It's next to impossible to pay off your debt when your monthly expenses take away all of your income.  So, your primary debt strategy should be to decrease your monthly expenses.  Even a couple of dollars on each expense can really add up.  It's like found money!

Tackling one of your monthly expenses at a time, focus on every possible way you can think of to reduce that bill. 

Call your service providers and ask them about ways to reduce your bills.  They may not help, but they might.  It never hurts to ask.

Do you really need 200 cable channels? 

How much of a difference will your auto insurance be if you increase your deductible or remove towing?  Have you researched the other insurance companies?

Is your long distance plan really saving you money for the amount of minutes you spend calling long distance?

Would bundling your cable, phone and internet services save you money?

You get the idea.....

Lots of good points.

I am going to consider some of these suggestions.

I think this post has some great ideas.

Thank you. 

I'll try to come back with more.  I have a list of expenses that I am currently going through and I'll post any successes I have.

I appreciate the positive feedback.

That is true and thats when you continue to do what you NEED to do and begin to cut your costs. The things that you don't need. and begin to put your extra money to the side. Maybe find a way to earn some extra money.

Yup, we canceled cable (so sad!), which is saving us about $100 a month. I've worked really hard on reducing our electric/gas bill by using nightlights instead of turning hall lights on at night, turning lights that aren't in use, off,  changing furnace filters frequently, cleaning the lint dryer after every use, and washing with cold and drying on medium. We also waited until mid June to turn on our air conditioning and even then we try and keep it reasonable. (76-77)


We use mostly cloth diapers, only using disposable at nighttime, so we only buy diapers once a month.

A quick way to lower your grocery bill is to stop buying pop/soda/coke. When we were first married we realized it was the most expensive thing on our grocery list. Water is better for you anyway!

Hope I find more ideas here!

There is usually a lot of stuff to cut from the grocery bill.  Definitely soda / pop.  Water is great.  Also, inexpensive ice tea mixes will perk up your water for much less money.

Also, hit the Farmers Market for produce.  Clip coupons and then check the flyers to see what you can get for free or almost free using those coupons.

It takes a little bit of work but it can be done!

We do the coupon clipping thing plus we shop at Kroger and save with their store card. I have walked into Kroger before with a batch of coupons for pre selected items, checked out and spend $20, took over $200 in items out of there. Now this doesn't happen to this extreme that often, but its almost like stealing it all legally, bit of a thrill.

On the backend of this, we talked to the owner of the local gas station, and instead of throwing out all the papers with the coupons in them, we get them, then we vist him for our gas all the time which is about $300 - $500 a month's business for him

There are quite a few good suggestions in here that should help anyone cut monthly expenses.