Monitoring Household Expenses

With the upcoming visit to the Philippines, I've been buying a lot of goodies to bring to all my loved ones and close friends. This doesn't happen often so I guess I can go overboard, lol. It's good I have looked into all our utility bills a long time ago and made some changes to pull the expenses down so I'd say I saved quite a few dollars in the process. Variable expenses like gas, water, and electric are the ones I can cut down consumption of, and it really paid off. I was also able to get cheap insurance quote and adjusted our bill favorably. The savings I get from our utility bills I was able to apply to some of this trip's expenses. It pays to closely monitor household bills right?