At Rural Ways we are always looking for ways to reduce our expenses. The lower our monthly outflow, the less we need to earn and/or save to maintain our household. I had an unspoken goal of $1500 for our monthly expenses. (And by monthly expenses, I mean everything. Every penny that it takes for Rural Ways to exist each month.) And, I had an untested assumption that we were close to that. Unfortunately, assumptions often don't stand a closer look. Today, I took a hard look at the numbers and came up with something more like $2000. I would think that with a couple of spending tweaks and some better accounting, we could be at or below $2000 per month consistently. As for $1500 per month, that is a pipe dream right now. A 25% reduction won't come easily even for Rural Ways' somewhat frugal lifestyle. Anyway, it is not a bad goal and there are a couple of things to look at. First, the electric bill continues to be higher than it could be. Second, we need to rethink our insurance position in a couple of areas. (More on that later.)
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Hard Truth About Expenses
At Rural Ways we are always looking for ways to reduce our expenses. The lower our monthly outflow, the less we need to earn and/or save to maintain our household. I had an unspoken goal of $1500 for our monthly expenses. (And by monthly expenses, I mean everything. Every penny that it takes for Rural Ways to exist each month.) And, I had an untested assumption that we were close to that. Unfortunately, assumptions often don't stand a closer look. Today, I took a hard look at the numbers and came up with something more like $2000. I would think that with a couple of spending tweaks and some better accounting, we could be at or below $2000 per month consistently. As for $1500 per month, that is a pipe dream right now. A 25% reduction won't come easily even for Rural Ways' somewhat frugal lifestyle. Anyway, it is not a bad goal and there are a couple of things to look at. First, the electric bill continues to be higher than it could be. Second, we need to rethink our insurance position in a couple of areas. (More on that later.)
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yeah....those reality check things are tough. We started tracking our expenses diligently a few years ago and it was a pretty big shock to see what we were actually spending compared to what we thought we should be spending.
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