Money Saving Tips

[OBIO]

With the economy in the tank world wide, I thought it would be a good idea for us to share ways of saving money or making our money stretch that extra bit. I will start with a few ways that Deb and I have found to save money, while not decreasing the quality of our lives.

1) Energy Efficient Compact Flourescent Light Bulbs.

Sure these light bulbs seem to be pricey when you see them in the stores, but they quickly pay for themselves and go on to save you money and reduce a household's energy usage to boot. Deb and I replaced just 8 light bulbs...the 8 that we use the most...with compact flourescent light bulbs. Those 8 bulbs cost us $20....found them on sale...yet in the very first month of use, those 8 CFLs (as they are commonly called) reduced our electric bill by $25. Nothing else changed in terms of electrical use...our computers were on as much, our TV was on as much, our fish tank filters and heaters were on non-stop...yada yada yada. Those 8 energy efficient light bulbs saved us $25. We will soon be replacing the rest of the incandescent bulbs in our house with CFLs.

Many people think that the CFLs don't give off as much light as a normal bulb....in some cases this is true....but if you buy the better brand, the CFLs can actually give you brighter and warmer light than normal incandescent light bulbs. The normal bulbs we used....60 watters....were rated at 800 lumens. The CFLs we bought...Honeywells....are rated at 850 lumens. They give us a bit more light, a warmer light...while using only 13 watts per bulb.

One thing to keep in mind when buying CFLs. Do not buy off brand light bulbs. Yes, the off brands are cheaper...but they don't last as long, don't produce the quality of light, and some of them are known to be fire hazards. Stick with a known name brand. GE, Sylvania, Honeywell.

2) Netflix

Deb and I got tired of paying $70 a month for digital cable, only to find that there was very little worth watching....even with 150 channels at our disposal. We dumped the cable bill in exchange for Netflix. $11 a month and we have movies and movies and movies in heaps and piles to choose from. We can watch movies, and some TV shows, on our computers and on our TV through our Wii gaming system....which connects to the internet via a wireless router. And if a movie we want to watch is not available through the instant streaming menu, we can have it mailed to use on DVD...no extra cost...and keep that DVD for as long as we want. For those who don't care to have DVDs mailed to your home, you can go with a slightly cheaper package....I think it's $8 a month.

One thing to keep in mind...in order to be able to watch Netflix on your television, you need an internet connected media player/game player of some sort to run it through...the Wii, X-Box and Play Station 3, there are more and more internet ready blue-ray/DVD players and some TVs are coming with built in wireless networking capabilities. A router, generally a wireless one, will be needed to connect to the internet. And your internet connection has to be at least a 1.5meg per second connection.....dial up and 768K connections will not work with Netflix.

How is the selection of movies on Netflix? Wonderful. I have watched movies from way back in the silent movie period all the way up to very recent movies like The Karate Kid (with Jackie Chan and Will Smith's son...Jayden Smith), Iron Man, Grown Ups. Lots of classics and great war movies to be enjoyed.

Oh...those few shows that Deb and I did like watching on cable TV...we can pretty much watch on the web sites for the network they were on. Pawn Stars and American Pickers are two shows the I enjoyed watching....all I have to do is go to HistoryChannel.Com and watch the shows right there...FOR FREE! Deb goes to CBS.com to watch her soap operas.

3) G-Mail for long distance calling

Deb and I were paying $50 for our home phone line. Most of the incoming calls were telemarketers. Anyone who wanted to talk to us called us on our cell phones. So, we chopped the phone line. $50 a month in savings. Most of the folks we call are either on Verizon or on our friends and family list...so we can talk to them as much as we want at no extra cost.

For those phone calls that are outside of our Verizon plan or long distance....I make the calls through G-Mail....yes, G-Mail....the e-mail service. For people in the US and Canada, G-Mail allows free calls to any US or Canada phone number...free! No charge. If you live in the US or Canada and find your long distance phone charges are getting painful to your wallet....sign up for a free G-Mail account, grab a mic for your PC and make your calls for free. People will not be able to call you via your G-Mail account, but it can cut down your phone bill...or in our case, totally eliminate it.

Another method for reducing your phone bill is Skype. Computer to Computer phone calls...sort of...and with video! For FREE! If you have 9 siblings spread around the world...get them all signed up on Skype and all ten of you can have one big conference call and yak your heads off for FREE!


These three steps have helped Deb and I reduce our monthly expenses by $145 so far...that amount will go up as we replace the rest of the light bulbs in our house with energy efficient ones. That is a savings of $1740 a year. And we have not missed out on a single thing...our quality of life has not been reduced on bit. It has actually gone up...no phone ringing 50 times a day, no blaring commercials. Our house is so much quieter...and more nicely lit to boot.

OBIO

 

[Tracon]

Great post.

Very true about the light bulbs. We use nothing but the fancy wiggly lights. Bit big though sometimes.

Netflix is a must if you watch TV and Movies. Very cheap, and it can be used on game consoles like XBOX 360 Slim.

Gmail has free calling through 2011 doesn't it?

 

[OBIO]

Yes, G-mail phone calls are free throughout 2011. Not sure what will come in 2012....hopefully they will continue to offer it for free.

Oh...money saving tip number 4!

Buy meat in bulk!

This evening, I ran into the Krogers Grocery store....a mainline grocery store here in Ohio....to pick up some stuff. As I was going by the meat section, I happened to see 5 pound bulk packages of 80% lean ground chuck on sale. $10.54 per 5 pound package. This was about $9 off the normal price...simply because the meat was within 4 days of its USE BY date. No biggie....I bought 2 5-pound packages, brought it home, divided it up into 1 pound chunks, placed those chunks into 1-gallon freezer bags, flattened them down a bit, pressed as much air out of the bags as I could, and popped them into the freezer. That USE BY date...out the window as that ground chuck can safely been stored in the freezer for up to 6 months.

How much money did I save? Normally, we buy 5-pound tubes of 80% lean ground beef (hamburger) at a discount grocery store. Recently those 5-pound tubes went up to $15 per tube. And this stuff isn't ground chuck...just regular ground up beef hamburger. So, we saved around $10 and ended up with a much better meat...ground chuck versus ground scraps and odds and ends. There is a difference....Ground chuck is so much better than regular ground beef.

One thing that I will begin doing again is hitting the meat section of Krogers around midnight to 2 in the morning. At that time....a lot of meat that is getting close to its USE BY or SELL BY date is put on Manager's Special. 50 to 75% off the normal price. One time, we bought a 7 pound Angus London Broil for $6. 7 pounds of ANGUS...for less than a buck a pound. I brought it home, sliced it into pieces more suited for cooking for 2. Froze it. That USE BY date...it can save you a lot of money. Simply buy it cheap, repackage it, freeze it and SAVE BIG MONEY.

OBIO

 

[flaminghotsauce]

My wife and I spent a few years very broke. We learned to do without a lot of what most people cannot live without.

Cell phone: We have two tracphones which cost us $17/month to refill automatically with minutes. I get 100 minutes per month, wife gets 60. We never use them all, even though I use mine as a "work phone." I need emergency communication ability. We are not phone-aholics, nor texting dweebs. A phone for the rare times we actually need to make a call rather than "wat r u up 2?" My niece is cutting back to start paying on her student loans and has had to ditch her beloved iphones. She was spending $172/ month for the two for her and her husband. I would wretch if I had to pay that much! I just wouldn't, period.

We don't smoke. My inlaws gave up smoking and can afford a vacation in Mexico every year with NO other financial changes. $4/ pack? roughly? Imagine a pack a day: $4 x 365 days per year= $1,460.

We don't eat out much. My wife is an excellent cook, and even when she's not cooking, it's cheaper to throw in a frozen pizza or three.

No TV packages at all. No TV antennae. We do netflix also. It saves not only cash, but our sanity. Pop culture, ignorant news readers, ignorant politicians, ignorant commercials.... gone.

We went through a year-long period of coupon shopping that was SO productive for household goods like soaps, shampoos, razors, toothpaste, etc. that we're pretty much stocked for years. We often spent less than 5% of the retail! I remember walking out of a store with $180 worth of goods, and we were out like six bucks? Nice. The stocking up leaves more cash available to stock up on food items when they go on sale. We buy a side of beef and pay $2.49 a pound versus 9 or 10 /lb for a ribeye steak.

Got out of debt. Paid off all credit cards. Well, to be honest, I'm not totally out. I'm still paying my student loan and house payment. But running CC balances sucks cash like no one's business. It's like getting a raise, paying of the credit cards. Our highest interest card was 24%. We're paying four or five house payments per month. We should own it in two more years. If you pay heavily on the house note for the first few years, I mean HEAVILY, you'll knock many years off your loan and save thousands and thousands of dollars.

Paying cash for vehicles. I own four vehicles and pay no payments. I have the option to substantially reduce insurance coverage when I don't owe someone else for the vehicle. Cars depreciate about as fast as the payment, as a rule of thumb. Buy used, pay cash.

Buy quality items. They break less. Initially a little more than the cheap junk, they pay off in the long run.

Garage sale clothes and shoes for the little ones. They don't know any better, don't care, and will trash 'em as fast as if you bought them new. $.25 pair of shoes versus $15, same half-life expectancy.

Hope some of this helps. There's plenty more ideas out there.

 

[Dynasaur]

The 'Wiggly' Fluro lights are good, but you have to careful if you have light dimmers or other electronic light controls (like the touch-light type of table lamp.) The energy saver fluro's can make them fail.
You can get energy savers that are able to be dimmed.These usually consist of a small dichroic (?) lamp inside a standard size outer glass.
At least that's what they are like here in Oz

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Similar to the Tracfone, Straight Talk will allow cell phone addicts to have unlimited USA coverage ( phone, text, and data ) for $45 per month per phone, also owned by Carlos Slim, the world's richest man. We've had it for 4 months with zero problems. They have a less generous plan for $30, that would fit most people... buy the monthly renewal cards at Walmart or online.

Other money savers... buy generic whenever possible. I like the coupon tip... just need to make time to study up on it a bit.

Dick

 

[Tracon]

It's called Hypermiling. Basically, persistently monitor fuel use on drives in the car. Stay under 2000RPM on acceleration, brake no more than absolutely necessary to be safe, etc..

Look it up, fascinating driving techniques. We all notice the price of fuel when we fill up or pass a gas station, but do you honestly realize how your driving habits affect you financial data?

Clean oil, filters and properly inflated tires mean a lot.

 

[stansdds]

Want to save some real money on light bulbs? LED. Yes, quite expensive to buy, but the prices have dropped, but they outlast fluorescent by a good margin and do not contain mercury. And for outdoor lighting nothing beats the LED. Everyone markets incandescent and fluorescent bulbs with yellow coatings that are not supposed to attract insects at night, but all of them do. LEDs do not attract insects simply because of the specific wavelengths of light produced by LEDs.

 

[kilo delta]

Few more great frugality tips*:

Cut up your wife's credit card (do this at your own peril)

Sell off your wife's massive shoe collection on ebay (see above)

Stop smoking,drinking...washing (ditto)

Grow or kill your own food supply

Sell your home and move into a vacant cave using love making as your only means of acquiring heat (might become a solo affair should the earlier points have gone badly)

Designer clothing??? Not necessary...make your own from the remains of your previous meal...deerskin pants,lambskin top and moccasin's made out of leaves could start a whole new fashion trend

For entertainment/socialising why not brew your own alcohol using locally sourced elderberries with a dash of alligator urine for a little extra special zest













*Disclaimer:
The opinions expressed by the original poster are theirs alone,and with tongue firmly lodged in cheek, and do not reflect the opinions of the SOH or any member thereof. The poster is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by their wild thoughts and actions. While every caution has been taken to provide the readers with most accurate information and honest analysis, please use your discretion before taking any decisions based on the information in this post. Author will not compensate you in any way whatsoever if you ever happen to suffer a loss/inconvenience/damage/divorce/personal injury because of/while making use of information in this post.

 

[n4gix]

These are all very good tips (well, except possibly for the last few made by Kilo Delta).

For Netflicks, I simply connect my laptop to the HDTV via an HDMI cable.

You can save a TON of money by adopting this tip:

Using Toilet Paper Efficiently and Cheaply!

1. Tear off a single sheet
2. Fold into quarters
3. Tear off the innermost folded corner, set aside
4. Unfold sheet and insert middle finger into hole
5. Wipe
6. Carefully fold up the four corners of the sheet and wipe finger
7. Retrieve the small piece you previously set aside and clean fingernail

 

[Allen]

The CFL are crap in my house. I lose 2 or 3 every 6 months. I can buy 99 cent store normal bulbs. *4 pack* that that last longer and are cheaper.

 

[alain95]

Money...

...is the root of all evil today.. (Pink Floyd)
Hey chaps ! I don't know how I could save more :
- I have no cell phone
- And I have no car ! (I rent sometimes to see my family in the countryside)
Do you believe me ?

cheers