Cutting down on monthly obligations or services is super hard!!

Remember when you were a teenager, a long, long, time ago? OK, that sounds harsh but that is what my kids would say.

What did your parents give you? Did they give you a car and pay for your insurance or did you have to work and pay for it? Did you have the newest electronic gadgets?

We all grew up without cable TV, I-pods, cell-phones, I Mac, internet access, our own dvd players, laptops, our own TV in our own room, and guess what, we are still here.

Many of these items we have grown to consider them necessities, even though they were not 20 years ago. Are these items really necessities? Many of them come with monthly service contracts that deplete us of our incomes continuously.

I am not saying you should live in a cave but look seriously at these items and make some choices if they are really necessary, in some cases they can actually be a financial drain and provide no benefit. You need to weigh the costs of these items. Maybe you don’t want to completely get rid of everything but you can probably reduce the costs of these items by sitting down and going over and cutting out things that you do not use.

Get your kids in on this to, that way they do not expect these things to be given to them. Tell them why you are making these choices. Maybe not watching Nickelodeon can be good to!! I am not totally against television however I do believe it can be an extreme waste of time if it is not managed correctly. I got tired of playing TV police in my house and I eliminated the cable.

It is hard to cut back but I have found that my kids find other more productive things to do and I probably have been the one that feels the most deprived!