Do you budget your money? How do you determine what to spend on bills and extraneous expenses? What are things you cut out if money is tight at times? What do you splurge on if you have a little extra?
Anyone who knows me knows that I am careful with money. I wouldn’t say extreme, but I do not like paying more than what is needed for anything. That is especially true for those boring but necessary bills like electricity, cable, cell phones, grocery, and more. When you save on necessities you have more to spend on fun things like travel! So how can you cut down on those necessities? I am sharing some tips today!
1. Grocery shopping
If you are lucky enough to have several grocery store chains around your home, try shopping at them each for a few weeks and review your total. When you eat the same types of food week to week, you get an idea of what is a good price and what is exorbitant. Once you’ve found a place where the prices are consistently good, just shop there. Coupons and sales always help, but they only go so far if the item cost is already high. Save time, energy, and money by doing your grocery shopping at a store where prices are consistently low.
2. Electricity
Are you using energy saving light bulbs? What about a programmable thermostat? Don’t forget to turn off the lights and fan after leaving each room. These things can all help to save you some money each month.
3. Cell phone bill
Family plans are very economical. We have my parents on our plan and it drastically reduced our cost per person. Cell phone companies often have a slew of discounts available, too. Check to see if they have a discount for you. We were able to compare my husband’s company’s discount to my teacher discount to get the best rate (up to 20% off the plan)! If you aren’t getting a discount on your cell phone plan each month, you are probably wasting money.
4. Cable and internet
These days loyalty counts for nothing which is unfortunate. Many cable or satellite tv companies have deals to entice new customers then drastically increase the prices after a year or two. We save money by calling customer service after the deal is up and seeing if they will continue our deal (this works well for our newspaper, too). If they won’t continue it, then we switch companies. We have the option of two different satellite tv companies and cable so we have rotated around them to make sure we are getting the best deal. It can be annoying to make those installation appointments, but we save several hundred dollars each year.
5. Dry Cleaning
It’s difficult to completely avoid having any dry clean only or hand wash only items in your closet. And if you work in a business environment, items that require dry cleaning like blazers and suits are a necessity! Dry cleaning bills really add up over time. By switching to Dryel, you can save money each month by not paying those dry cleaning bills and doing it at home. It costs as low as $0.25 a garment. My husband thinks Dryel does an even better job than the dry cleaners with getting stains and smells out, especially with the booster spray. And Dryel has a new stain pen that even works on delicate clothing that will help you get those stains out even more! You can find the new Dryel Stain Pens at the HSN.
Thank you to Dryel for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own.
