Shaving
I know of a popular personal finance blogger or two who hate mint.com. They worry about security, or claim that one can get the same information in an Excel sheet.
Hmmm…I use Excel sheets for lots of things related to personal finance, but none of them are able to tell me how many dollars I spent on every last category over any spread of time I choose. So, Mint.com, I am going to dedicate this post to you, because you are the reason I can easily gauge whether my frugal tactics are making an overall or long term difference in my budget. You allow me to cut out other variables, like unavoidable and unexpected medical copays and let me focus on the things that really matter. Like how much I spent on onions.
-In the last year we dropped Comcast Internet and picked up AT&T Internet + Home phone, saving $16 a month on Internet, while getting a landline thrown in. This was nice because the roof of our then-apartment had no insulation, but did appear to be lined in lead dental aprons, hence no cell phone reception.
Image: Kagan McLeod
-Now that we had unlimited incoming/local calls, and could use a calling card at 1.5 cents/minute for long-distance, it didn’t make sense to keep our $84/month cell phone plan with 1000 minutes. We switched to Tracfone, and pay as we go. Between always using a coupon to get bonus minutes, buying a phone with “free” double minutes for life, and being very conservative about not blabbing on the cell phones, we now pay about $21/month. (Surprisingly, my husband now uses more minutes than I do. I only spend about $8/month on my cell phone. Heeheee, “strong silent type” my foot!)
These two decisions have taken us from $147/month for mobile phones and Internet to $79 for mobile/house phones and Internet. That is a $68/month savings, or $816 annually.
Similarly, we bought a house last year with a mortgage/tax/insurance cost only $60 higher than our rental property. Between not having to save for a down payment and pay rent anymore, building equity every month, and getting tax deductions, we thought things would work out, even though news on my husband’s employment was all doom and gloom. The only areas of concern were a.) having to pay for emergency repairs ourselves, and b.) possibly higher utilities because of an extra 200 square feet, larger washing machine, and extra bathroom.
Mint.com helped me calculate exactly what we were paying per month for gas and electric at both houses. Rental house: Gas/$120 per month, Electric/$150 per month. (In December we had a $500 gas bill, despite keeping the heat low and insulating all the windows and doors.) Our house: Gas/$93 per month, Electric/$77. We also went from paying $125/month for water and sanitation to paying $33 for sanitation and $0 for our delicious well water.
| Utilities | Rental | Our House |
| Gas | $120 | $94 |
| Electric | $150 | $77 |
| Water | $100 | $0 |
| Sanitation | $25 | $33 |
| Annual Total | $4740 | $2448 |
In total, I can see that just utilities alone were ~$2300 higher each year. Throw in the fact that our property tax and mortgage interest will push us above the standard deduction for the first time, by about $4,000, and we’ll save an additional $1200 in taxes.
So, besides living in a nice warm house where we can actually replace faulty things with functioning versions (unlike our Old World landlord who would “fix” 50 year old faucets as often as necessary), we are coming out $3500 ahead because we own. And that extra $60/month? We just refinanced at a lower rate, and after we recoup our costs in five months, we’ll be spending the same as we did to rent. (Less actually…renter’s insurance was $145/year, not included in the rent.)
One last gloat: our utilities will be even lower this year because we just replaced the windows on the house (with a $1300 tax credit to bring the cost down to $1700), so we can expect our gas bill to drop by about $14/month, or $168 annually. Being able to clean our own now-double hung/actually openable windows will save another $100 annually on window washing. Assuming we did not recoup any of that cost in resale, it would take us 6.4 years to break even. This also assumes we don’t place any value on being able to open our windows in our no-AC house, clean them more than once a year, keep out insects, or escape during a fire.
The beauty of a program like Mint.com is being able to see progress (or the lack thereof) on any front. I can see what I’m spending on groceries + restaurants each month, but also over time. This is like weighing oneself every day and taking the weekly average. It really reduces the ability to lie to oneself and say, “Oh, this is just a heavy day” or “unusually expensive month.” If I’m routinely sneaking take-out and fancy prepared foods, it’ll show up on both the scale, and mint.com.
So, here is what I have determined my attempts to shave communication expenses and utilities have resulted in: $4584 post-tax, or $6366 before taxes. If I look some more, I’m sure I could determine how much reusing Ziplocs, buying most clothing/toys/books used, and cooking 95% of our food from scratch saves. However, Mint says that my family spends ~20% of the IL average on “Food and Dining”, meaning groceries + restaurants + snacks, etc. 93% of our food spending is at the grocery store. The IL average is 24% of the food budget being spent at the grocery store. We spend about 11% of what the average IL family spends to clothe themselves.
Can you see why I love Mint? (Okay, fine. What I really mean is, “Can you see why Mint makes me love myself (and The Tightwad Gazette) more?”)
Next post: how my attempts to become a SAHM lead me to become a more efficient wage earner.
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