5-6: cheaper living expenses

This post is a continuation of the post 10 ways to reduce your monthly expenses. Here are numbers five and six on the list, and how we accomplished them.

5.  Switch to a cheaper cell phone plan

When Alex started his business, we determined that he’d be on the phone a lot, so we decided we’d need unlimited cell phone minutes. We were paying about $170/month for a big name cell phone company. We switched to StraightTalk, and now pay only $90/month for unlimited talk, text, and data. We have experienced a slight cut in service, but nothing we can’t deal with for the price cut.

6. Minimize rent/mortgage payment

This is another one we didn’t do after Alex moved in, rather, I did it when I moved into the apartment. I picked an apartment with a fairly low monthly rent, even though the apartment isn’t the biggest/nicest apartment I could have gotten. Keeping that payment low has really helped us control our monthly expenses. We currently live in a 1-br apartment, and have worked really hard to minimize our stuff to be able to stay here as long as possible. It's easily saving us more than $300/month to not rent a 2 or 3-br apartment. If you have a mortgage payment, it might be worth looking into refinancing to minimize the payment.

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