No-spend month in June?

I eluded to this when I updated my Sew-it-All Challenge page but I recently realized I’ve been medicating myself with shopping these past few months, a lot.  In an effort to reign all of that in (luckily I tend to stick to only buying things we really need…I just haven’t spaced purchases out like I normally would) I’ve decided to do a No-Spend  Challenge for June.  As part of that, I’m going to cut out some things I think are unnecessary expenses.

1)  Efax – it’s $16.95/mo and I just realized they’ve been double-billing me for months.  I’m going to just cancel the whole thing.  I so rarely need to send or receive faxes–typically I scan and e-mail documents and I think this has caught on!

2)  Stamps.com – I print most of my postage through PayPal and the rest I can print at USPS.com.  So why am I paying $24.99/mo for Stamps.com?  I may ask for a PayPal and USPS.com compatible label printer for my birthday–I’ve found some that are well under $100.  I do use a LOT of tape or pricey half-sheet labels for postage so it might be cost-effective to switch to a stand-alone label printer.

3)  YMCA – I’m ashamed to admit we’ve been paying $67/mo for 15 months and we’ve gone there all of maybe five times. I didn’t want to cancel b/c members get reduced rates on classes and lessons, but it’s 13 miles away (and a 20+ minute drive) so it’s just not happening.

4)  Cable internet…maybe?  We are paying $65/mo and DSL would be $20/mo for the first twelve months AND we’d get a $50 gift card.  We’re really worried about performance so we have to give this one more thought.

5)  Hulu+ – I’m not sure we’re getting our money’s worth.  It’s only $8/month but I almost never watch it.  I just can’t stand the commercials.  I use the streaming Netflix and Amazon-on-Demand way more often.

6)  This doesn’t have a $-amount assigned to it but I made an account at http://www.catalogchoice.org/ and I’m working on opting out of all the paper catalogs I get.  I’m also calling 1-888-5OPTOUT to be removed from the CRB’s lists.  In addition to this I’m unsubbing from all the e-mail spam, including Groupon et al. as well as clothing stores, etc.

7)  Wen and Sheer Cover.  Monthly they send me kits and monthly I send them back and request to cancel.  They do refund me but it takes a while and I bet they’ve cheated somewhere along the way–I easily could have missed something like that.  I’ll make one last phone call to get them canceled and then if that doesn’t work, I’ll change my debit card #.  I’m done with their dance.

8)  Do you know that if you cancel magazine subscriptions, you can request a pro-rated refund for the remainder of the year?  I recently went a little hog wild renewing subscrptions we don’t really *need* so I may cancel most of them (if the family admits they can survive).

So, if we switch to DSL this is a savings of about $175/mo or $2100 per year.  If we keep Cable internet, it’s $135/mo or $1620/year.  Either way, it’s a pretty darned significant amount to add to savings!

I’m not 100% sure how what our rules for June will be, particularly regarding entertainment and activities for the kids.  I can happily go without dining out as a family for a month and we can do more homemade lunches for T to take to work.  Due to the heat most of the kids summer activities are indoors at fast-food type places and the kids always want something; I actually feel like we have to buy something if we’re there taking up space!  I also am not sure I’m ready to give up our little date-nights or things like Moms’ Night Out.  I have to get that all figured out, including whether or not I’ll be shopping today to stock up for some OAMC.  I’ll check back in later once I have a plan! 🙂