One of the first pieces of advice I garnered from Dave Ramsey (more on him in later posts), is to find out where all the money goes. It seemed for years that no matter how much money I made, I never had any at the end of the month to save.

When I got serious about my finances, I sat down and swore to track my income and expenses, and make a budget. I was more than a little surprised to find out where all the money goes.

• Gym membership I never used
• 5 magazines (annual renewals) that I never read
• Breakfast and coffee each day
• Eating out at lunch each day
• Satellite TV channels I never watched.

Etc. etc.

Shock Happens

I was shocked at what was going out. It amounted to about 20% of my take-home at the time. And these were just the things that I was doing, I hadn’t talked to the spouse about what she was spending. Between the both of us, a shocking amount of income trickled through our fingers.

That was the first ‘low-hanging-fruit’ changes that we made to start taking control of our finances. By cutting channels (different satellite package), taking lunch, bringing coffee, and a few other BASIC changes, we were able to reclaim a large part of the money flowing out. It took some getting used to, (Starbucks does make some good coffee) but with a little perseverence, it became habit, then the routine.

I’d challenge the reader to take a look at a month’s worth of expenditures and see if there were any ‘low-hanging-changes’ that you could make to trim back the lifestyle.