Later Suckers!

Parents’ lives are swamped by suckers… little suckers who take a lot of time and energy from us on a daily basis. No matter how few or how many children, you could easily pack out an entire day with chores, errands, after-school activities, work and family obligations.

After having my fourth child, I knew I needed to reassess where I was and how much “extra” stuff was sucking away my time all day every day. There was just too much to do and too little time. Most of all, I realized that I was duplicating unnecessary efforts daily.

[bctt tweet=”Get your life back by getting rid of time sucks in your life! What’s zapping your time and money?”]

Emails

I started with my emails. I get close to 100 emails a day! Quite honestly, most of them go straight into the trash. At one time, I found value in these emails, but I had to look at the last time I opened, read and absorbed an email from that sender. Many emails went straight to the trash can, and many, many more, were “saved” with the intention of reading them.

I never did and I don’t know when I would ever have the time. So the subscriptions had to go! I got rid of over two dozen subscriptions and lightened my daily email load.

How many emails do you delete automatically or worse yet, keep them knowing that you probably won’t have time to get back to them?

Facebook Groups

Seems like someone “invites” you to a new group everyday these days. One major downside of the “invite” is that you are automatically added to the group and you don’t find out until you’re inundated with notifications.

I weeded through the junk and kept the groups in which I want to engage.  Now, some of those suckers are very persistent. Even after you “leave” the group, someone adds you back. For those special cases, I permanently leave the group so that no one can add me back.

DVR

My DVR is full. I watch all sorts of shows, but sometimes my DVR will record shows that I no longer watch. Every week, I go through my DVR and delete the shows I no longer watch.

To get rid of this time sucker, I went through the DVR listing and deleted them. Oh, it felt so good to NOT have to delete the shows regularly.

What else do you have in your life that sucks away your time?

 

Automatic Withdrawals

Now that everything is automated, it’s easy to pay for a service that you no longer use. I had two subscriptions of about $15 each that I had been paying for months before I realized that I was still paying for them and not using them. Often these payments are small, $1 here and $5 there. They may not seem like much, until you start adding up all of the small increments. You could be losing anywhere between $1 and $100 a month.

Debit Card Use

Swipe, swipe, swipe… we swipe so much that most of us don’t know the last time we saw a dollar bill. A Starbucks coffee here, a Lowe’s charge there, by the end of the day, we’ve spent $100 without thinking twice about it.

The question is: Did you need everything you bought today? An even better question would be: Would you have missed it if you DIDN’T buy it today?  If not, then you didn’t need it and those few dollars are now gone.

Bank/Credit Card Fees

Those sneaky companies will charge you for the smallest of infractions: overdraft, over the limit, late payment and do not forget paying many things at one time. They hold all of the little checks just until a large check comes in, wipes out the account and then processes all of the little ones, leaving you to hold tons in fees.

Check out your local credit union. We have banked with two credit unions. Even though they don’t have branches everywhere, I rarely paid any fees, and even when we did, they were reversed because it happened so rarely. As long as you have just one branch near your home, it’s totally worth moving your money! Check them out.

What else do you have in your life that sucks away your money?