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]

Originally Posted by SaraJayne

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]

Originally Posted by ekatiel

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]

Originally Posted by Pigeon

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 ?

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by ekatiel

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]

Originally Posted by ekatiel

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.