10 Things We Have Cut From our Budget

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For the last couple of years we haven’t been super diligent on not spending money. Now we are focusing on saving money and here’s 10 things we are cutting from our budgets.

0:00 – Our mindset about spending less
2:12 – #1: Groceries
3:27 – #2: Phone plans
5:42 – #3: Smashed Avocado
7:40 – #4: Insurance
9:24- #5: Alcohol
10:40 – #6: Power Bills (by Installing Solar Panels)
12:23 – #7: Daily Coffee’s + Energy Drinks
14:02 – #8: Mortgage Interest
16:26 – #9: Rent Savings
17:15 – #10: Tax Savings

BONUSES
19:29 – #11: Living a Minimalist Life
20:017 – #12: Not Eating Meat

Recommended Videos
How We Feel About Credit Cards – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnM7YvcG7oE

Transcription:

For the last couple of years, myself and Ben have kind of not really been super diligent on not spending money. We’ve been spraying Kashmir, let’s face it, we just sold a couch the other day and my son, grandson, he gets the money and he’s just like. It was hilarious. But yeah, we haven’t been super diligent on lowering the expenses in our life. We’ve been mainly focused on growing our income, which were both definitely done, but now we’re at a point where it’s come time to focus again on saving money in our lives, both in our personal lives and in our business. And so today we want to talk about 10 things that we’ve cut from our budget. I’ll do five Ben, we’ll do five as well and hopefully you guys can get some help. Some tips out of this as well. Yeah, for sure. Because there’s been some money that, you know, I didn’t even realize I was spending probably like you guys right now and you know, hopefully this video will let a lot of cleanup those costs.

Yep. So it is, it does feel really liberating to really start to focus on this and work out how can I still live a really good life, but how can I spend less money at the same time? So this isn’t about living off baked beans for the next three years, hating your life, driving your health into the ground because you’re not eating properly or living in a complete dump. This is about areas of your life that you can cut expenses, but you can still live a really happy life and a really fulfilling life and have some of those little luxuries as well. The thought of taking something away that’s not the reason why I’ve been cutting costs in my life. Like it’s just been because I just like saving money and I don’t like overspending on things where I can say to hate the money.

So the things that I’ve cut haven’t been for a particular raising it, it’s more just because I enjoy doing that as a, as something to do. So it’s less about just, I don’t know, it’s less about just living super frugally, but it’s more about, yeah, saving that extra money that you can then use to invest that you can then use to achieve financial freedom faster. Definitely. So this might be to save a deposit. This might be to buy a property or this might be to pay off debt if you’ve got those foundational properties to pay them off faster. Absolutely. So what’s your number one? Okay, so number one is groceries. Now I’ve got two kids who are dairy and gluten intolerant and so naturally a lot of the groceries that we were buying can get quite expensive when you’re looking at those sorts of dietary requirements.

But there were a lot of stuff in the groceries that were just. We didn’t need to spend as much on even things like milk because we drink soy and almond milk. Buying that from Audi. Instead of buying that from Woolworth, you’re paying a dollar 80 instead of $3 and Addie is saved because my wife and I shop there too, at least 35 percent at least. It’s insane how much money it saves you. So I think saving on groceries has been a big thing and also just focusing on buying exactly what groceries that we need and then eating the groceries that we have. There’s so many times that things have just gone to waste because you know, we’ve bought too much and haven’t focused on just buying what we need is a whole thing there as well. Like you and I both liked this concept of just slow living and more thoughtful living in. I think wasting is one of the worst things that you can do for the planet. You know, not that that’s what it’s about, but I just, I liked the idea of doing less formal. So groceries have been a massive one for me to cut it up, isn’t it? What about your eighth? We’ll have to edit that.

Start out that we were getting like your five then my five. Um, so one for one. A simple one that I think you guys could easily applies. I’ve obviously always been with life at Telstra, Vodafone or an obvious for them on a ball. I thought it was just normal to pay 100, 120 bucks a month for unlimited everything. Audi, who is a supermarket brand car brand is sponsored by Audi guys. It’s definitely not, um, that, you know, I’ve just hooked onto their phone playing my work phone is now 15 bucks a month for unlimited calls, unlimited texts and my personal phone is 45 bucks a month and that gives me unlimited calls, texts plus, um, everything that I need Internet wise. So instead of spending 200 to 20 month, um, you know, effectively between them spending 60 bucks, it’s a massive saving. I had the same thing and that was from the video that we created where we’re talking about this sort of stuff is that I went from spending about, I think it was 145 per month.

I had a plan that had just finished. I was actually looking at upgrading to one of the newer iphones, which would then put me on a plan for about $150 per month. But instead I decided to try Audi, which didn’t work. I had this weird, I had this weird porting issue that was super rare. Anyway, I went back to Telstra, but I’m on Telstra prepaid and I pay $30 a month. I get unlimited calls, unlimited text and I get eight Gig of data. So I’ve gone from $145 a month down to $30 a month. And then I was looking, my phone was broken and so I was looking at a new phone and I just bought an old iphone seven off Ebay. I think I spent $360 to get an iphone seven rather than upgrading to the iphone 10 or what I did, like I bought my phone outright so that I could get on the cheaper plan and it’s a huge saving over a two year plan.

Even the phone costs plus 30 bucks a month. That might be like $700. That’ll pay over the course of a year. That’s. So that’s like four or five months of a regular plan of $150. So. Awesome. Yeah, so we both have that one. My next one is smashed avocado, smashed down. What I mean by this is that I love my coffee, which you guys probably know if you love coffee too, you’re one of my people, but often I would go out for coffee, but then I would also get breakfast. Then I would go out with my kids and then I would also get them breakfast or I would buy them one of those gluten free dairy free cupcakes. That’s like $9.

So now instead of going out for breakfast and doing that, I just do that a lot less. So it’s not that I never do it, it’s that I just don’t do it religiously. Like I was doing it multiple times per week and now I’ll do it on special occasions. Like if we’re going out, I know that we’re going out on, no, we’re going to spend money on that and I’ll choose a place where I’ll get good food for not as much pen and paper because I need to write that one down. For me, one of my favorite things to do because I’m a dad of three, they’re all young, is to just walk down the road where I leave and as some epic little coffee shops down there and you know, I don’t drink coffee so I’ll have to buy food and it ends up being a $60 plugin, coffee run, um, at least twice a week we do that and it’s just such a huge waste of money when the quality of the food in my house, in the projects and I’m buying so much better anyway.

It’s just something that goes so quickly, something that you don’t notice when you’re not conscious about it and you just go out for coffee and end up buying breakfast for everyone. It’s just like shivers there go $60, $70. How did that even happen? So just being conscious of that and cutting that out. Then I’ll go out, I’ll get a coffee and then I’ll go to the bakery next door and I’ll buy some stuff from the kids there. So I ended up spending $15 on the whole morning instead of 60. Oh that’s cool man. Get the morning out, take them to the beach or take them to the park, which is an epic spot to have breakfast. I’ll have coffee anyway. Just not eating enough the cafes, but taking it out. It’s hard way you’ve been living too because far out there’s some good places and another one for me is for years and years and years, like from buying properties and owning cars and stuff. I’ve just sort of always been with the one insurance provider. I don’t know why. I think there’s a, there’s a rule in insurance in

banking, which is if you’ve got more than three products with somebody, the likelihood of that client leaving is about five percent of the longterm. Like that is so hooked in and that’s why they constantly trying to sell you into multiple products because they know that it keeps retention. And what I did recently is I just reviewed all of my insurances and ended up saving myself about 30, 35 percent again. And who did you end up going to? Um, so I’ve always been with Allianz, which are, from my perspective, they’ve been fantastic from a coverage perspective. Like, I’ve had a couple of, I had a client of attendant burned down one of my granny flats and they were amazing to deal with through that thing because I had the right cover in place, um, but I’ve, you know, been seeing the ads on TV and seeing those guys talking about saving money. And so what I did is I went to, I went to Suncorp and I went to, um, I was really sick a few weeks ago and had two days to do nothing and I went to Ra Ricq and then I compared them on every single one of my policies across every product

and the four providers. And then half of my stuff’s still with Allianz and some of my stuff’s now with Youi. But even the threat to Alianza may sliding the, someone else was enough to pull them down as well. So you’re able to save money on the insurance policies you had with Allianz because you were threatening to leave because I had a bunch of policies with themselves, like the motor policy discount that there hadn’t been applying. Thanks. Thanks guys. So the next one for me was alcohol. This is something again that I just wasn’t being really conscious of. I love having a beer or love having a wine, but I was just doing it more than was necessary. I wasn’t getting drunk every night or anything like that, but he ain’t doing nothing but it was just commonplace to go to the bottle shop and to buy a case of a craft beer and dropped $70 or something.

Have Goodyear. Yes. I’ve got to say. Um, and so now, yeah, it’s, it’s more of a conscious choice to. It would just be like, well we’d have alcohol in our house. And so at night if you’d want to be, there’ll be one there. Before you knew it, you’d had two beers, each main Kale, that’s four beers. They’re like four or $5 each. Save Jack and Becca case every weight without even trying. Maybe not that much. But um, but yeah, so just being more conscious of alcohol consumption and then buying it when I know I’m going to drink it and just buying what I need and not having it as like a go to in the fridge and rather just drinking water instead. And so then if I’m having friends over or something like that, I’ll go out and I’ll buy a bottle of wine or buy some alcohol, but just not having it there has saved me a bunch of money.

That’s cool. Um, another thing that saved me some good money and we’ll continue to save me money in the feature is I’ve just moved into a home that I plan on spending a long time in. And so I knew that as soon as I moved into a home that I was going to spend time in, I’d put solar on the roof. So I’ll put a six and a half kilowatt system on the other week for three and a half thousand bucks. Like it’s so cheap now. Solar, it’s insane. After the government discount, I worked out that I was paying about 1800 bucks a year in power because I have a pool and just because of the way that we leave, um, so I worked out, you know, just over two years I’ll get a full return on my investment and then for the next 20 years it’s just a 2000 bucky saving effectively.

It’s awesome. So it’ll take two years to pay off the solar in terms of savings and then it’s just free coin after that. Yeah. I got an electricity bill for last quarter. It was $39 in credit and I was like, what the hell, like this is awesome and this incredible, incredibly positive. Um, and it’s been rainy and shocking up here. Like it feels like the ages now. So that’s awesome that obviously that’s restricted to people who own their own home, but definitely something to look into for sure. Definitely. I log into trying to do solo for rental properties and it’s basically extremely difficult to do even if you have your own freestanding panels to get it wide open, to Redo the literacy. It’s just, it’s not a five high, so unfortunately that’s the only phone occupiers 90 people that want to stay for a minimum of three years.

So yeah, because if you then rent out the property solid doesn’t really add value to the rental. No, it’s great for the tenants because they’re paying as much centricity. Yes. But as a owner, renting out your property as an investor, it’s probably not gonna make you more money. And so my last thing was my daily coffee as well as energy drinks as well. So again, it was just not being conscious of it and buying coffee multiple times throughout the day when I was out because I drink like two to four coffees a day. Oh Wow. I think I love my coffee habit for you. So when you go out, especially because I drink almond milk as well, so they chuck an extra fifty cents or so dollar on for that. I was at a place that other day an extra dollar for almond milk, a little cup. Say, Oh, I actually love how you pay a dollar for something that tastes worse. I don’t drink dairy. Dairy doesn’t sit well with me and it doesn’t taste worse. It’s delicious. He used to it. Now they’re like the little chunky bits.

Have you ever had. This is a Vegan, right? I don’t drink coffee. I don’t drink. I’m not a coffee snob. Right? Yeah. So just again, having coffee at home and then when I’m going out for coffee, I know I’m going out for coffee and I’m doing it because I’m going out with friends and I see that as an investment into US spending time together. And again, it’s like five or $10 there and so it’s not that big a deal, but when you’re doing it multiple times a day and it’s like 10 or $15 per day that you’re spending, that’s about $100 a week. Is this why you have amy as much lately? Because every time we do, you buy me a complete chair and you’re like, fuck you man. I’m cutting the budget and I’m saving 10 bucks every time, once a month. And now as I’m moving to Sydney to save on Kombucha, which, um, another thing that is saved

me an absolute fortune in like the biggest saving in my life in the last 12 months is obviously with my own home, which I have some debt on as well as the investment properties which are half dead on. I’m paying interest to the bank. Um, so about 12 months ago as some of these rules around lending decided to kick in. What I found is that the difference between an interest on the timeline and a homeland with interest plus principle where you’re paying down the debt, that the percentage that you’re paying in interest for each of them changed dramatically. Um, with an interest only loan, I could get a rate of about four point eight percent or five percent with a principal and interest loan, I could get rates as low as three point eight percent, four percent. And so I went principle and initially now that’s not for everyone.

Not everyone can afford to do that. Cashflow was. But for me, it represented a saving in itself of over 20 grand a year that one percent. And then I refinanced the bunch of properties because the banks are so competitive for your business right now, are refinanced to a bunch of different lenders or just spoke directly to the banks and all of them pulled my rates down by at least another half of a percent doing that. So I reckon that those two things probably saved me 30,000 bucks in the last year, which is just so much dead money. It’s crazy. So now that’s now me to pay 30 grand in the last year off in principle repayments and it’s a much better longterm position.

Yeah. That will allow you to pay off your properties so much faster. Yeah,

because it’s 30 grand this year than 30 grand next year. And then obviously you’ve got the positive compounding effects that you’re now paying less interest each year and you’re going to pay it off faster. So I remember reading this article recently from the barefoot investor where he said if you pay just 500 bucks off your property per month on top of your regular repayments, it saves the average person about nine years on the life of their life. And over $100,000 of say $500 a month, just 500 bucks a month. He said. But yeah, it’s, it was just interesting concept for me. I hadn’t heard that stuff until recently. Yeah. Well obviously the more you pay off in the beginning, the faster, the more the more years you have for that positive compounding effect of work in your favor. For sure. Um, is there anything else that you would add in terms of savings that or things you’ve cut out of your budget this year? The other big thing from a business perspective is I’ve just changed premises to sell me. That’s, I’m a little bit more moderate and a shitload cheaper that’s put me in a much better position as well.

And that’s something that I will be doing. I’m moving down to Sydney so I will be renting for cheaper than I’m renting up here. That’s be moving into something small because it’s Sydney, but I do love tiny house living and so yeah, rent is something that I guess I have been excessive with in the past and not really focused on how can I get a more affordable property, but given my circumstances now that’s something that we’ll be looking at because I have to move anyway. I want to make sure that I’m not paying excessive rent because if I’m saving 50 or $100 per week, that’s money that I’m going to be using to pay off debt or money that I’m going to be using to save the deposit in order to purchase property.

Actually, there’s one other tip for investors that has been really powerful for me in the last year as well. I’ll just add, um, I always, because I’m a bit ocd, I like to have things in categories and boxes as you know, and I always had a home loan for each investment property that I had with an offset account and I got all of the rent for each property paid into the offset account. All the costs taken out of that offset account so that it was clean from an accounting perspective at the end of the financial year. And also just clean in my mind, but what I’ve done, because I’m getting all of this rent for these properties now,

I’ve actually started to park all of. I’ve got all the renter repayments coming straight out of my offset account and then all of the costs for each property also getting taken out of the offset account against my own home. And so, you know, rather than having it in the offset account of the individual investment properties, you’re getting an old pooled into the offset account of your own home. And then the expenses are coming out of that one. That’s exactly it. And because that is non tax deductible debt, it’s a better place to put it in. So let’s say over the course of the year, I’m getting over $100,000 of income from rent put into that account. You know, $100,000 at a five percent interest rate is another $5,000 that I’m saving, which you know, I’ve been wasting for years. And years and years for no reason, and so there’s tax benefits for that, which you guys can talk to your accountants about in order to organize that, but they have a bunch of things that we’ve caught out of our budget this year.

I’m continually looking at my life and looking for ways to save money, so if you guys have other ideas, please leave them in the comment section down below. I’m really excited to live a good life, but to not have excessive expenses because what I found is that the higher your expenses, the more money you need to make in order to be happy and if you can make less. If you can build up that savings buffer in your life because you’re spending less than you earn, then you can invest, move towards financial freedom. You can live a better and more fulfilling life than if you’re just being frivolous with your money. Like I feel like I was over the last couple of years. Yeah, I completely agree with that. Like a simple life with lower overhead costs, main set, you’ve got more choices and more choices. Ultimately, traits, more fulfillment.

To me, yeah, and I think, I guess one thing that I would add to that is one big savings that I’m having in my life is just living a more minimalistic life, so less furniture, less homework, sorta staff. Even my clothing has been simplified and so living a minimalist life and not just acquiring excessive stuff has been a massive difference for me. Saving on kids’ toys as well as I just training my kids to be happy with the things that they have and to find enjoyment out of the things that they have and living a more minimalistic lifestyle that’s going to save me thousands of dollars as well that I don’t notice because it’s not regular weekly money that I’m spending, but just choosing to live consciously and minimalist just means I don’t think about going to came on every week and buy new toys for the kids that they just played with the Duplo in the Lego that we have a.

yeah, I love that Bro. And another huge saving in your life that you haven’t mentioned. Two of my sisters have Vegan. I was vegetarian for like 10 months later, has been vegetarian for like a year before is just not eating nate too, like we don’t have to go down that path, but that would be saving you 40 to 50 percent of your weekly food as well. I guess expensive. I guess I didn’t think of it because I haven’t bought me in so many years, but yeah, stakes can cost $10 each if you blind laying chocks. Really expensive. I know it’s something outside of this, but it’s just all of these little things stack up and it means that you’ve got to live this life that you’ve got to live sooner. Yeah, so I’m really excited for that in my life. I hope that you guys are excited as well to cut some costs out of your life, but to also live a really great life and to move towards financial freedom. Why are you here? Go ahead and check out another video that mean bended on credit cards and how we feel about credit cards. Go ahead and check that out. Otherwise, until next time, stay positive.