Supper Planning Anyone?

I've been watching the family budget and looking for additional ways to save. A few ideas have popped in my head that I'll pursue however one really stood out. I enjoy cooking on occasion and I wondered if there were ways to link my passion for saving money with my enjoyment of cooking.

Quick numbers: If the average family meal runs around $20.00 the cost to feed the family runs over $1800.00 per month! A large number for sure. Is $20.00 the correct amount to use per meal, I'm not sure just yet. Dropping the average cost to $10.00 per meal would slice the cost in half and may save $900.00 per month. Is it possible? Will the family rebel? Or can we make a deal and share the savings with a pay for performance approach?

Annual Escrow Statement

We received an exciting item in the mail yesterday. Our annual escrow statement indicated our account had an overage. Included with the escrow statement was a check for $1,465.46! Talk about an unexpected and nice surprise!

Even better, to avoid incurring a overage going forward, the mortgage company is reducing our house payment by $97.56 per month starting in May. Now that's a huge amount to add to our snowflake account.

Encouraged by this sudden reduction on our house payment we have challenged ourselves to reduce our homeowners insurance costs by at least 10%, and to give serious thought to refinancing our home.

Homeowners Insurance, an Annual Review

While visiting with some friends last weekend one of our discussions centered around the cost of homeowners insurance. My friend has a significantly lower annual premium compared to ours premium so I decided to begin reviewing my policy and shopping to compare my rate.

In my research I found a website that caught my attention because it is to the point and the author seems very knowledgeable.

http://www.castlerockagency.com/how-much-should-i-insure-my-home-for.html

If you're like us, you probably rushed around to insure the property as part of the financing closing process and you may not have looked at your policy or the premium since then. We think that is a mistake and that we should review our policy as part of an annual review process.

We'll keep you posted on our findings and hopefully our savings!

No Savings on our DVR Fees

Our attempt to save on our monthly cable fees fees did not go the way we anticipated. We received the DRV unit and set it up. It is just about identical to the one we currently have. Unfortunately, per the cable company, the unit must be from their inventory with the serial number on file for the unit to work. This savings effort was a complete bust! (Next time we'll call before we purchase.)

Undaunted, we called the cable company on the rate we have been paying, $113.00, verses the one advertised, $99.95. Per the individual we spoke with the $99.95 rate is only for one year and then the rate goes to $129.95 per month. After a bit of back and forth the cable company agreed to upgrade the speed on our internet, from 7 Mbps to 20 Mbps, and reduce our bill by $5.00 per month.

We gladly took the deal. It's about a year payback on the DVR so we'll consider this effort a wash and we will not include the savings in our snowflake account or in our monthly results tracking.

Clean Sweep

At long last the storage unit has been emptied out and now we can sock away an additional $179.22 per month into our snowflake account. Even better, we can start saving this amount starting in February.

This is our largest savings accomplishment to date. Oddly enough once we got started the effort to clear both the garage and the storage unit was not as bad as we thought it would be. Perhaps it was the though of the savings that kept us motivated.

Looking for Savings on Cable TV

Our cable company has an offer which includes phone, cable, and high speed internet for $109.00 per month. This caught our interest since we have been sending them $140.00 per month for just about 2 years now. A quick review of our bill shows a the base fee of $113.00 plus some additional fees for DVR Service, 7.95, and DVR Smart Box, 6.95. The remaining difference includes taxes and fees. We called the company to see what the difference was in service. No Difference!!! The agent indicated this price is only for "New Customers". We let the subject drop however we hinted that we may cancel service. He did not flinch.

The thought of getting ripped off has been bothering us so we went online to check the facts. Via the internet you can purchase the same package for $99.95. That's a $13.05 per month savings with no change at all.

Motivated by our find we decided to see if we can purchase a DVR to save the $6.95 per month as well. We found the exact model we currently use on eBay for $50.00 plus $14.80 in shipping. It gets better..... Prior to finding this listing we received a pop up for a 10% savings if we use paypal to make the purchase. We could not resist. The box and shipping ran us $59.80.

So here's the plan. We'll call the cable company and tell them we want the $99.95 deal. If they say no we'll tell them to cancel my service and to schedule service for a new customer the same day. (We have one concern, is there an installation fee?)

If there is no installation fee, and if the cable company goes for the switch, and if we can use the box we'll enjoy a three month payback on the DVR. Then we can bank $20.00 per month of true savings. That's $240.00 annualized and nothing to sneeze at.

Our Last Orthodontia Payment...For Now

After two years of payments we are about to pay off our oldest son's orthodontia bill. Fortunately for us our orthodontist does not charge interest on the payment plan. Starting in February we will have an additional $108.00 per month. Since these payments have been part of our ongoing expenses we will include the amount of the payment amount in our snowflake account. That is until we start making payments on the orthodontia work for our next oldest son.

If you your employer offers a Flexible Spending Account or "cafeteria plan" we highly recommend you include a portion of the orthodontia fees in your annual plan election. Since orthodontic treatment is provided over an extended period of time, with an initial examination and installation, and monthly adjustments. There are Internal Revenue Service rules for reimbursement of eligible expenses through a Flexible Spending Account. The basic set of rules consist of the following:

• An individual may only be reimbursed for expenses incurred while a participant is in the plan.
• An expense is incurred when the service is performed not when it is billed or paid.
• The participant must submit documentation showing that the service has been provided.
• The expense must be reimbursed from funds allocated for the plan year in which the expense was incurred. Expenses or unused funds cannot be carried over to a different plan year.
• Claims for orthodontia expenses for adults must include a letter of medical necessity. Orthodontia treatment for adults is considered cosmetic and cosmetic services are not covered under flexible spending plans.

Storage Fees

A while ago we made an effort to fit two cars into our garage. In Florida, where we live, that is not very common since homes do not have basements for storage. The end result was a rented storage unit that is full of stuff and a garage that still only holds one car. Grrrr..... What a waste of money. Our goal over the next few weeks is to empty the storage unit and bring the stuff back and arrange it in the garage in an orderly fashion. The storage fees are $179.22 per month which includes tax and some other fees. This savings amount is pretty large and bump up our monthly snowflake account savings.

Sold!

We sold our extra car for $1,880.00 It was probably worth more however we decided to close the deal since the activity was slowing down. We don't consider this extra money part of our snowflake efforts so we'll place the proceeds in a different account. The insurance savings are definitely going into our snowflake account. Based on my call to Geico we will save $469.10 every six months or $78.18 per month.

Cell Phone Bill Reduction

We have a "family" cell phone plan that allows rollover minutes. We have 3 phones that are all linked together so we only receive one bill. I hardly use my phone and my wife does not use her phone very often. The majority of the use comes from my sons texting. As a result we never use all of our allowed minutes. A quick change on the cell phone providers website and poof, we are now saving an extra $10.00 per month. This savings will go right into our snowflake account.

Savings on Credit Monitoring

We use CreditKeeper (HSBC) to monitor our credit activity. The monthly fee was $9.95. We also use another service, True Credit, due to an error found on our TransUnion Credit report. The monthly fee for this service was $14.95. We decided to cancel CreditKeeper since it did not reflect the details we needed for TransUnion. After calling CreditKeeper to cancel the service they agreed to reduce the monthly fee to $6.95! That's a $3.00 per month savings or "snowflake". Since the TransUnion issue is resolved we decided to cancel True Credit and bank the $14.95 savings in our snowflake account along with the $3.00 detailed above.

XBox Live Savings

Our son plays XBox live nonstop. The monthly fee is $7.99 per month or $95.88 per year. By switching to an annual payment the fee drops to $49.99 per year or $4.16 per month. This a monthly savings of $3.82 per month. We'll schedule a monthly transfer of this amount to our snowflake account.

We're having flurries in Tampa!

Sell an Extra Car

We have an extra car the we rarely drive. Although it is paid off we pay a hefty monthly insurance premium for it to sit in the driveway. We listed the car on Autotrader.com for $79.00 which includes "advertising" until the car is sold.

Once we sell the car the decrease in our insurance payment will be added to our snowflake account.

Cutting Expenses and Banking the Savings (Snowflaking)

Snowflaking really means banking your savings. For example, let's say you have been paying $50.00 per month on your phone bill. If you find a better offer of $40.00 per month you now have a savings or snowflake of $10.00 per month. The idea is that you place the savings in a bank account with other snowflakes and the resulting "accumulation" can be used to make a big difference in your debt balance. A "snowflake account" is simply an account where you deposit your snowflake savings.

We believe the best place to begin finding monthly snowflake savings is in the list of items classified as "living expenses" in your Emergency Reserves calculation. Carefully review your recurring payments and determine what changes can be made to reduce or eliminate these expenses. The benefit in targeting these expenses is that they are recurring and as a result your savings grow quickly.

Is possible to save significant dollars without noticing a change in your lifestyle?