Tips for Successful Personal Finances
With Thanksgiving around the corner, I wanted to express my gratitude to all my readers.
It’s time for change and I have made the decision to stop writing this newsletter. I have enjoyed all the readers feedback, suggestions, and the friends I have made over the many years. But it’s time for me to move on.
Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving and a Joyous and Healthy Holiday Season!
I want to share with you my top 5 list of what we have done with our finances over the years that have taken us from being in debt to having a safety net for our fina
nces.
I wrote this so that you can know what is possible. Start today and make changes so that you can achieve your goals. For us, this was not something that we did overnight, it took many years of making small changes to get to where we are now.
If you have been following my posts in July, you see what we have done to simplify our lives. This is always a priority for me.
Did any of tips inspire you to make a change? What have you done? What did you do that we haven’t yet? I am always learning something new from my readers.
I would love to hear from you. Tell me what you’ve done. Tell me what you like to learn more about with your finances.
This stay at home time, we have made changes to our routine. Bills are still coming in and some are higher, but income stayed the same or was even reduced. Something h
ad to change.
For our electric bill that went up (even more now with summer air conditioning), we unplugged. Think shutting the strips on the TV ‘s when not in use, unplugging the computers and printers when not is use, unplugging the kitchen appliances, and more. By doing this we have reduce our bill by about $15 a month. AARP has an article on lowering your electric bill during summer.
Previously, we have reduced our cable bill, by reducing it to basic TV service and internet. Now we add whatever paid service that works for us – and only one at a time. We have smart TV’s and can access programming through the internet apps that are free. We use our local library’s digital collection for free. Right now, we are using Sling TV for other channels. In total, we spend about $110 a month total, by reducing the cord. Hopefully, one day we can totally cut the cord!
We have also not renewed most magazine subscriptions and cancelled memberships. For our warehouse club, I had to go into our profile and uncheck automatic renewal. If you do this, remember to check that you are not being automatically being changed when you shouldn’t be.
How many times have you gone out and made a purchase only to come home to find out that you already had the item? This used to be us. 
Simplifying the kitchen is good thing makes what we need easier to locate when needed. Simplifying and organizing has been our mission. Now our kitchen cabinets and grouped together – one shelf for condiments, one for soups and other canned goods, one for pastas, etc. Kitchen cabinets a mess. Items put on any shelf and not grouped together.
Now it’s so much easier to see what is needed before going shopping and not may unnecessary purchases (all while saving money).
Next, we are simplifying by getting iod of items the are one-time use items.
What items are in our kitchen that we only use for one purpose. These are taking up space and we can do without these. Think apple slicer, we can cut the apple with a knife. Th
ink popsicle molds, how many times have I used them. I can only think of one time. We are working our way through the cabinets and drawers in our home. How many of these items do you have in your home?
Items are piling up and will be ready to donate soon.
Simplifying the kitchen is good thing and makes what we need easier to locate when needed. 
During this stay at home time, we have begun getting rid of duplicates. Really, how many potato peelers can one kitchen need? Not to mention the hamburger flippers, ladles and more.
We have begun going through the process of cleaning out the kitchen cabinets and drawers. I can’t believe how much we have accumulated over the years. Maybe, its time to pretend we are moving and do a deep cleaning? Think about all the money we have wasted with buying these items! It’s time to think save money instead of buying another item.
We have made choices in our lives to do things ourselves and not pay for the service. It’s a personal choice that we are happy with.
With that in mind, I want to share with you what we personally don’t spend money or reduce our spending on in our household.
Our Home:
By doing these things ourselves, we save money each and every month that we can use in a variety of ways (reduce debt, increase savings).
If you have followed my blog, you know that we do projects around our home all the time. We typically a yearly list to do.
With more time on our hands and being a homeowner, means there is always a project / improvement that needs to be done, some by us and others by professionals.
Our first project this year was to replace the grass between the road and sidewalk with plants. 
Delivery trucks parking on the sidewalk and the salt from the winter storms always made this grassy area a mess. Our hosta plants needed to be split, so this solved the problem. We removed the grass and placed weed block down, added the plants and completed it with mulch. No cost to us, just labor over two weekends.
Next, we starting to replace fence panels. We are still doing this ourselves, by replacing a panels or two when we have a few hours and the weather cooperates. We’ll do what we can and at a slow pace. It sounds easier than it is, because it’s not only replacing the panel, we need to breakdown and transport the old panel to the town’s transfer waste station.
As you know, home improvement projects and maintenance are easier to do now versus having a major emergency home improvement project later.
With more time on my hands, I got to thinking about what I could reduce or eliminate to save money. Honestly, I always think about this. For me, it comes down to spend that money now on something or save it for later.
What items do I purchase that I could use another option? Here are some of the things I have changed in our house:
How much can you save by making small changes?