From shopping to smoking, behavior that will bust your budget

When the playoffs get underway and the Super Bowl build-up is full-tilt, David Heaton might feel the pain.

For right now, he’s good.

The “sports nut,” as he called himself, pulled the plug on his family’s cable television about two months ago, and with that move he turned away from the bells-and-whistles package that afforded him Sunday afternoon bliss — every game he wanted to see at the touch of the remote.

That was before he lost his job and couldn’t find another steady one for almost a year. In those leaner times, Heaton cut the fat, eventually including cable television. He’s saving about $100 a month, he said.

“I’ve been able to spend more quality time with my family,” Heaton said. “I watch too much TV anyway.”

When times get tough, consumers buckle down. It isn’t easy to stop costly habits or behaviors, though. Doing so, however, could put you on the road to financial freedom. At the very least, it can give you a little breathing room from suffocating, often-unnecessary bills.

“We’re creating some awareness there that may not have been there before, particularly if it’s very casual spending” said Mary Ellen Nicol, a foreclosure prevention counselor with Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta.

A smoker may spend $5.50 a day on a pack of cigarettes. When Nicol points out that’s $165 a month — money that could help reduce credit card debt, for instance — it hits home.

“I want them to see what effect that’s really having on their budget,” she said.

Stan Nation and his wife worked together and ate late lunch out every day, he said. Then, they’d stop and have dinner on the way home from work. That alone didn’t lead to the couple filing for bankruptcy. But even after managing to repair their credit and being issued a credit card six months later, they fell back into bad habits and more debt.

“We got one get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said. “We were headed there again, and I said, ‘Let’s stop and think about what we’re doing.’ I didn’t want to make the same mistakes again. I heard Dave Ramsey on the radio say how much eating out will burn through your budget.”

The Nations were spending about $160 a week on eating out, he said. That’s more than $8,000 a year.

Today, the couple cooks most of the week’s meals on the weekends. In 11 months, after selling a truck and cutting costs in other areas, they are debt-free.

Whether it’s small items every day, like coffee, sodas and snacks, or big spending habits like clothes shopping, expenditures add up fast.

Nicol said she counseled one homeowner who, along with her daughter, spent $800-$900 a month on clothes and dry cleaning. Others spend as much as $50 a month at coffee shops. Some consumers spend money each month on gym memberships they never use, on magazine subscriptions that are never read or produce that goes bad in the refrigerator.

“Even though things have changed financially, they still want to feel the same way, and that includes [small] spending,” Nicol said. “Some people are not at the point to see where cutting down is really a way to increase their income. We’ll hear from them later on. It’s a process. Some will get it right away; others come to it slowly.”

Heaton has taken his lumps, going to sports bars or the homes of friends to watch football. Still, he doesn’t plan on going back to cable anytime soon.

“It’s all going toward debt,” he said. “We just paid off one card, and we’re working hard to get rid of another one. It has worked.”

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