The 10 Things You Really Don’t Need

If you have debt – not counting a mortgage – you should be thinking about all the ways you can pay it down as soon as possible.

Credit card debt, credit lines, student loans, car loans, financed appliances, TVs, furniture are all game and should be considered a financial emergency!

People ask me what they should do when they have these type of short-term debt obligations. They say, “How am I supposed to save and invest when I have all this debt I need to pay off? Investing for my future isn’t even possible now. I can’t do it!”

I understand people are in that situation. And if it’s not ourselves, we have friends and family who are. I see it first hand. They complain to me that they don’t have any extra money to accelerate debt payoff.

But then we take a look at their lifestyle and we discover they live a much more fancy and consumer-centric life than Mr. Everyday Dollar!

I tell them there’s an easy solution but it’s not painless: cut expenses as soon as possible.

Then they tell me, “But everything is cut to the bone! There’s nothing left to cut! Am I supposed to eat cat food?!” One friend said this to me while we were in her kitchen, as I watched her fork $100 over to the cleaning lady!

With more prodding, I typically find these people have lives and homes bulging with unnecessary things. These are the things that suck the everyday dollars out of their wallets. And the same dollars that can be used to pay off those loans, start an emergency fund, and invest for your future!

What can we cut? Let’s start with these 10 things:

1. Landlines

Young whippersnappers might not even know what a landline is. Older folks certainly do and seem to have a hard time giving them up, even if they have a cell phone. If we’re looking to pare down our lifestyles and our expenses, it makes sense to give up the landline.

If we own a landline and can not give it up, we should look into cheaper options.

If you have internet service, a solution like Ooma or OBi are sleek Voice over IP (VOIP) devices that offer free home phone service forever. You’re on the hook for the initial equipment costs – around $150 for Ooma and $75 for OBi - but then only pay local taxes so it pays for itself in a few months!

2. A Smartphone

The Sexy iPhone 5

Before you go throwing things at Mr. Everyday dollar, first know that having a smartphone will cost you $16,000. And that’s just for phone service. What about the apps that we buy? Apple sold over $10 billion dollars of apps in 2012! Everyday dollars slipping out of our electronic wallets…

I understand the convenience and allure of smartphones because I had one. In fact, in keeping with my clutter-free lifestyle, I even salivate over the fact that a smartphone can replace multiple devices like an iPod, phone, GPS and digital camera.

But I also think smartphones can have a deleterious affect on our lives. The constant stream of information, emails, tweets and texts cause us anxiety and even guilt when we aren’t working or tapping away on our phones.

The devices that causes this hectic way of living aren’t a necessity, they’re a choice, financially and otherwise.

3. More Than One Laptop or Tablet

Why is this necessary? I have a friend that has a laptop, a gaming desktop, an Ultrabook, two iPads and a Kindle. And I’m sure there are more devices, long forgotten, squirreled away in a closet or drawer.

We should be able to make do with one system. I have a MacBook and I use it for everything – reading books, recipes in the kitchen and streaming music and movies to the TV.

We should be able to decide what one device we need and then sell all the other devices.

4. More Than One TV

Some of us have a TV in every room, bathrooms and kitchens included. We should be able to make do with one TV.

You know, the only thing our bedrooms should be used for is sleeping and doing the nasty.

5. Cable or Satellite TV

Streaming Netflix

Netflix, Hulu and an Over The Air (OTA) antenna should cover all our entertainment needs.

I hook up my laptop to my TV for an awesome experience. You can also do this with a Roku or Apple TV for a low-cost way to get streaming media to the TV.

6. Books/CDs/DVDs

It’s called the library folks!

7. The Morning/Afternoon/Evening Starbucks

You know who you are. This doesn’t have to be Starbucks either. Maybe it’s a Mountain Dew from the vending machine or a bag of Doritos from the cafeteria.

Whatever it is, these are everyday dollars that slowly slip out of our wallets on a daily basis. Perhaps give up soda and switch to water. Or try brewing kombucha.

It’s not a dollar here or dollar is the end of the world, but it’s when we become dependent on buying these items regularly that it adds up to shockingly large amounts of money.

8. Meals at Restaurants

Pizza and Vino

We know they cost more money than preparing meals at home so let’s try scaling this back. I typically eat out twice a month: once for lunch and once for dinner. You know what happens? Eating out becomes a fun experience and not a normal everyday thing.

We can prepare great meals at home, like the famous Mr. Everyday Dollar pizza!

9. More Than One Car

Even with a family I think we should be able to get by on one car.

It might mean moving closer to work or choosing housing close to public transportation. The ultimate goal? Owning no vehicles. But even Mr. Everyday Dollar thinks that’s impractical for most of us.

The more cars we have the more of our everyday dollars go towards gas, oil changes, maintenance, car insurance and speeding tickets.

10. A House Bigger Than 1,500 Square Feet

A big house has all the traps of spending way more money than necessary so let’s find something around 1,500 square feet.

Bigger houses mean bigger everything: heating and cooling bills, property tax bills, mortgages, and maintenance and repair bills.

It means more furniture and crap we buy to fill it up with. It means we need to pay someone to clean it because it takes too much time to do it ourselves. So let’s not get trapped in a bigger house!

Jane Savers

I fail at eating take out food but I would argue that I have negotiated a great cable/internet/phone rate and I can’t afford to do anything else so tonight I am watching two multi-millionaires (Oprah and Lance Armstrong) chat about cheating and I would miss cable tv if it were gone. I know you disagree but I don’t drink or smoke or go on vacations so I am keeping cable. My cable/internet/landline costs me 7 hours of work per month.
I do have a cell phone but it is not very smart and it costs me just $100 per year.
- http://mreverydaydollar.com/ Mr. Everyday Dollar
  
  I love that you figured out the time cost of your cable/internet/land-line package! I remember doing this from a young age: my first job at age 15 was washing dishes for $4.25/hour and I would calculate if I really wanted to work 4 hours for that Hootie & The Blowfish CD. It puts things in perspective.
- http://www.watermelonpunch.com/ watermelonpunch
  
  Well I think the gist of it is that if you need (or even want) to maintain a budget, and can’t do so “having it all” – you have to set priorities. Eating take out and cable tv – not strictly necessary. But lots of things are not STRICTLY necessary.
  
  But if you want to save money, you decide what unnecessary things are really important (for sanity! lol)
  Like someone else trying to budget… maybe would rather ditch the
  cable tv & go to the tavern to watch the game & get a meal &
  drink beer. And well, who’s to judge that preference. Everyone has
  different priorities for their current lifestyle.
http://www.watermelonpunch.com/ watermelonpunch

It really is amazing these days what a lot of people have come to think of as “necessary” purchases.

I only match 2 out of this list, and with distinctive caveats.
We have more than 1 tv. But only one is less than a decade old.
And we have more than 1 car. But both are over 10yrs old, both were paid for in cash long ago- no loans.

(And important to note that I’m fairly newly married – which means duplicates of things acquired in the past.)

Otherwise, none of those things on the list apply to me.

Ah, such it is… I constantly visit “frugal tips” web sites, only to find I’ve done it all and sometimes better. LOL

And speeding tickets? That’s the most frivolous expense. 1) it’s more dangerous to speed, that’s why you get tickets for it, and 2) it’s totally avoidable.
I myself have been driving since 2000 and have never had a moving violation. It’s not rocket science. ha ha The speed limits are generally clearly posted!! ha haha

As for cable… Yeah, I can see why people feel like it’s the “cheap” entertainment option for those on a budget. And yeah, I mean you do have to have something for relaxation & recreation.

BUT, we go even better. We have a Playstation 3 (gran turismo!!).. and it’s a game console, a bluray player, and a streaming device all in one, so you don’t need a bluray player or a streaming device. We have a subscription for Netflix (streaming only). You can access Youtube on the playstation. And we have an antenna (I like watching the local pbs over the air). Of course we live in a city with decent reception. And there’s about 10-13 different channels OTA if you count the hd splits of the different networks. But if you don’t, there’s always HULU if you want to see current recent tv shows before they’re on Netflix if that’s important to you.
(I haven’t had cable tv since 1998.)
- http://mreverydaydollar.com/ Mr. Everyday Dollar
  
  After I got my recent speeding ticket, I now don’t speed. I had a good run, 12 years between tickets! But as a longtime 15mph-over-the-limit driver I sometimes cringe when all the cars pass me on the highway now! Oh well, the other benefit is the faster we drive the worse gas mileage we get.
  
  When I ditched my Direct TV back in 2010, I kept my DVD player for awhile. Back then I looked into the PS3 for the reasons you outlined. But then I decided to use my MacBook with Plex to stream Netflix/Hulu/Youtube to my TV and used the builtin DVD drive to watch discs from Netflix, so I then sold my standalone DVD player. Shortly after that, I switched my Netflix service from DVD plus streaming to streaming only. That’s the only thing I pay for now, $7.99/mo and I couldn’t be happier.
  
  I’ve thought about getting an OTA antenna but I’ve lived without those channels for 2+ years now so I’m thinking it won’t happen anytime soon. But I do love me some PBS! Rick Steves, America’s Test Kitchen, Rick Bayless all favorites!
  - http://www.watermelonpunch.com/ watermelonpunch
    
    Yeah, well the PS3 of course is only worth it if you want to play PS3 games. My spouse & I are HUGE into Gran Turismo 5. And for the hours of entertainment we’ve gotten steadily from that ONE game over the past 2 years, made the price of the PS3 & the game, well worth it.
    
    I figure it’s turned out about $3.50 per week, and that’s just averaging so far. So let’s say the ps3 works another year at least without breaking or something, that’s $2.50. We probably average say a minimum of 6hrs per week gaming, and 12hrs per week non-gaming use of the PS3 (though probably a lot more than that in the winter but I’m too lazy to do seasonal adjusted math lol)
    Cable tv would cost us a minimum of $15 per week in order to get enough channels to warrant watching 10hrs per week.
    
    BTW: If you find an old OTA antenna somewhere lying about… it will work just as well. Sometimes they make it seem like you need a special antenna for digital broadcasts – and that’s simply not true. You just need a capable television set (or a converter device to hook to one that’s not).
    And the $10 antenna variety is fine if you live in the city. But if you live away from a metro area, or between mountains that sort of thing… an outdoor (“on top of the house”) kind of antenna might be necessary.
    
    In regards to what you said about speeding… Our culture has sort of imposed upon us some very perverse driving habits.
    If you look at it rationally, statistically, not breaking the speed limit has all sorts of benefits that outweigh any possible benefits from speeding. Including economic, safety, and just plain civil harmony!
    Yet for some reason there continues to be a sort of peer pressure to break the law.
Someone

The phone in the picture with the caption “The Sexy iPhone 5″ is not an iPhone 5.
Dukefan1

We tried doing away with our landline and using only our cell phones. However, the reception is so bad in our house and calls would drop constantly. We got the landline back through our cable provider for $10/month.