8 Ways To Stretch Your Eating Out Budget

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Eating out is a treat for us.  We do it often enough that our kids know how to properly act in a restaurant, but not so often that they expect it or ask for it.  I’d say we probably dine out at a restaurant once a week, maybe once every other week all depending on how other things go (like eating at my in-laws or parents).

We love eating out, but we don’t want to dedicate a lot of money towards it.  While it’s not something we will ever cut out completely, we keep it in check by following a few simple guidelines that let us stretch our budget a long way when it comes to our dining out.

  1. Check the local paper for coupons – Every week we get a local ‘community’ focused newspaper.  In there are coupons that are specifically for us, as they’re usually within a 5-10 mile radius of our house.  You can find deals in other publications, of course, but the community papers seem to do a lot of the legwork for you.  We also have used the Entertainment Book, though it looks as if that is soon going to be a thing of the past.
  2. Look online – There are many sites online where you can look for deals.  Groupon, Living Social, and restaurant.com are great sites to check out.  For the latter, make sure you look up a coupon code, as you can often get their vouchers at 70-80% off, which makes a good deal even better!
  3. Kids eat free – If you have little kids, you know that their food can be expensive, and even more so if they’re having one of their picky days.  Take the burden off by looking for nights when kids eat free.
  4. Look for daily specials – One restaurant close to us has a deal that runs six days a week, four hours per day, where any omelette on their menu is $3.95.  The omelettes are good, and you also get a side of hash browns and toast.  It fills you up and at a price that’s hard to beat.  Look around for such deals.
  5. Get your food to-go – While eating out can be relaxing (plus there’s no dishes to do!), you can definitely stretch your dollar further by getting restaurant food in carry-out, and eating at home.  The food is the same food you’ll eat at the restaurant, but you won’t have to pay the full tip (you should still plan on paying a small tip to the take-out person who brings your food), as well as drinks and other items that can add a lot to the bill.
  6. Speaking of drinks – If you eat out, try drinking water.  Soft drinks can add a lot to the bill, and alcoholic drinks are even more expensive.  We typically drink water, and that saves us at least $4 each time we go out.  (Note: Since your server still has to spend time and effort filling your water glasses, plan on adding $0.50 per person that drinks water on top of your calculated tip).
  7. Split a plate – I’ve seen many articles where it’s been well documented that restaurants give you much more food than you should probably eat, and definitely more food than is usually served at home.  Many people will eat too much, some people will take leftovers, but what about finding a dish that’s agreeable to two people and splitting it?  Most places will happily do this, and if you let them know, they’ll even split it up before they bring it out.  Even if they charge $1 or $2 extra to split it, you still save quite a bit versus paying for two entrees.
  8. Order an appetizer - Ordering something off of the appetizer usually provides plenty of food and it’s typically quite a bit cheaper than an entree. I love nachos and can often come away very happy with a full order of nachos for $3-4 less than an entree.  The only caveat is that the appetizer menu often contains more fatty foods, so be careful here.

In the end, if you use some of the tips above, you can have a completely satisfying meal out but pay significantly less money.

What things do you do or have you seen done that can save you money on your dining out bill?

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Tailor Your Heating And Cooling To The Season

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Today marks the first official day of Spring.  While our weather here in the midwest has not given barely a hint of actual spring weather (when I woke up today, it was 17 degrees out, with a wind chill barely above 0), the fact is that warmer weather will soon be here.

With that, we’ll eventually be turning off the heat, and at some point turning up the air conditioning.  There are a few things to keep in mind as you make that switch:

Check Your Program

I’m hoping that by now, everybody has a programmable thermostat installed.  This will allow you to vary the temperature automatically, so that adjustments can be made to cover times when nobody is at home or when people are sleeping.  These can save a good deal of money, but it’s important to check to make sure that your program is intact.

This past winter, the batteries in our thermostat died.  I woke up one morning to find it five degrees below what it should be, and a ‘LOW BATTERY’ warning.  This irritated me because I had just changed the batteries a few weeks prior, but I guess the batteries were either old or defective.  On top of it, the thermostat is supposed to warn of low battery at least a month before it gets to the point where it will no longer work, but it didn’t do so (maybe if the batteries were bad, they died suddenly?).   In any case, the power was so low that the thermostat couldn’t muster enough power to kick on the furnace.  It also meant that when I took the batteries out to change them, the thermostat immediately lost all programming (usually you have about 30 seconds to change the batteries where it will retain the programming).  This meant that I had to re-program everything.  I did so, for the heat, but I left the cooling alone.  I will have to make sure to program the cooling cycle into the thermostat prior to switching the air on for the season.

(That reminds me, it’s probably a good idea to write down your program so that you aren’t struggling to re-program it. I’m sure that my program will not be exactly what I had last year).

Adjust Your Output

In the summer, our house cools in such a way that I close off every vent that has a lever in the downstairs floor.  Some air still gets out, and there is still one vent in the kitchen that doesn’t have a lever, and this is enough to cool the entire first floor, and keep the second floor at a comfortable temperature.  Otherwise, what happens is that the downstairs cools off quickly, and since the thermostat is down there, it turns off, yet the upstairs will get sweltering hot.  That means we’d either be very hot while we sleep, or we’d have to lower the temp, increasing our overall energy consumption.  By balancing out our output, we’re able to maximize the work our cooling system has to do.

(Note: in the winter, we leave pretty much everything open which keeps a good balance throughout the house).

Look At Unused Areas But Tread Carefully

I’m on the fence about this one.  When I was growing up, my grandparents had a radiant based heating system (and no A/C) which had a radiator in each room.  They had a couple of bedrooms that they were no longer using, so they turned off the heat to those rooms, and shut the door.  That made sense to me as the main boiler unit would simply have to work less to generate less steam output.

With a forced air system like we have, the output is going to be the same, even if you close off rooms.  It isn’t going to blow less air, so I question whether you save by shutting off rooms, especially when I’ve read that the size of your furnace and A/C units are (at least in theory) sized for the cubic footage of your house.  By reducing the area, you could be creating other issues.

In the case of cooling, you could be reducing the time that the unit runs since it has less area to cool, but since the cooling system is designed to extract humidity from your home, less cooling means less extraction.  This means that your home could end up feeling hotter as more humidity remains, meaning that you’ll likely…you guessed it…go and turn the thermostat down, meaning that you’re not going to reduce your usage at all.

Summary

Overall, there are various methods you can take as the seasons change to ensure that your system is functioning effectively.  Now is the time to start planning for that switch.

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Research Purchases With Product Reviews

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Whenever I’m purchasing a product I haven’t used before, I try as hard as I can to find out more information about the product.  Of course, I look through some of the product information, but one of the things that I have found most helpful is to research product reviews by other customers who have experience with this product.  Doing so has helped me in a variety of ways, and can lead to money savings through a variety of means.

What are some of the benefits of reading product reviews?

  • It gives you practical information on the technical information available – We recently purchased a new TV, which is a fairly expensive purchase.  When looking at the product specs, the information clearly outlined what type of inputs and outputs were available on the back of the TV.  This is something that is important if you plan on connecting any external devices, such as DVD players, gaming consoles, or other devices, as you want to make sure that you can properly plug in devices which you own or plan to own.  The technical sheets give this information in a very technical manner, but by reading the product reviews, I was able to see from a user-based experience, how the back of the TV was configured and how it would best be used.  Other users who had the type of equipment I had spelled out in great detail how it worked for them, and some of the things that were good to know.  Product reviews can take the technical information available and translate it into working terms that can help you better understand the item you’re considering.
  • It can make you read something that you might otherwise miss – Last year, I needed to patch a couple of very small holes in a piece of canvas that has outdoor exposure.  I typed a few terms into Google and came up with a couple of product names that seemed to fit the bill.  When I went over to Amazon, I typed in the name of the product and thought I was ready to go. I took a moment to scroll down and read the reviews, where I found out that there are two different varieties with practically the same product name made by the same company.  One was for canvas and the other was specifically for items other than canvas.  I didn’t realize it but by typing in only the information I had, I’d wound up on the product page that would not have helped me.  This would have been my oversight, but it would have resulted in me ordering and paying for a product which I did not need.  Reading the review allowed me to learn from the mistakes of others, and I ended up ordering the product I needed, saving me the cost of the wasted order.
  • You get to read real actual reviews – This one is the most obvious, so I didn’t post it first, but you get to read the thoughts of people who have actually used it.  No product page is going to give you the shortcomings of a product, but those types of things are really what potential buyers are looking for.  By reading through reviews, you tend to get a bit more practical information and can see exactly what people have experienced.  One rule of thumb is that (looking at Amazon’s 5-star rating system), I tend to skip over the 5-star and 1-star reviews.  It’s obvious that those people either truly love or absolutely hate the product in question, and while they certainly have their reasons which may be applicable, I find that the 4, 3, and 2 star reviews actually paint a better picture that matches the information that I’m looking for.

Where do you find great reviews?

I’ve found a number of different sites can generate good reviews:

  • Amazon – They sell so many products that they seem to have the most product reviews.  Still, you will find many items that are listed which have no reviews.
  • WalMart – They often have reviews of products that they sell, and let’s face it, WalMart sells a lot of products.
  • Review sites – There are a number of sites available dedicated to allowing customers to review products.  Usually what I do is go to Google and type in what you’re looking for, followed by the word ‘review’.  This tends to find any sites where you might be looking for reviews based on real customer experience.

In short, I think it’s great to get as much information on products you purchase.  I’d specifically spend most of my time looking at reviews for bigger ticket items or products which are new to you.  You’re probably not going to get much value in looking at a review for something you buy regularly, although sometimes you will find that things have changed that you might not even be aware of, so depending on how much time you have, you can never go wrong with looking up product reviews.

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Enjoy Quiet Time

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We are a society with lots of hustle and bustle, and with that many of us are busy all the time.  From the time we wake up until we go to bed, we are busy with something.  We go to work.  We do stuff for the kids.  We cook.  We clean.  We have family obligations.  We plan activities for later.

It’s very time consuming!

We all need a break now and then.  We require time to unwind, relax, and get away from all of the things we have going on around us, all the to-do lists we have, and all of the people that are counting on us in seemingly endless fashion.

All too often, many people take their breaks by trading one stimulus for another.  While it may certainly be enjoyable to go to a movie instead of cleaning the kitchen, or while it’s great to go shopping on a day off, the fact is that these and other similar activities are not providing rest to your brain and your body.  You may be enjoying yourself, but if you’ve ever wondered why you’re still tired, sometimes more so, after taking some time to do things you enjoy, it’s probably because you’re not really giving yourself a break.

On top of keeping yourself overly active, many of these activities have something else in common: They cost money.  This adds to the stress that many people have as they have to find room in the budget to pay for the movie tickets or the sporting event or the trip down to Disney World.

So, what can you do in order to really give yourself a break, and also give your wallet a break at the same time? Thankfully, there are many things that you can do.

  • Go for a walk or a bike ride in a nature filled setting – If you have a park with trails nearby, this can be a wonderful activity. While it will require some level of ‘being physical’, the relaxation it will bring to your body will provide you an overall sense of peacefulness.  On top of that, even though you are undergoing physical activity, the fact that you will be refreshing your mind will help promote a really good night’s rest, so if all goes well, you can wake up the next morning feeling both physically and mentally refreshed.  And, you’ve just gotten some exercise on top of it!
  • Listen to some relaxing music – If you love music, and most of us do have some music we love, you can really lose yourself in this one.  Lock yourself in a room, turn the volume up (or put headphones on if you have to keep other sleeping bodies in mind) and get lost in some great music.  Often times a relaxing CD will do, but you can also find a CD that you used to love but haven’t listened to in a long time.  Chances are it will bring back some good memories and you’ll find yourself relaxing as the music takes over.
  • Read a book – Finding a good book to read is like discovering an entire new world.  If an author does it right and you connect with the story, the words on the page will form images in your mind that will take you from this world, and while leaving your current troubles and hectic schedule behind, if only for the time you get lost in your story.  The best part is that most people have access to thousands of such stories by virtue of public libraries.
  • Write a letter – Put the laptop and tablets away for this one.  I’m talking the old-fashioned way where you get a paper and pen out, and write a letter.  Find someone you haven’t heard from in a while, someone you miss, and write a letter.  Write what is going on, and what you’re feeling as well.  If you have problems you can share, write about those as well.  Writing things down will actually free you of some of the burden that’s associated with stress.  If you actually mail it or not is up to you, though if you do, I’m sure letters are so uncommon these days that the person that receives it will no doubt cherish it.
  • Spend romantic time with a loved one – Hold hands.  Sit down by the fireplace with a good fire going.  If you have someone you love, spend some quiet time with them. You don’t even have to do much talking.  Just touching will bring you close, will help you unwind, and it could even lead to more fun activities that are also shown to relieve stress!
  • Take a nap – If you find that you’re tired all the time, and that the nighttime just doesn’t give you enough time to catch up, treat yourself to a nap every now and then.  A couple of hour nap could provide the same boost to your body as an entire night of sleep does (though the trick is to get the same amount of sleep that you usually do).  It can definitely recharge you, and if you haven’t treated yourself to a nap in awhile, trust me, you are missing out!

These are just a few of the ways that you can treat yourself to one of the best gifts you can get: the gift of time.  The bonus about the activities above is that they are all free!  If you lose yourself in one of these activities or something similar, you will find that it’s easier to rest, it’s easier to think, and this will lead to you being able to solve more problems, get more done, and be more effective in your day to day activities.  So, really, taking rest time is an investment in your everyday life.  Once you treat yourself to some ‘down’ time, you’ll find yourself making room for it and wondering how you ever lived without it for so long!

Readers, how do you treat yourself to alone time, and what activities do you most enjoy that carry you away?  Do you find that rest time actually enhances your productivity? 

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Keep The Outside Air Outside

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Here in Michigan, one of the biggest expenses I have all year has to do with keeping our house at a comfortable level in terms of temperature.  Michigan summers can be hot and the winters can be hold.  There are many days and nights where we can turn the thermostat to the OFF position, but for the days where you are either running the air conditioning or the heat, operating those devices can be very costly.

There are many ways to reduce your bills that tie into the equipment itself (energy efficiency) or things you can do to which will make it run more effectively (programmable thermostat, adjust temperature) but those are things I have already covered or will save for another day.

What I’d like to cover today is the savings that you can realize by keeping the outside air out. There are two main ways which I’ve found that this occurs and you can work to fight against either one of these things.

First is the effect of temperatures wanting to balance.  See, in the winter when it’s cold outside, the house will become cool from two effects, one is the radiant effect of the temperature difference between the colder outside and the warmer inside.  Temperature will always try to achieve a balance, so the warm house will slowly radiate out through the walls, meaning that at the same time the colder air temperatures outside are working their way in.

The best way to fight this is by properly insulating your home.  The better R-value you have for your insulation, the better it will be at keeping the temperature on one side of the wall or the other.

You can control some types of insulation more than others.  Insulation in the wall is probably something you’re going to have to live with unless you want to go through a lot of work.  There are several options I’ve seen over the years.

  • Ripping out the drywall – If you’re doing a remodel and are gutting a room or some rooms, you might just want to clear out the drywall and improve what’s behind it.
  • Going in from the outside – If you’re replacing siding or something on the outside of the house, there could be an opportunity to add or replace the insulation from the outside of the home.
  • Poking holes – This is probably viable only if you have no insulation in your walls.  I’ve seen where they drill holes across the wall and blow insulation in the holes.  Patch up the holes, re-paint, and you’re good to go.  This is expensive and troublesome, but if you have no insulation at all, it could be worth it.

So, the walls are out, but what about the top and bottom?

Get up in that attic and see what you have.  If you have an attic space above the top of your home, chances are this is where the insulation lies that is supposedly protecting the air from escaping above.  It’s also the area that’s relatively easiest to improve, and you can get a meaningful bang for your buck.

One of the first things that we did after we moved into our home in 2007 was to add insulation into the attic. I have a father-in-law who is very handy, so we were able to rent a machine from Home Depot, buy the proper amount of insulation, and spend an afternoon blowing it into the attic space.  It required us to snake a hose up from the driveway (where the machine was) up to the attic using a bedroom window for access.

The total cost of this project was around $350 for us, and it improved the insulation in our home tremendously.  It keeps heat from escaping, and in the summer it minimizes the amount of heat that is trapped up in the attic from radiating into the home, which requires the air conditioner to work all the harder.

You can also insulate from below.  If you have a basement that you use and keep heated, you probably don’t have an opportunity to improve here, but if you have an unfinished basement or a crawl space, you can put insulation between that space and your living space to create a barrier.  These will probably involve the insulation that you buy in rolls and will end up being stuffed between floorboards.

If you work here, just make sure to get the advice of a professional or two.  Basements can be damp places, so you want to make sure that you’re not creating such a tight seal that you trap in all the moisture.  This can lead to mold problems which are going to be far more expensive than the money you’re saving by insulating.

Also, make sure to understand what needs to be done around wiring and plumbing so that you’re not creating a fire hazard by improperly insulating around wiring incorrectly, or doing something that can cause the insulation to become damp if you don’t take the proper steps around plumbing.

Windows and doors are huge problems. The next area you want to hit is your windows and doors.  If it’s a cold day out and you open the door, what happens?  Cold air goes in, right?  So, what do you do?  Close the door as soon as you can.  That keeps the cold air from getting in.

Or so you think.

Many doors and windows are still letting air in if they are not weather sealed properly, and even if they are when they’re first installed, chances are they might not be functioning as well as they age.  If you have a door or window that is letting air in, it’s the same as leaving the door ever so slightly cracked or leaving the window open a tiny bit.  It might not even be really measurable (where you can feel a draft) at any one location, but if you add up all the draft coming in across all your windows, it could be the equivalent of leaving a window open a few inches.  On a cold day, think what a difference that would make in keeping your house the right temperature, and the work that your heating or cooling system has to do to combat that.

You can fix that by adding weatherstripping to your doors and windows.  This will create better seals and reduce drafts.  My tool of choice in identifying where problems occur is an infrared thermometer.  You press a button and point it at or around the window, and you can see the exact temperature at any one spot.  Move it around and the temperature moves.

Establish a baseline.  What I do when using this tool is take a reading at all my windows by measuring around the windows and also along the wall a few feet from the window.  I’ll flip it on, and essentially go around the perimeter of each window.  All windows are going to be colder (if it’s winter) than the wall around it, just for the fact of radiant heat, but after a few windows, you’ll be able to see where the readings should be. You’ll start to see a ‘range’ that is likely normal for around windows.  If you have a window that’s giving a much lower temperature or even a spot on a window that’s suddenly dropping, that’s where you’ll get the most bang for your buck for weatherstripping.

This works great for around doors, too.  I knew our front door was a bit drafty as I could actually feel it, but until I used my infrared thermometer, I didn’t know exactly where it was coming from.  By running this around the door, I was able to tell precisely where there was a fault, and was able to focus on that area.  It made an immediate difference.

These are all ways that you can use to keep the air that’s inside your house, which you’ve worked and paid to have brought to the temperature that you desire, in your house.  Keeping it in and keeping the outside air out is the best method you’ll have to raising and lowering your utility bills.

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Cook From Scratch As Often As You Can

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There are many options available when deciding what to eat for dinner.  There are endless options of restaurants, there are pre-packaged or frozen meals available at the grocery store, but your best option is to cook from scratch as often as you can.  This will save you money and also has other advantages:

Check your sale ad.  The first thing you should do when deciding what to cook is to look at your sale ad from your preferred grocery store.  Finding out what is on sale will allow you to pick out ingredients that you can get for less money than normal.

Set up a shopping day. That leads me to another piece of advice which is to always shop in advance, which means that you plan your meals out in advance.  If you find yourself stopping at the grocery store multiples times per week to pick up stuff you need, chances are you are wasting money, and it’s a certainty that you’re wasting time.  Do a little advance planning.  It’s definitely worth it.

Start slow.  If cooking meals from scratch is a new practice for you, that’s just fine, but if that’s the case I would start off slow.  Don’t think that you can convert from the take-out lifestyle to the cooking at home lifestyle overnight.  That would be too overwhelming.  Pick one meal, make it simple (like pasta with meat sauce) and use that as your launching pad.  If you jump in too quickly, you’ll likely end up quitting because it’s too dramatic a shift to make all at once.

List your ingredients.  When you cook from scratch, have a recipie and an ingredients list.  Make sure you have all of the ingredients you need, and if you are seeing something on your list that you think you have but haven’t used in a while, make sure you check to ensure that it’s still good.  There’s nothing worse than assuming you can use meat in the freezer only to find out that it’s been in there so long that it’s freezer burned.  This would certainly bring a halt to your meal making plans!

Don’t compare meal prices at the start.  One of the common arguments I hear is that, especially for single people or couples without kids, is that eating in doesn’t save money. They’ll point to the costs of buying all of the ingredients that they need, and will show that a takeout meal is the same price and takes a lot less time to make.  Don’t fall into this trap.

Why?  Because you’ll stock up.  If you haven’t cooked much, you likely don’t have much to cook with, so at first, you will need everything.  But, with many ingredients, you’ll use a small portion and will have the rest left over for future meals.  This means that as you get deeper and deeper into your meal making strategy, your costs per meal will steadily decline.

It’s healthier.  What you make in your kitchen will be much healthier than what you get from a restaurant, whether it be fast food, take out, or sit down.  You’ll use healthier ingredients and it’s almost a certainty that you’ll use less of the unhealthy ingredients that restaurants use, like salt.  Over time, the health benefits that you give yourself by cooking in will pay in other ways.  You’ll feel better.  You’ll have less problems that will require doctors care.  You’ll have better opportunities to keep your weight from going up.

Bottom line, it puts you in control.

The problem of time.

One of the common complaints I hear about cooking in is that there isn’t enough time. By the time you get home from work and deal with kids or everything else, it is late to start a meal.  I understand that, and while it’s not possible to create time out of thin air, and while I doubt many employers are going to take too well to you leaving early so that you can get a head start on dinner, there are other ways to handle this.

Have your ingredients laid out.  The night before, you can get your ingredients together so that when you do come home, everything is right there.  A common factor that many people forget is that prepping your meal takes quite a bit of time, so if you can reduce the prep time necessary, you’ll be able to jump right into actually making the meal as soon as you walk in the kitchen.

Take it one step further.  You can take the prepping in advance to an advanced level, by doing some of the pre-cooking the night before.  If your meal requires meat to be browned, you can do this the night before after the kids are in bed and things have settled down.  This will make the next day’s meal even easier to cook, and it will force you to actually cook the meal and not give into the temptation to slack off!

Cook when you can.  If you have a little extra time on the weekend, especially with the colder winter months now coming upon many of us, you can spend some time cooking meals for the week.  Many people will cook two or three meals, and put them in the fridge, so all that has to be done is warming it up when it’s actually time to eat them!  How easy is that?  Plus, as you get better with cooking, you’ll find that you can make many of your upcoming meals at the same time, so you can get three meals cooked in two hours, versus an hour per meal during the week, saving you an hour of cooking time.

Don’t forget leftovers.  If you cook something that you make a lot of, plan on freezing what you can.  As long as you don’t abandon it to the dark regions of your freezer, you can have that as another meal within a couple of weeks.

Cooking your meals can save you big bucks if you start off small and stick with it.  You’ll learn new skills, save money, and will end up providing yourself better health along the way.   Readers, do you cook from scratch?  Share how it saves you money.

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Perform A Line By Line Exam Of Every Bill And Statement

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We’ve all heard the words “Knowledge is power” , but when it comes to saving money on your monthly bills, this can be a very powerful statement.

In the age where paying bills is easier than ever, consumers benefit, right?  In the old days, you’d have to go to the mailbox, find the bill, open it up, take a look at it, write a check, find a stamp, take it to the mailbox, and wait another month for the entire cycle to start over again.  This process wasn’t just for one bill, it would be for every single bill that you paid.

The mortgage.  The car payment.  The electric bill.  Gas.  Water.

You get the idea.

Now, it’s so much easier.  The ‘bill’ shows up in your inbox and on a designated date, the money gets subtracted from your account.

No more opening the bill, no more having to worry about finding the checkbook or running to the post office because you’re out of stamps.

It’s all so much easier now.

Maybe a little…too easy.

In fact, this entire process could be costing you money each month.  By missing the part where you open the bill and take a look at it, this could be costing you money each and every month.

Here are a few things that you might want to take a look at:

  • Bank statements – Most banks have moved away from providing totally free checking and savings accounts.  If they are offered at all, chances are there are rules and restrictions tied to such things as maintaining an average daily balance, performing direct deposit, or limiting the number of transactions.  Take a look at your detailed statement to make sure you are not paying any unnecessary monthly fees.  Banks do have to notify you when they make changes, but they’ve gotten really good at slipping these notifications by so they go undetected.
  • Mortgage statement – If you pay a monthly mortgage, take a good look at it.  Chances are the bank hasn’t added any fees, but if you take a good look at it, you might find some opportunities.  Look at the rate and see what it compares to what is available today.  Perhaps a re-finance is in order.  Look at whether you’re paying Personal Mortgage Insurance (PMI).  If you’ve built up enough equity in your house (usually 20-30%), you might want to consider a request to have this removed.  Banks typically won’t remove it on their own, it’s free money!
  • Cell phone bills – Take a look and make sure that everything looks right.  Is every line that you’re getting billed for actually being used?  Are you paying any overages that could be worked into a different plan?
  • Appliance repair plan – Our gas company offers an appliance coverage plan that we take advantage of.  With the age of our appliances, this makes sense for us, but if your appliances are brand new, you might not need this coverage, especially if they might still be covered under warranty.  Conversely, if you have appliances that average 15 years or more in age, they might come out and tell you that it’s unrepairable, in which case you’re going to have to replace it anyways.  If your appliances are getting to that age, it might make sense to put the money aside from the repair plan toward replacing the appliances.  If you’re run this on auto-pilot, you might not even think about it, but looking at the bill could prompt some questions.
  • Cable bill – This is one where you really should take a good look as cable companies change their fees and such all the time.  Take a look and find out what equipment you’re being billed for every month.  If you’re paying lease fees on a bunch of cable boxes and modems, you might be able to call and ask for one or two to be given to you for free, especially if the equipment is old. Take a look at what packages you’re paying for and make sure you are still watching the channels associated with any premium fees.  Also, look for any discounts that you might have gotten at one time.  Most cable companies will only provide discounts for six to twelve months at a time, and while some might be willing to renew them, they won’t do it unless you call and ask.  If you don’t keep tabs on your bill, you might miss this opportunity.
  • Credit cards – This is one that I hope you look at every month, but it’s so important that it bears pointing out. You should make sure that all charges that appear look familiar.  I actually advocate logging in on a regular basis to keep tabs, because you will likely not remember certain things from weeks ago.  If you carry any balances, you should also make sure to verify that your interest rate has not gone up.  Also, keep tabs on your minimum payments.  Hopefully you’re paying more than that, but if they change and you’re not aware, you could be slapped with a service fee for not making a minimum payment.

These are just a few.  Take a look at each of your bills because chances are you have others that warrant taking a look at regularly.

Divide and conquer.  This can be cumbersome to do all at once, so I would recommend you take a strategic approach to staying on top of this.  With the exception of your credit card bills, which should be looked at each and every month, I would pick one bill at a time and focus on giving it an exam that month.  It may take a while, but after a few months you’ll have gone through each of your bill and hopefully will have caught some money saving opportunities along the way.  By the time you get through all your bills, it’s time to start over as it will have been a while since you looked at the first one.

Readers, do you perform any routine checks on your bills?  What are some of the things that you’ve discovered along the way?

 

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

6 Tips To Buy And Keep The Best Mattress Possible

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Buying a new mattress is one of the more challenging purchases to make.  There are so many options and so many prices, you often don’t know where to start.  It’s tempting to buy the most expensive mattress to think that you’re getting the best quality and the best sleep, or to buy the least expensive figuring that it’s just a big markup anyways.

So where is the real truth?  Probably somewhere in between.  Most often, the higher priced ones have little added value over something that’s much less expensive, though I do advise staying away from the lowest price model, as it typically ends up being a case of ‘You get what you pay for’.

Here are a few tips to find the best mattress possible for your budget:

Stay away from furniture stores. We have two major furniture chains in our area, and both are highly overpriced when it comes to mattresses.  We buy our mattresses at a local store that does nothing but sell mattresses.  Their store is pretty basic, they do little marketing, and they do delivery and setup themselves.  If you buy from a big furniture store, a big chunk of your purchase price is going toward marketing, glitzy stores, and of course profit.  You can save up to 50% by searching around.

Do your homework.  There are so many mattresses that it’s hard to know what’s good and what’s not.  Use a site like Consumer Reports to tell you some of the better rated mattresses, and use their Best Value recommendations.

Understand your needs.  Mattresses are one of those things where one size does not fit all.  Everybody has a different preference when it comes to how soft or firm a mattress is, and you should understand your needs and preferences going in.  If the person you’re sharing the bed with has different preferences, you may have to pay a little more to get a more customized mattress.  But, good sleep is worth that.

Once you have a mattress, here are some tips to extend the life of your mattress so that you can get the most use out of it.

Flip and rotate.  The rule is that you are supposed to flip the mattress upside down and rotate it every six months.  This isn’t possible with pillow top mattresses, but you should still rotate them.  Pick a date or time of year that will remind you.  We use our wedding anniversary as a date to flip, and then try to remember around our half anniversary to do it again.

Vacuum.  I’m not sure if it’s an old wives tale, but I’ve heard that mattresses typically weigh 50-100% more after being used for 10 years or so than when they’re new, and that the extra weight is dust.  If that’s true, that’s pretty disgusting and I would figure it has to change the composition of your mattress, and not in a good way.  When you flip and rotate, run the furniture attachment over your mattress and your box spring.

Spend money on good padding.  You should always have a quality pad.  I wouldn’t go for the cheaper ones because I believe you get what you pay for, and I’ve learned that the hard way as the cheaper pad I once bought began ripping after less than a year.  We now have a high quality pad and it lasts well.  If you have a ‘warm’ sleeper that tends to sweat a lot, make sure to launder your pad regularly, otherwise it will start to smell and that smell will get into your mattress.  Few things are less inviting to a good nights sleep than a stinky bed.

What tips and tricks have you used when mattress shopping or for after you have that mattress to keep it providing good sleep?

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

Roundup And Carnivals

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Here are some excellent posts about savings that I’ve enjoyed reading, and I thought would be applicable to my readers.  Send over some love, drop a comment, and don’t forget to tell them who sent you!

  • Man Vs. Debt discusses how to save money by making sure to use your leftovers.  There are tons of great tips here.  (No Leftovers Left Behind: Saving Money In Your Fridge)
  • Not Made of Money is thinking about the holidays already and has some tips on how to create and maximize a budget for gift giving (Strategies To Stretch Your Holiday Budget)
  • The First Million Is The Hardest has some tips for getting the most out of your health insurance by some savings tips to consider during open enrollment (6 Ways To Save Money During Open Enrollment

I’ve been included in a number of carnivals recently.

Hope you have a great weekend and enjoy these other great bloggers.

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.

6 Ways To Save By Keeping Your Car In The Garage

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Owning a driving a car is expensive, so it comes as no surprise that money can be saved by driving less.

But, that’s often a much easier thing to say than to practice.

Many people find that drastic changes in their driving habits simply aren’t possible, so they end up changing nothing.  I believe that you can save money by adding together a few smaller changes in habits. Let me know what you think of the following ideas:

  • Combine trips – We’ve all heard it before, but it bears repeating, and as the top recommendation.  Consider that when we leave our neighborhood, it takes 0.2 miles to navigate through the streets just to get to the subdivision entrance, and at least 1.5 miles before we get to anyplace that is a destination for us.  That’s 3.4 miles round trip every time we leave the neighborhood.  Count the number of times you drive in and out of your driveway in a given week and see what it adds up to.  In our case, if we could cut just two trips a week, that’s over 350 miles a year we’d be cutting off.  That’s over a tank of gas, a tenth of the life of an oil change, 1% of the life of your tires…well, you get the point.
  • Bike – If you live somewhere where riding a bike is safe and you can get back and forth to where you want to go, why not give it a whirl for short trips?  In our case, the 1.7 miles I mentioned actually leads us to the drugstore, so if we have to go pick something up there, and we have the time, maybe we could hop on the bike.
  • Hitch a ride – If you have people you know that live close by, and you have a good enough relationship with them where it wouldn’t seem odd to tag along for certain things, why not drive together occasionally?  You could come out ahead and save some mileage.
  • Share kid pickup and drop-off – If you drop your kids off and pick them up, chances are you have at least one neighbor doing the same thing.  Why not split this duty which will save you some mileage and some money?
  • Carpool – My father-in-law lives 25 miles from work, so he drives 50 miles each day if he goes by himself.  He found that two co-workers live fairly close by, so now the carpool three days a week. They each take a turn driving after they meet at a central location.  It takes 75 miles a week off of his driving.  Nothing to sneeze at!
  • Walk - Just like with bike riding, you can get back and forth on your feet.  Plus, it’s great exercise and offers fresh air for the better times of the year.

Will any of these things save you thousands?  Probably not. But it could be in the hundreds, and not only in gas but when you factor in things like oil changes, other maintenence and the simple cost of depreciation on your car, every mile you don’t drive leaves money in your pocket.

 

Copyright 2013 Original content authorized only to appear on So You Think You Can Save. Please subscribe via RSS, follow me on Twitter, or receive e-mail updates. Thank you for reading.