a bit of telecommuting).
(3) I do 90%+ of the automobile servicing myself, and that typically works out to mainly oil changes, brake pads +rotors every 4 ~6yrs, etc. so the cost on maintenance is very, very low.
checking tire pressures, planning ahead RE: numerous short trips combine into 1, etc. works out very well as well.
(*my wifey owns the camry car due to that fact that she does 3x the travelling distance through hilly terrain to/from work than I do, and she cannot drive my M/T fit anways so what I ended up saving RE: small car on gas, goes to offset her on her 2.4L camry*)
(4) I'm on LED/CFL lighting scheme, so typically, with a family of 4 and a 2000sqft house (incl. cooking 4 old CRT Teles, laundry loads 3x a week, etc.) I averaged around 15kW/day of consumption.
(5) instead of my usual fancy cup of coffee from the nearby coffeeshop, I now saved that extra 3bux/day by getting a Melitta dripper and a small tin of coffee grounds. Works out to about 20cents/cup.
(6) I don't own any fancy toys (no urge for that): my PC is still my 7+yrs old Celeron socket 478 single core based, which serves me well and I intend to use it until mobo burns out. Ditto with my wifey's Athlon single core running Vista pro (for work also).
I don't own any additional "toys" that came straight out of my family's budget: our 46" LED HD TV was her company's Xmas gift, and we still running an old, hand-me-down Toshiba 720p upsampling DVD player with HDMI output (no blu-ray).
My audio gears are all at least 20+yrs old, mostly used stuff/home construction or through repair. Costs me nothing to own (other than electricity and an occasional turntable cartridge stylus replacement).
I don't have a large wardrobe of clothes (IT industry doesn't require you to dress up in a suit all the time), I only buy shoes every several years, we occasionally shop @ 2nd hand store for my kids clothing, etc.)
We don't eat out very often (maybe once every week, mostly cheep foods but not fast food); I cook @ home most of the time, we both doggiebag food or bring our own lunch, etc.
we have life and disability insurance on both.
With that kind of financial discipline: we managed to build up enough cash reserves that if one of us goes dire straits, we can still stay afloat for over 1 yr (while still paying for mortgage).
This is what our financial advisor called: financial discipline. This is what most modern Y-generations lacking of.
Q.
