This is my journey to apply the book, Unf*ck your finances. The book is about personal finances but I’ve added actions specific to working for myself. 

The first thing I’m doing from the plan I made four days ago is to understand how I’m spending. This means listing out all of my fixed costs and interrogating them.

Up until this point, I’ve been able to reduce my monthly costs by $274.14. Let’s see how I go today.

Feel free to do a cross-examination.

I have Stitcher Premium so that I can listen to a specific podcast (By The Book: Authors Tell All). I use Overcast (free) as my main podcast app so I’m really only paying this for this specific show. Thing is, I’m totally behind on the show. Keeping it for now and adding a reminder to re-evaluate in 2 months.

Yeah. This one is a fixed cost. It’s no interest (for now) so I’m sticking to the minimum.

I was ready to pause this subscription. But it turns out people have subscribed to my mailing list. So I should actually keep it and email them. I will be emailing people for the rest of my life. I’m going to keep this.

We’re paying for the ability to be pretty average housekeepers the rest of the time. Worth it, but I could cut it if I had to.

I do a lot of my reading on Medium and I’m happy to pay this price to be able to access all of the articles and make my applause worth something.

I seldom use CityCycles but I like paying this small amount to have the option.

I have been subscribed since the beginning (6 months ago) and still haven’t gone in and completed the course modules. I’ll keep it until the end of the year because I really want to support Gretchen’s work. I’ve added it to my calendar to actually participate in the July theme (family).

I use this to manage every collaborative project that I lead. I love it and I don’t know that I could ever let go of it. And, seriously, I’m tied into it for at least two projects and two teams.

I’ll be cancelling this next week. It’s a great product but I’ve moved from charging by the hour to charging by the day. I like it to see how good I am at time estimation but I can easily get away with something much simpler (like the built in 17hats timer).

Yeah. This one is a fixed cost (for now!). I‘m aggressively paying down one and sticking to minimums on the others.

Fixed. We’re here for at least another six months. When we move or renew, I’ll consider moving to a 50/50 split (currently he’s bearing more because of differing income levels).

I use this mostly for Acrobat but it’s nice to be able to use Photoshop and InDesign if I need to. I checked the cost for Acrobat standalone and it’s actually the same!

I use it almost daily. Keeping it.

—

I reduced my monthly outgoings by $27!