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Some time ago, I think I started a thread asking parents if they saw their spending drop when their kids went off to college. Well our kid left on Sunday so I'm now able to start paying attention to this for us and I already see a drop in spending. The first place it has shown up, as expected, was when I went grocery shopping yesterday. I was able to buy less of stuff (only 1 gallon of milk, 1 pizza crust, fewer boxes of cereal) and skip some items entirely.
I'm really curious to see if there is any significant drop in utility bills. I figure we are washing fewer dishes, doing less laundry, having fewer showers, less toilet flushing, charging fewer phones and other devices, running the TV less, the computer less, the lights less, etc. Even a 10% drop in the utility bills would be nice to see.
I figure between food and utilities, we should see about a $200/month drop in spending. Then we don't have all of the money that was being spent on youth group activities. That was about $2,000/year. And we won't be using as much gas taking her (or her taking herself) to and from meetings and events. Also, when we go out to eat, we'll be paying for only 2 instead of 3. Plus my wife and I are already cooking at home more just in the first week and plan to do even more, so we should be eating out less overall.
Of course, all of that savings just gets shifted toward college expenses but at least it helps defray those costs with no additonal out of pocket impact over what we were already used to spending. If it all adds up to about $5,000/year, that helps a lot.
I'm really curious to see if there is any significant drop in utility bills. I figure we are washing fewer dishes, doing less laundry, having fewer showers, less toilet flushing, charging fewer phones and other devices, running the TV less, the computer less, the lights less, etc. Even a 10% drop in the utility bills would be nice to see.
I figure between food and utilities, we should see about a $200/month drop in spending. Then we don't have all of the money that was being spent on youth group activities. That was about $2,000/year. And we won't be using as much gas taking her (or her taking herself) to and from meetings and events. Also, when we go out to eat, we'll be paying for only 2 instead of 3. Plus my wife and I are already cooking at home more just in the first week and plan to do even more, so we should be eating out less overall.
Of course, all of that savings just gets shifted toward college expenses but at least it helps defray those costs with no additonal out of pocket impact over what we were already used to spending. If it all adds up to about $5,000/year, that helps a lot.
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