What are you cutting in your budget to absorb the Payroll Tax increase?

[ekatiel]

We're losing about $200 a month. Trying to figure out where I'll cut. Unfortunately, vacation/entertainment funding seems to be the first on the chopping block . Thankful that we have "fluff" to cut out of our budget. I'm feeling for those who don't right now . --Katie

 

[tarheel618]

Home phone and cutting the grocery bill. Maybe the cable if necessary.

 

[disneymom2003]

We won't be going to the Nascar races they decided to spend 70,000,000 on.

 

[Tinker'n'Fun]

Travel. We didn't have it before and we can easily go back to what used to be.

 

[sherry7]

We're going to be losing around $190-$200 a month as well. What an awful surprise this was on our paychecks today! I doubt most of the politicians in Washington realize this, but $200 a month is a BIG chunk of change for the average middle class family.

I really don't know what we're going to cut on the budget. We just spent almost $14,000 on much needed new flooring for the house, which I put on a credit card at 0% interest for 18 months. So, that was already taking $780 a month on average out of our pockets for the next year and a half, and now we're losing another $200 a month to this Social Security tax increase. I do have the money in the bank to pay outright for the flooring, but I'd rather spread it out into payments since it's at 0%.

There's not really a whole lot we can cut, with the exception of vacation. But, we had already decided to skip vacation this year because of having the floors done. We were talking about buying a new dining room set this year, but that is definitely on hold now. Hopefully some wood glue will hold the old set together for another year or two.

 

[Pigeon]

Honestly,it's not a big deal to us and I'd rather go without lots of things.

 

[SaraJayne]

Did people honestly not know it was reverting back?

It shouldn't have been a surprise.

 

[christineann]

Probably cutting out cable. I already changed jobs (after 10 years) and cut my commute and gas bill by over 75%.

 

[bdcp]

Makes no difference as we have a much larger cushion than that. We also are paying off a car this month which leaves us with mortgage and a couple of credit cards. Car payment is about 3-4x was the increase is. We won't be cutting back on anything. The ss holiday was just that a temporary holiday. We planned for it all along.

 

[ekatiel]

Did people honestly not know it was reverting back?

It shouldn't have been a surprise.

Surprise or not, it's happening, and every working american is going to have to cut back somewhere. Whether you figured out where that was months ago, or you're figuring out that now, it's a fact. The thread didn't ask if people were surprised, it asked where people are cutting back. --Katie

 

[bdcp]

Surprise or not, it's happening, and every working american is going to have to cut back somewhere. Whether you figured out where that was months ago, or you're figuring out that now, it's a fact. The thread didn't ask if people were surprised, it asked where people are cutting back. --Katie

Their point was no one should be surprised.

 

[ekatiel]

Honestly,it's not a big deal to us and I'd rather go without lots of things.

If it's not a big deal to you, do you want to pay my portion, too ?

Makes no difference as we have a much larger cushion than that. We also are paying off a car this month which leaves us with mortgage and a couple of credit cards. Car payment is about 3-4x was the increase is. We won't be cutting back on anything. The ss holiday was just that a temporary holiday. We planned for it all along.

But you ARE cutting back SOMEWHERE. You will be getting less money. So, you will HAVE less money. You might be cutting back on savings, but it is still cutting back. --Katie

 

[tarheel618]

Surprise or not, it's happening, and every working american is going to have to cut back somewhere. Whether you figured out where that was months ago, or you're figuring out that now, it's a fact. The thread didn't ask if people were surprised, it asked where people are cutting back. --Katie

I Agree with you ekatiel, most of us are not surprised but at the same time the prices of items such as food, gas etc has increased steadily for most households without any pay increases to offset the increase.

So yes it was a nice holiday but losing 100-200 a month is going to hurt a lot of household and most household will have to cut back something.

 

[2disneyboys]

When we got the "raise" (extra 2%) 2 years ago, dh and I increased our 401k withholdings . Now that its being changed back, We are planning on a month or so of figuring it out without making any changes, and if it puts too much strain on our budget, then we'll amend our 401k withholdings back to what they were 2 years ago. Inthe meantime, we'll take it from our entertainment slot the budget & hopefully, it won't be a problem to adjust w/o having to stop the extra 2% going in the 401k's. Thankfully, we never treated this "holiday" as income so we are not going to miss it. I am glad to be in this position.

 

[SaraJayne]

Surprise or not, it's happening, and every working american is going to have to cut back somewhere. Whether you figured out where that was months ago, or you're figuring out that now, it's a fact. The thread didn't ask if people were surprised, it asked where people are cutting back. --Katie

My point was no one should be surprised.

We aren't cutting back anywhere.

 

[bdcp]

If it's not a big deal to you, do you want to pay my portion, too ?



But you ARE cutting back SOMEWHERE. You will be getting less money. So, you will HAVE less money. You might be cutting back on savings, but it is still cutting back. --Katie

No, we're cutting back on nothing. Savings is increasing. Payment to cc are increasing. We planned for this. It was a tax holiday, not a pay increase.

 

[Marionnette]

I won't have to cut out anything. When they stopped taking that 2% of my income for social security, I put it into my retirement savings. Now that the government has decided to take control of that money again, they can put it aside for my retirement instead of me. Whether I actually trust them to do that is another story.

 

[PatsMom]

No change for me. It was a temporary thing so i added it to savings. I am going to see how the budget works out and may actually try to continue the higher savings.

 

[ekatiel]

My point was no one should be surprised.

We aren't cutting back anywhere.

I'm going to beat this dead horse one more time, and then I'll let it go. You are cutting back SOMEWHERE. You will have less money. Whether that is less money to spend, less money to save, or less money to sit on as a "cushion" (I would call that saving), it's less money, and you are cutting back. I'm guessing that people who say they aren't cutting back don't really do a budget. With a budget, you put money into categories until it is all gone. Some of those categories are for spending, some are for saving, but with a budget, every last cent is accounted for. Now, you will have fewer of those "cents", and you will have to decrease your budget in one or more categories. SO, you will be cutting back somewhere, whether you're aware of it or not. Unless you're planning on charging an extra $100-$200 a month on your credit cards to keep up with your current standard of living/spending/saving. Then, I guess you wouldn't be cutting back. --Katie

 

[DisneyBill]

Did people honestly not know it was reverting back?

It shouldn't have been a surprise.

There are probably a lot of people like our DS who had never worked [a full-time job] yet before 1-1-2011 who just started earning an income and never knew the 6.2% rate existed, and in fact were taken by surprise of the reverted rate.

To the OP, we will be foregoing the set-aside of the FICA tax holiday money that we began when the holiday did. It has been ear-marked for DD's wedding funds, so; sorry DD, it's over.