Exactly...and I tend to think we weren't actually as rich as we thought we were. When you're paying for fancy popsicles with a credit card...

The popsicle stand example sounds so ridiculous when you actually read it.

Proposition Joe said:

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The popsicle stand example sounds so ridiculous when you actually read it.

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But it's true! We've got at least two, maybe three, just in The Woodlands!

No doubt, I just never thought about how ridiculous our economy is/was until I thought of it in that manner. I believe Steel City Pops may be closing shops, but we had a brick and mortar one in the corner space of a high end shopping center.

Proposition Joe said:

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No doubt, I just never thought about how ridiculous our economy is/was until I thought of it in that manner. I believe Steel City Pops may be closing shops, but we had a brick and mortar one in the corner space of a high end shopping center.

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This is exactly why I haven't lost my mind (yet) about the economy "shutting down".

Unfortunately, a lot of the businesses getting hit the hardest are propped up entirely with discretionary spending. While I certainly feel bad for those businesses and their employees, that is not a bottomless well.

F16 thread triggered an update. Our household spend is tracking -42% MTD vs last month over same period. In line with what I predicted in OP.

I was curious to see how we're stacking up at the midway point in the month. We're on pace to come in around $2,000 below normal for the month of April. The biggest driver is we're stuck at home so no travel-related expenses, very little gas, and no shopping. Restaurant spend is coming on lower even though we've been ordering much more expensive takeout than normal and leaving larger tips.

-$8K

TXTransplant said:

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Aust Ag said:

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Ragoo said:

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Proposition Joe said:

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In addition to that it will be interesting to see what restaurants do simply from the optics side of things -- if you can only serve half capacity then logic tells you the price will have to go up.

But we're seeing a lot of these restaurants adapting right now with these value "to-go" menus that make you really see the premium you are paying for what is often mediocre service and ambiance. Right now those fajitas and chips/dip are $20 for take-out, but when we go in to eat the same thing it's $40+ post tip?

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probably see a lot of consolidated menus too.

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What will kill the restaurants in the end, with all this takeout, is minimization of the bar revenue. What's that crazy markup I heard on wine, etc? The hamburger, BBQ joints ...."medium priced" places, might be OK and make it.

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I think the places that rely heavily on the lunchtime crowd - think restaurants in downtown Houston and the places that built up around the XOM campus on Spring that houses 10k employees - are going to hurt for a while, too. Even if the stay home order is lifted, I don't see the XOMs and CVXs of the world sending all of their office employees back to work right away. None of them want an outbreak in their office, so I expect people will continue working from home even if the city/county says it's ok to go to work.

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I think this is also true for high end downtown type of places that thrive on business travel where people going are using corporate cards. I know my company has already started looking at how to save on travel expenses as we are a firm that can (and does) work remotely very easily. How often do we realistically need to send whole teams across the country to a client's office? This ordeal is showing them we can fully service clients without anyone traveling. I think in the long run the reduction in business travel for years to come will really hurt a ton of high end restaurants.
Also to your point regarding lunch crowds, my firm has said no one will return to offices nationwide until 6/1 at the earliest.

And to the point of the thread initially, our spending is tracking to be down between $2000-2500 for April and that's with a surprise bill of 2 new tires.

My spending is certainly down. The wife and I don't buy random things, aside from a hobby or two. Most of our spending was on restaurants, so that has gone way down.

Another plus is that I'm getting hella good use out of this Traeger.

At the halfway point, we are -37% in spending compared to same period in February.

We have spent all of $89 on Restaurants this month. Wow.

edit: down spending helped this month. Had an unplanned $1,700 repair bill for fridge. Jesus!

I bought a used benz

Bought a Z71 Tahoe with my savings

i am shocked by some of these numbers and jealous. **** we blow 1700 a month just on cell, tv, and utilities, and my house is just 2300 sq ft. with 2 people in it....

cbr said:

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i am shocked by some of these numbers and jealous. **** we blow 1700 a month just on cell, tv, and utilities, and my house is just 2300 sq ft. with 2 people in it....

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The pron channels are expensive...

I was just doing a bit of back of the envelope, and I could see it with a pool.

jh0400 said:

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I was just doing a bit of back of the envelope, and I could see it with a pool.

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In 3,400 sq ft with a pool. And I'm currently overpaying for both cell and tv. I don't see how that's remotely possible.

cbr, we can save you some money!!! Give us the breakdown!

Yeah, I'd like a breakdown as well.

We have about 3k sqft, a pool, 3 kids that don't turn anything off, 2 adults and terrible sealing around our doors/windows and we don't approach half of that on utilities + phone + tv (for us this is Youtube.tv, Amazon Prime, Disney+, BritBox) ....that's insane. And I've worked from home for a few years now, so it's not like we're turning the a/c down during the days or anything....

$30,000 Millionaire said:

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bought a 12 month supply of 30 year emergency food and other "common" supplies to be holed up for a long time:

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do you live somewhere a natural disaster/apocalypse is pending to wipe out all forms of life?

It's called being prudent. Maybe there will be a wave 2 with food shortages?

My expenses haven't changed. Don't know how everyone is saving money now?

Doesn't matter if there are 4 horsemen bearing down on us and I am viewing the armies below Tel Megiddo, my wife can still find a way to spend it all.

Tumble Weed said:

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My expenses haven't changed. Don't know how everyone is saving money now?

Doesn't matter if there are 4 horsemen bearing down on us and I am viewing the armies below Tel Megiddo, my wife can still find a way to spend it all.

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For us it's restaurants. We spent a sh^t load of money per month eating out. We are DINKs so it was major easy button spend for us.

I'm on pace for $160 this month to restaurants. That's normally pushing $2k which I realize is a ridiculous number regardless of your situation.

No gas, travel, entertainment, Gym membership, kids activities, less on restaurants, etc. Up some on groceries but that's it.

Honestly wish people wouldn't have used the opportunity to cut restaurants so much, but everyone has to make their own decisions and recognize there is a lot of uncertainty right now.

$30,000 Millionaire said:

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cbr said:

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i am shocked by some of these numbers and jealous. **** we blow 1700 a month just on cell, tv, and utilities, and my house is just 2300 sq ft. with 2 people in it....

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what?!?

how? would love to see the breakdown.

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here goes cause i am getting ripped off. any suggestions are welcome.

part is my fault, i was just too busy the past 4 years to nitpick vendors, but this is bull*****

ATT - 2 ipads, a hotspot for internet (live in the country, no normal service) 2 iphones unlimited data, a freaking watch for my wife - $500/mo

directv - no pay channels, that bull**** is almost 300 per month, but i do have an extra dish for the shop. 3 tvs
our internet is a bit spotty so we havnt ditched tv yet...



frontier freaking energy - i swear someone else has a freaking line to my house somewhere, but the nearest house is .5 miles away, so i dont know how. They are saying we use 500-1000 kwh per week. I dont see how.


have 2 fridges, a small 2300 ft house, it is a 1913 house without much insulation but still... electric heat which is expensive in winter. new AC's,

the only thing different from any normal 2 br 2 person house, other than its age, is that we have a barn, well, electric gate, and a shop.

we keep fluorescent or led lights on in the barn and an occasional 4' fan on most of the time, but that's it.

the big outdoor lights are all LED's and not on all the time. no pool. gas stove (propane).

the shop is not air conditioned or heated. it is not lit most of the time.

so electrical bills are 300-800 per month. cold winter months over 1000.

i've had those crooked ****sticks at centerpoint check meters before, they didnt find anything. I guess im going to have to go outlet by outlet and loadtest everything...

not to mentoin frontier regularly rips me off. I checked and their ****ing rates went up to 23c/kwh without notifying me.

I changed providers today, hopefully that will help. still dont know how we could be using that much power.


im also getting absolutely ****ed on insurance across the board, health, auto especially.

I'm usually 2K/ month at restaurants/bars as a single guy

SoupNazi2001 said:

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YouBet said:

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Tumble Weed said:

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My expenses haven't changed. Don't know how everyone is saving money now?

Doesn't matter if there are 4 horsemen bearing down on us and I am viewing the armies below Tel Megiddo, my wife can still find a way to spend it all.

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For us it's restaurants. We spent a sh^t load of money per month eating out. We are DINKs so it was major easy button spend for us.

I'm on pace for $160 this month to restaurants. That's normally pushing $2k which I realize is a ridiculous number regardless of your situation.

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$2K on restaurants for 2 people! Eating at Bob's every meal.

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Let's say you ate out 20 days of lunch and dinner - 2 people, that's only an average of $25/meal/pp.

tamc93 said:

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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.

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Now that there is almost 30 days of this ... a better number would be 40% reduction in "non-essential" (e.g. excluding taxes, utilities, insurance, etc.). It is probably higher, but there were oddities with vacation refunds etc that I excluded.

My guess is if I look at April in the same way, it will be closer to 60% since we started the slow down in late March.

$30,000 Millionaire said:

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all I can say to that is yikes.

- change carriers if you can get coverage
- $300 for TV is excessive, you should try Dish
- you should insulate your home, maybe new windows first, in-wall insulation next?

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i will spend more time investigating att for sure.

probably will cancel TV, especially if we dont get aggie fall ball.

i guess i need to make some decisions on the home. I was going to buy a wood stove home heater and put it in the fireplace this winter, but glad i didnt as this winter it was never very cold. That $2500 would have sure paid for itself ,and hey, chopping wood is a good workout!

probably get that done this summer when its cheaper.

the house has cool 1913 windows and shiplap walls. no real easy way to insulate. 10' cielings. there is a fair amount of insulation, but it appears that the MANY light fixtures are just open around the bulbs.... i suspect hot air just plows right out of those fixtures. Need to investigate that.

I dont really know how much cool air is leaving from windows, vs. just through the walls. Not sure what to do about insulating the walls - there really is no space, its just wood and sheetrock.

anyway, again, any input is welcome.

The number of people I know that are in their 30s and 40s that don't know how to cook might shock some.

Call ATT, threaten to cancel your TV, and see what they give you. I got a decent deal with no contract.

Sign up with Energy Ogre if you're in Texas. I've saved well over the $10/mo they charge.