Cloud services can become unexpectedly expensive, but strategic cost optimization can help manage expenditures effectively within 30 days. By creating an optimization plan and targeting quick wins, such as removing unused resources and updating to the latest generation of instance and volume types, organizations can reduce costs without impacting performance. Employing tools like AWS Cost Explorer and AWS Trusted Advisor aids in identifying idle resources, while Infracost provides actionable insights for updating infrastructure code. Utilizing Reserved Instances and Savings Plans offers significant discounts for predictable workloads, while lifecycle and retention policies for storage services like S3 and CloudWatch ensure data is managed efficiently and cost-effectively. These strategies align cloud expenses with actual usage, making cloud cost management both practical and achievable.