Biggest for us is daycare going to $0
Grocery bill is up
Dining is down but still present
We've done a few one off online purchases
Expecting to save an additional $6k over the next couple of months.

thirdcoast said:

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Liquor?

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Outlier for me. My wife stopped drinking on 01/01/2020. I finished off my last bottle of good tequila last weekend and now very slowly going through our red wine stock, but it will last me a long time.

We are down but nothing crazy. Eating out less but more time to cool more expensive things a home. Mainly cutting back on the usual big purchase or two per month we make. We make a point to get takeout every Friday and likely do a few other cheaper takeouts during the week.

I did buy the kids Chromebooks, so I guess that was a larger spend for the month.

Gas is obviously less, but it's a small amount anyway as I work from home.

single guy, early 20s. Bar and going out spending dropped alot. little on gas, and food. havent been eating out alot as well, i did spend a bit at Lowes tho

As an accountant, I don't really track my spending at all! lol. I suppose I see it when doing our tax returns (two S corps and an LLC and then the personal return) but it isn't something I look at monthly or quarterly. Having said that, I am working less (even though it is tax season I am sort of coasting because of the change in the deadline) but I have more money in the accounts than usual. So spending somewhere is declining. I have been doing some investing, and I know that is up but not by a lot. Bought a zero turn mower, so that is increased spending. All this makes me curious as to what has gone down spending-wise, but not curious enough to check it out, lol

Our HI vacation was cancelled. Been saving a long time for it. With that said, I went and bought the biggest hot tub in Dallas. My 5 kids are pumped and it's a great way to relieve stress! Also looking to buy a ping pong table to keep the kids moving.

Anyone want a hot tub right now, you can get them for 30-40% off! They have warehouses full of them right now. No close contact with any vendor either!

Other than that, we hardly eat out. Not having to pay for band, sports, birthday parties, dates, PTA, etc., is saving us a lot of money.

thirdcoast said:

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Liquor?

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Consumption way up, overall spending is down. I used to take employees out for drinks on the regular to give them and opportunity to *****. Now, its more beer at home on the couch.

Buying so many activities for kids/helping them get some studying/work done.

Luckily, done with daycare.

Too many oddities this month...taxes, vacation refunds, etc... to get a good data set.

Short answer is - we have cut back heavily since we expect Q2/Q3 income to be cut drastically. Thank goodness for a good Q1.

March spending was way up because I filled an upright freezer with food, bought a 12 month supply of 30 year emergency food and other "common" supplies to be holed up for a long time: TP, trash bags, medications, vitamins, detergent, batteries, disinfectants, emergency water filters, camp stove, hydroponic garden, books. The 12 month food supply was very expensive, but some piece of mind there. I also bought a new iPad, new MacBook, office supplies like whiteboards, and a Peloton to prepare for a long haul quarantined. I also accelerated all home maintenance items that needed to be done in the next 24 months. I think I net spent $25K Feb - March on these things.

Restaurant spend is down 100%, nothing towards gasoline, no clothing purchases, no non essential household goods, no travel expenses, no entertainment. Spending lots on groceries.

I expect April to be -75% for my regular run rate and to continue as long as this lasts.

$30,000 Millionaire said:

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March spending was way up because I filled an upright freezer with food, bought a 12 month supply of 30 year emergency food and other "common" supplies to be holed up for a long time: TP, trash bags, medications, vitamins, detergent, batteries, disinfectants, emergency water filters, camp stove, hydroponic garden, books. The 12 month food supply was very expensive, but some piece of mind there. I also bought a new iPad, new MacBook, office supplies like whiteboards, and a Peloton to prepare for a long haul quarantined. I also accelerated all home maintenance items that needed to be done in the next 24 months. I think I net spent $25K Feb - March on these things.

Restaurant spend is down 100%, nothing towards gasoline, no clothing purchases, no non essential household goods, no travel expenses, no entertainment. Spending lots on groceries.

I expect April to be -75% for my regular run rate and to continue as long as this lasts.

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Actually on my list to get. I'm going to swap out an older full upright wine fridge that is broken and no longer used with this. You recommend any particular brand?

Already got my bike so good there. We have a Greg Lemond Revmaster we bought a few years ago. It's come in handy with quarantine.

Mine is in my garage. I bought a Frigidaire indoor / outdoor from Home Depot that was on sale, I want to say it was about a grand. I've had it for a couple of years and it's been generally really useful, but very useful now.

I'm kicking myself for not getting an 86" TV now that I'm watching a lot of shows.

jefe95 said:

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Gasoline spending has dropped significantly. No commute for me and the kids so that's a huge chunk of cash sitting idle. Add the restaurant tabs and it's a massive drop in April expenses. March was partial month but it was noticeable.

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Gas was almost free anyway.

Dining is all but eliminated but we didn't do that much anyways. We have bought a bounce house for the basement that the kids can expend some energy in. Bought new bikes for wife and 6 yo daughter. About to do landscaping in our backyard. Gas and work lunches were already paid for by the company, so that's saving work quite a bit.

Monthly spending down 75% - not counting mortgage or car. Usually around $20k, now around 4K.

No eating out, no travel. We are def wasting less too.

Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess

Wife and I (both 36 and both work) with two kids under 5 in Houston.

This will likely be our lowest credit card spend in 5 years (since we had our first child).

Monthly bills:
Groceries: Guessing up 2-3x (partly because we normally both eat lunch out at work). Hard to tell in the short term because our grocery trips are now much bigger trying to only go to the store once every 1-2 weeks vs our normal 2-3 trips per week.
Gas: Guess 1/5 the gas use. My wife hasn't moved her car in 2+ weeks (both of our companies have gone from going into the office 5x/week to completely closed). We both have commutes of less than 6 miles each way, so we've gone probably gone from 250 miles/week to less than 50/week. For the average person who has a much bigger commute, this will be huge.
Booze: Way, way up
Electronics: This has been a big expense since both of us have gone full work from home. Even with already having an existing home office and also grabbing an extra docking station from work, we've still had to buy 2 more computer monitors, a new wireless key board/mouse, a webcam, and another powerstrip. If this goes on, we'll have to upgrade our printer
Restaurants: Down, but making an effort to continue to order out dinner 2x/week, but focusing on ordering from local family-owned restaurants. Also tipping 2-3x what we normally would for takeout to help out the restaurant staff.
Travel: This will be the big one as this drags on. We already bailed on an April trip to Florida for my FIL's 70th bday (3 flights). Looking forward, likely cancelling have to cancelling a fishing trip to Florida in May, wedding in Alabama in June, and trip to Destin in July. Probably looking at $2k/month in travel expense savings.


Out biggest savings are coming from eating lunch at home each day and less gas and tolls .

Both of our kids do full time childcare at our church school (they temporarily suspended tuition starting April 1), but we've had to bring in a nanny so we can work. Nanny is cheaper, but we're donating the difference to the church school, so breakeven overall.

We were over $800 under budget last month. At the rate this month is going, could be even more under budget.
Groceries and Booze increasing, everything else decreasing.

All A&M said:

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Just an FYI to you that don't track your spending. I had not tracked my spending until recently. I knew my yearly spend rate and that I was living within my means with enough being saved for retirement, etc. The details just didn't seem worth the trouble. But now I'm using Mint. It is EASY. It was an eye opener and it is good to have that data at your finger tips with almost no effort.

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I did not like it at first, but I've come to appreciate the absolute simplicity of Personal Capital's budget tool. Couple it with their vastly superior investment tools over anything else I've seen in the market and I think they are the leader now with financial software - and it's free if you can tolerate ignoring the monthly phone call you will get from a sales person. Granted, I don't do normal budgeting.

Now all I need is for them to add a solid bill tracking module and I can ditch Quicken altogether. Will probably just build bill tracking into xls and save the $100 per year with Quicken.

We're coming in under on gas, dry cleaning, and drinking away from home. For eating out, we've still been ordering takeout or delivery three or four times a week, and I've been tipping more than normal.

We had a trip to Paso Robles last month, so there was no noticeable change in our March spending. I expect that we should come in $1,000 to $1,500 under our normal monthly spend for April.