Money Management, or LACK thereof

SO everyone understands money management in this day and age, or at least they should. If things are tight at your house, like they are in ours, here is something to think about.

What do you need?

By this I mean, what do you seriously need? For example: Shanon and I are smart phone users. We love them! They are convenient, we get all our email, use our favorite apps, anytime and anywhere we want. However, what do we really NEED from a phone? I would assume at it's most basic we need calling, right? We have a laptop and a desktop computer, so do we really NEED all of these features on our phones? The painful answer is NO. We are now in the process of trading in our Droids, and reducing our monthly bill by 52%. Thats just nuts.

What about other areas? Setting up automatic payments with companies definitely is convenient, but you can get in trouble if you are not paying attention. For instance, our cable company. We have had automatic payments set up with them since we moved here back in 2010. We had how much it was monthly, and it has been deducted from our bank account every month since then. BUT-What about after the 12 month promotional period ends? Yeah, pretty painful. Did you know that they can change your bill, add new fees, and still just automatically deduct them from your account? We weren't paying attention. Its tough to admit, but it's the truth. Our bill practically doubled, and did so many months ago. new "converter" fees, and the non-promotional pricing drove the bill up by almost $90.

This is a challenge. Take a look at your monthly bills. Especially if you have auto payments. What do you need? NOT WANT, NEED.