Comments on: Understanding “Trimmables,” or, Purposeful Saving

By: Dr Zen

Dr Zen — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:28:51 +0000

Jeez, am I the only person round here who doesn’t have any trimmables? I have three young kids. I suppose I could trim one of them if the white slavers come calling…

By: Free Money Finance

Free Money Finance — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 05:19:12 +0000

Carnival of the Vanities #163

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Carnival of the Vanities. I’m honored to be the host this week and hope I can live up to the great tradition of this carnival. Per my usual carnival policy, I’m listing the

By: Uncle Foobar

Uncle Foobar — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:00:05 +0000

One thing i’ve seen modelled
(the book is “All Your Worth” by the “Two Income Trap” women)

Is this idea:

Take your income;

50% goes to Must haves (basic needs)
30% goes to “Wants”
20% goes to savings, including paying down cc debt.

That way you can build your “wants” for a specific purchase
without feeling like you’re depriving yourself.

Also, Quicken Win (not mac 8-( ) has a “savings Goals”
that can go t a similar idea; kind of a “christmas club”
way of managing a savings/checking account.

Foob

By: jim

jim — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 14:11:39 +0000

Yes, trimmables are ambiguous and I might not have done a good job at explaining what I meant. The motivation for the post was trying to “find money” you were spending now and reallocate it to savings with the purpose of spending it on something else. A lot of people have a lot of monthly expenses (versus some one-time expenses such as buying a new grill, ipod nano, groceries) that they could probably live without if they knew they were saving it for something else.

And what you pick to remove and not negatively impact your life is arbitrary… i say a gym membership is more valuable than a netflix account because on average a gym membership should improve your level of fitness, though that might not be the case for everyone.

I don’t mean to make a value judgement, I was merely providing an example. Thanks for the comments Byrne!

By: Byrne

Byrne — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 08:35:37 +0000

Jim, nice post, but your concept of “trimmables” may be too ambiguous, or incongruent with some of your examples. You define trimmable as “something you’re paying for on a monthly basis that you could remove and it would not negatively impact your life”. But #1, what about things you don’t pay for on a monthly basis? You could easily live without an iPod nano. As could a new grill, or stereo system. Yet these items are generally not paid for on a monthly basis.

You use the qualifier “something you could remove and not negatively impact your life.” Well this is an arbitrary statement. Who’s to say Netflix is less valuable than a gym membership? For several people, removal of Netflix would much more negatively impact life than a gym membership. These blanket statement value judgements just aren’t summed up best by a blog post.

By: Caitlin

Caitlin — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 18:13:38 +0000

Well said. We only subscribe to a premium cable channel when the one show we want is airing new eps – this way it only costs us about $45 a year vs $167 because the $13.95 charge is only added for about 3 months. I felt like I had a real “Aha” moment when we thought of that one LOL

And something like Netflix (and cable) is trimmable in a flexible way, its not an all or nothing charge (like tivo access) but its tiered. So while I usually pay nearly $19/mo for Netflix, my analysis has shown I can drop to a less expensive tier and not impact my movie watching at all, or drop to $9.99 and maybe impact it a little bit (or drop that low when I do a lot of biz travel and have less DVD watching time at home for example)

Good ideas Jim!