Money Saving Tips

With the cost of energy soaring and the cost of food out of control it seems as if there is no way to make the household budget stretch far enough these days. Fortunately there are things that most every family can do – simple money saving ideas – that can help your budget stay on track even with escalating costs. Listed below are some great ideas for easy ways to save money.

1. Get rid of your land line. Most households now have multiple phones. If most family members have a cell phone do you really need a standard land-line phone any longer? It may seem scary at first giving up that old stand-by telephone, but times have changed and this is one time that changing with them could save you a bundle.

2. Carpool to work. This is an idea whose time has clearly and unequivocally come. Not only will carpooling cut your monthly work-related gasoline bill in half, but if you let your insurance agent know that you’re carpooling, it could save you another small fortune on your car insurance. Plus it should cut down on the cost of car repairs.

3. Review all of your insurance policies. This includes auto, home, life, health and any other policies you have. If you haven’t already consolidated all of your policies under the same company banner, doing so could save you some serious cash each month. But even if you’re already getting the multi-policy discount, simply reviewing each policy with an eye toward saving money should shave close to 20% to 25% off your monthly premium payments.

4. Use energy wisely around the house. It’s time to make a real effort to turn off lights every time you leave a room unoccupied. Don’t stand in the refrigerator door casually looking over all of the contents of your refrigerator (your refrigerator uses approximately 20% of all the electricity in your home), and use room air conditioners to cool only the rooms you are using rather than the whole house.

5. Don’t let your car engine idle for more than 60 seconds. If your car was built after 1999 then it takes less fuel to restart the engine than it does to let it idle for more than 30 seconds.

6. Do you really need all of those cable channels? Sure, it’s nice to have hundreds of cable channels, but ask yourself how many channels you actually watch. If you’re honest with yourself it’s probably a lot fewer than you’d really care to admit. And how much would you really miss certain shows if you couldn’t see them any more? I mean, really?
You can save quite a bit of money every month by switching from a premium cable line-up to a basic service.

7. Cut back on fast food. How often do you “just make a quick stop” at a fast food place each week? Twice? Three times? Five? Not only are burgers and fries slowly killing you, but the cost of several “cheap” fast food meals each week is costing you a lot more than you probably realize. Cut out the fast food and see how much you’ll save every month.

8. Take coffee to go. A thermos from home would save you a lot of cold, hard cash every month. Instead of picking up coffee every morning, just take it with you from home.

Americans have been used to a great deal of waste in their lives. This is understandable since resources have been cheap and plentiful up until recently, but times have changed. The rest of the world wants its shot at the good life and there just aren’t enough resources to go around. Consequently life is getting more and more expensive every month. The good news is, for the time being at least, most Americans can stop the economic hurt simply by cutting out the waste in their lives without really affecting their overall lifestyle very seriously. Just look around and see where you can cut back just a little here and there – and it won’t be long until all the small savings add up to some real money.