Can't pay all our bills, which should I prioritize?

$80 a month isn't that high. I don't know where you live, but like u/wrighterjw10 mentions, there are many variables. However with that said, OP has to have full coverage on her vehicle because she has a car payment. Full coverage on an SUV, regardless of age is going to be in that ball park and potentially much higher. Also the age of the car makes less of a difference than you might think. Newer cars are generally safer and will qualify for more safety discounts. I had a 7 year old car and then bought a brand new car with 13 miles on it (literally straight off the semi) and my insurance dropped by 20 bucks a month by going newer with a more expensive car.

Regardless of the stories, anyone who is insuring two people and getting full coverage on a car will be hard pressed to get much cheaper than $70 a month.

I drive a car that is 1 year old, I have a squeaky clean driving record, I have excellent credit, I am 30 years old, and my car is garaged in an extremely safe neighborhood (crime rates of your car "garaging location", usually your home address, has a large impact on rates), and I pay the equivalent of $76 a month for that with full coverage and that is after a lot of shopping around. Also the $76 is only because I pay the entire 6 month term all up front which gives me a 20% discount. So if i didn't pay it all up front and paid monthly it would be $91.xx

I am not trying to start a fight, i am just illustrating that for full coverage on the vehicle I don't think you have much wiggle room here. Changing insurance companies would yield maybe $5 a month less in savings. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask an insurance broker but I would be surprised if it impacted your budget much.

For me I would dodge the student loans first, and consider changing your internet. $130 is a ton for internet in my opinion. I too, work from home, doing online marketing, I work and stream video constantly and I play a lot of online video games and I used to do that with a comcast 40/8 plan which was $48 a month. I am lucky now because Google Fiber came into town, so now I have much faster internet, but I honestly don't need it and I only have it because I can now afford the luxury. But if i was ever in a pinch i would get rid of it and go back to cheap comcast. The differences between 40 Mbps download and 1,000 Mbps is rarely noticeable. Most routers cap out per device at like 10 Mbps, and most servers that you are connecting to cap out much lower than that. Basically the point is that even at 40 Mbps the bottle neck is not your internet, it's the server you connect to, or the wifi connection, the processing of your computer, or many other things. So I have fancy 1,000 Mbps internet and its barely noticeable except in a few specialized scenerios. The point of this rant is to say that dropping your internet speed will probably have no (or maybe minor) noticeable impact on your internet around the house, and it could save you a good chunk of money.

IMHO any money spent towards cable TV (sometimes FIOS includes cable) is a waste of money unless you can afford it as a luxury. So if your FIOS includes cable then I would get rid of it. Considering that you can do Netflix for $10 a month and there is more than you can ever watch on there. You can buy a $10 HDMI cable and watch almost anything through a computer too if you wanted. You can watch hulu for free if you connect a computer via an HDMI to your TV. I realize Cable is nice, but its far from a necessity. Even for me, I dug myself out of debt a few years back and can afford the cable luxury now without any budget stress and I still don't buy it. I actually called recently wanting to get it again and when I heard the prices I said screw it. Even if I can afford it, its just not worth what they are charging now for cable.

/r/personalfinance Thread Parent