Recently I read that if you really want to get ahead financially, you shouldn’t sweat the little things- like that indulgent, over priced coffee that you can conveniently swing by and pick up on the morning commute. Apparently that isn’t making as much of an impact on finances as that indulgent, over priced VEHICLE that some of us choose to drive. Or that ridiculous, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses house that that vehicle is being parked at. And I say AT and not IN because, be honest, the car isn’t kept in the garage because the garage is full of other stuff! Apparently we are spending too much on our cars, houses and food.

That made me think back to my recent post about cutting back on eating out: For my family, it’s true, an easy place for us to cut back. For my parents it’s not as realistic because they rarely eat out, so maybe that won’t work for them. So I thought more about the other things mentioned…the house and cars.

The house? Size-wise we absolutely could downsize, however we couldn’t scale back the mortgage payment, so that’s not really as realistic of an option. We were lucky enough to have land to build on given to us (from my uber-generous father in law!), contracting services and my husband and father in law (as well as other generous family members and friends) did a huge majority of the work. In return, we have a lot of equity in the house and a very low mortgage payment. It’s ironic because we were SO eager to get into our dreamhome and have space for everyone to spread out. I quickly learned that the more space you have, the more “stuff” you accumulate and the more space you have to clean! Thinking back to the days when we lived in a two bedroom apartment I realize I was happier. Yes, it was tight…and our family was one child smaller, but I think there is a happy medium to be had. Plus in this market, I can’t imagine listing a house and waiting for it to sell. Definitely NOT the time for us to downsize.

The cars? We have three kids…one car seat and two booster seats. Therefore, we are limited to vehicle options at this point. One is paid off, so that’s about as smart as it gets. It is on it’s second transmission and we are beginning to think it might be time for a third soon, although hopefully not. The other is not paid off, we bought it used and it works for us. I’m not sure we could replace it with anything more economical. We could lower the monthly payments by extending the terms of the loan, but that’s not smart for us, I’d rather pay it off sooner. We have recently checked into refinancing the car at a lower rate, we found some great rates through a local credit union, without extending the terms. If anything, I think we need to work on bulking up our 50 pound 8 year old, so he’ll grow and meet the height and weight requirements to get him OUT of the booster-then we can focus on our 6 year old. I’ll cut the baby some slack…for a few years anyway.

The food? We are working on it. We have adjusted to eating out less. I’m interested to see how we do by the end of the month. I’m not sure we will make our goal of 50% less, but I’m sure we are going to do better than we have been. And little by little, we’ll get there…

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