15 Ways to Cut Costs
1. Food: Do your grocery shopping at the cheapest grocery store in your neighborhood, rather than the trendy ones.
2. Coupons: Find them, clip them, save them and use them. Look for stores with double coupon specials. However, if you can find an item on sale even cheaper than with the coupon, go for this route.
3. Gas: Gas stations charge more when you use a card so, save yourself about $.05 a gallon and use cash.
4. More Gas: Look for stations with daily specials such as “$.05 off on Tuesdays” and get your gas there, as long as you can’t find it cheaper other places.
5. Windows: Make sure your windows have a good tight seal around them and keep them locked so no air sneaks in and out.
6. Thermostat: For every degree you set your thermostat below 72 degrees, you can save about 2%-4% on your heating bills.
7. Unplug it: If you have a lot of electronics with clocks on them and you don’t use them often unplug them. They will still draw power from the wall to keep the clock running. Any items with a standby mode should be disabled and allowed to shut off completely.
8. Lights: Invest in fluorescent light bulbs instead of the normal ones. Yes they cost a bit more at the store but, in the long run, they use a lot less energy and they last up to 5 times longer then a regular bulb.
9. Daytime: Open the blinds and turn off the lights.
10. The Morning Commute: Many people get breakfast and coffee on the way to work and that runs about $5-$8 on average. Do that 20 times a month and you just spent $100 – $160 on something you have at home. Take coffee with you and eat before you go to work.
11. Telephone: Look closely at your phone bills; are there services on there you don’t need? Get rid of them! You can actually do this on any service you use.
12. Cell Phone: Many people get charged per text message, if you can change your plan to include text messaging, do it. If you can’t, you can make one call and have a conversation with someone instead of texting and racking up charges.
13. Movies: Movies are insanely expensive! Not to mention the $8 you spend for a bag of popcorn. You can easily spend $60 or more for a family of four. Hit up a Redbox near you for family movie nights. The movie costs you $1 and the popcorn you make at home will be a fraction of the cost.
14. Buy Bulk: If you are grocery shopping and you know you always get the same things, get the largest size you can, assuming it has a long shelf life. Normally, the larger a size you buy, the less you pay per ounce or unit. This means you are spending more at the time, but you are getting more for you money than if you bought the smaller size.
15. Think before you buy: We all make impulse buys; a candy bar here, a soda there. Before you buy something not in your budget just because you want it, think it over and decide if you really need it. More often than not, you don’t.
