Last year I was able to successfully turn off my gas and save some money during the summer. I tried to do that again this year but my landlord was uncooperative. He didn’t want to go through the hassle of turning off the gas so I am forced to pay for gas through the summer even though I won’t be using it. I did manage to save a little through my attempt at turning off the gas. For the short period the gas bill reverted to the management company rather than me there was a smaller customer charge so I’ll save that little bit. I’m unhappy that I’m unable to do this and will be moving out at the end of my lease. Wherever I live next won’t have gas heat-at least not natural gas heat. More on my future living plans tomorrow.
Andy Hough
An Unexpected Windfall…That I’ll Probably Have to Return
When I logged into my latest bank account today I expected to see a bonus of $50 credited to my account. Instead there was a credit of $150. I don’t have the terms of the bank bonus with me but I believe they made an error and credited me for a larger bonus than I qualified for. I briefly thought about just waiting to see if they would catch the error or not. I really don’t think they would though. The bonus was entered by the person who opened my account and they probably just rely on that when determining what amount to credit. I decided to go ahead and let them know of the error though. I’m hoping that maybe I’m wrong and I did qualify for the larger bonus amount or maybe they’ll just let me keep it. If not and they take the money back that is okay because it wasn’t mine anyway. I’m frugal but I don’t compromise my ethics for financial gain.
Accelerating My Internship
My original plan was to work at my internship through the end of July. I’ve changed my mind and hope to wrap up my internship in the next two weeks. I just have to put in a total of a 120 hours to get full school credit for the internship. I should be able to work enough in the next week to get to that total.
I’ve changed my mind for several reasons. One is the gas cost of of making the 3 hour trip twice a week. Another is the limited time I have left to earn income. Another big one is less time to spend with my girlfriend. I knew of all these before I started my internship but thought by extending my internship I would gain exposure to more experiences. It now looks like there wouldn’t be any significant new experiences in the extra couple of weeks so I might as well wrap it up so I can get back home and get my finances back on track.
June Credit Score
My credit score for June is 710 down from 719 the month before. This is still a decent credit score but way down from the high of 781 earlier this year. I’m assuming this drop is due to the balance transfer I used to pay down one of my student loans. Since that was a couple of months ago my score should start stabilizing.
I get my credit score for free from my WaMu credit card which is about all that card is good for. I’m not particularly worried about my score since I don’t plan on borrowing any money other than student loans. Your credit score can affect other things though, such as your insurance rates, so it is good to maintain a high credit score even if you don’t plan to borrow money.
How I Couldn't Find $10,000 Per Year If I Had To
JLP at All Financial Matters posted how he could “find†an extra $13,000 per year if he had to and Flexo at Consumerism Commentary followed up with how he could find $10,000 per year if necessary. This led me to analyze how their “money-finding” techniques would work for me.
Since I only made slightly under $13,000 last year I obviously don’t have nearly the discretionary expenses they do. I’m always a little surprised at how much some personal finance bloggers spend on these kind of thing when they’re usually reminding people to control their spending. Of course, what seems an extravagant expense to someone making $13,000 can be a quite reasonable expense for someone several times as much. Let’s go ahead and compare expenses anyway.
Cable and Movies
I don’t have cable so I can’t save any money there. The only money I spend on this category is in going to the movies. By taking advantage of different promotions I can often go for free or for a low price. If I completely cut out going to the movies and limited my movie viewing to free rentals from Redbox I could save maybe $200 a year.
Meals and Dining Out
I only spend about $100 a month on food making it hard to cut much here but there are some changes that could be made. I could take home more free food from work, reduce or eliminate my soda consumption, eat even cheaper food than now, and eat less of it. I could save another $200 a year here.
Communication
I use a cell phone as my only phone. There is no land line to get rid of to save money. My monthly bill comes to about $36 with taxes. I could discontinue this and go back to my $7.08 a month phone plan but since I’m making more calls now it would probably cost me about $20 a month now if I limited my call time. This would be another $200 saved.
Live Entertainment
This is something I currently spend $0 on because I don’t particularly enjoy it. No money to be saved here.
Vacation
I spent a lot on vacation this year but don’t usually take a real vacation. Still, I could probably save $200 on vacation or other entertainment expenses.
Cds,DVDs, and Books
This is another category I spend little or no money on. When it comes to music I’m content to listen to whatever is on the radio. I can get DVDs and books for free from the library or elsewhere. In the vast majority of cases once I’ve watched a DVD or read a book I don’t feel a need to own it. If I want to read it or watch it again I’ll just borrow it again.
That makes a total of $800 for these categories. Maybe I could save another $200 somewhere to get the total up to $1,000 but I’m not sure where. There just isn’t much excess in my budget. Making these cuts would be difficult. I’m quite happy with my current expenditure level but if I were to reduce it much I think my life would be much less enjoyable.