Three Big Time Budget Busters
No matter how much money you earn, a little or a lot, you need a budget. One of the most important things you can do with your money is tracking how you spend it. A good budget saves money in the short term and over long periods of times. Money savings that can be used to assist personal financial goals or to allocate resources to more beneficial or desirable endeavors. Budgeting can help you to create a financial plan that includes investments and savings, but you need to recognize and avoid the pitfalls that can bust your budget.
Avoid Impulse Spending
Modern society will try to convince you that you need the most modern and updated toys available, even though yours work just fine. Marketers are paid lots of money to arrange the grocery store so that you’ll be tempted to buy things you don’t need. Why do we find ourselves wandering at the shopping mall, looking for nothing in particular? These extra purchases can bust your budget in a major way, especially if you buy these things on a credit card that you don’t pay off every month.
Before you go to the store, make a list of what you need (plan meals ahead if you have to), and stick to your list. Don’t look for recreation in places that you will be tempted to spend more money than you have. You work hard for you money, stop and think about how hard you want to work to have that gadget you saw on television that does only one thing. Conspicuous consumption of non durable products is probably the biggest single budget busting expense that has little reward.
Reevaluate Your Utility Usage
In many European countries where energy costs are very high, consumers turn off their water heaters during the day to save electricity. A hundred years ago, it was simply unthinkable to leave the light on when you go to work. Can you really watch 400 channels of television? Sometimes it pays to evaluate how much of a utility you actually use, and which ones can go. A large number of people are canceling their home phone lines and using just a cellular phone, while others are bundling phone, Internet, and television into one low fee. Check around for what will work best for you, and you may be surprised at the cuts you can make with little or no change to your lifestyle.
Utility savings not only conserves money but more importantly helps the environment but consuming less fossil fuels and energy that pollute our environment.
It’s the Little Things that Kill
It’s only five bucks, right? That daily trip to the coffee shop before work will cost you $100 per month. If you buy lunch twice a week instead of packing it yourself, that’s another $80. Everybody has a vice- whether it’s online auction sites, music downloads, or weekly celebrity magazines. Start small and eliminate your vices slowly. Give up one trip to the coffee shop per week and put that money in an envelope instead. See how much money you’ve managed to tuck away. If you were to put $20 a week into an interest bearing account, you’d be set for retirement in twenty-five years. Now how much do those cigarettes cost? Conserving money on these expenditures doesn’t mean living like a miser.
Home made products save money are generally safer and once again are less of a drain on our environment. Bottles water is both expensive and generally no better than tap water let alone the production and disposal of water bottles is a clear detriment to our environment.
Saving money often has other positive consequences not just the conservation of money. Saving resources and preventing detrimental environmental damage is certainly one. Freeing up resources to allocate them for more worthwhile endeavors is another. The resources don’t have to be money either. Time is one of our most precious resources. Time with kids, time with family, time on charity or church groups. Watch the budget busters and save – in more than one way.
Quick Tips to Save Money on Heating
Saving money on winter heating bills can often be done with very low expenditures or hard work. Management of your existing resources is the biggest factor in reducing the heating expenses. A pleasant side effect is the less energy consumed the less emissions there will be polluting our environment. Save money and do a little to help to stop the damage to the environment caused by burning fossil fuels in your furnace.
1. Replace your old thermostat with a programmable model. Low-cost programmable thermostat models sell for around $25 and can easily pay back their cost within a couple of months. Better yet, they can save you more than $100.00 each year. The simple value of programmable thermostats is the device will automatically change the trigger on the thermostat for the home temperature so the heating and cooling of the house is operating more efficiently at the right time of day. For example, keeping the heat high at night while a family sleeps is clearly an inefficient use of heat and money. The programmable thermostat can be set to automatically drop the temperature at night time and then automatically turn it up at preset time in the morning. The thermostat can be preset to also turn the heat down during the day to let sunshine warm a home or keep the heat off when the family is not home. A programmable thermostat is pretty much a must have device based on costs and savings.
2. The follow up to the programmable thermostat is general rules on setting the temperature in the home. Be sure to set your thermostat as low as possible in the winter while still being comfortable. The closer your indoor temperature is to the outdoor temperatures, the lower your overall heating bill will be. If you still don’t use a programmable thermostat, shame on you, and make sure not to set the thermostat at a warmer setting than normal when you first get up. This will not warm your home any faster and it usually results in excessive heating which costs you money.
3. Check for window air cracks and spaces where the cool air can coem in. Repairing even some leaks can save a fair amount of money. Loss of heat from drafts along windows is a big drain on the heating system. Repairing these cracks and leaks can be performed by caulking along the frame and making sure the window as well as the storm window shut tight and snug.
4. Seal the leaks along door openings as well. Check to see if you feel a breeze at the bottom and sides of your door frames and doorways. Purchasing door blocks and sweeps to help block the flow of cool air will keep your rooms warmer and use less energy.
5. Close the heating vents in rooms that are rarely used. There is no use heating a room that nobody is using. The one issue you need to take care about is determining where your thermostat sensors are located. If they are located in a room that you close off, you may actually make your furnace work harder as it tries to warm a room that you have effectively shut off. Follow up by closing the doors to rooms that are not often used. This will keep the furnace from heating more space than necessary. Keep all your closet doors closed. There is no need to heat your closets during the winter.
6. Use the power of sun for heating and protect against fast cooling. Close the curtains on north facing windows to add an insulating barrier. This will help shield them and make it easier to keep the house warmer. Opening any curtains on the south side of the home along the windows will let in more sunshine. Be sure to close them after the sun has gone down. Using the sun and the warm and cool air outside of your home properly can help maintain room temperature and help avoid unnecessary use of the furnace.
7. Have your furnace checked periodically by a professional to make sure it is operating efficiently. Not only will this save you money now by having it work at top performance, it will also save you money in the long run by extending the life of this equipment. Dirty filters and dirty valves reduce the furnaces efficiency measurably. Maintenance isn’t necessary every year and you can inspect the furnace yourself as well as change the filters by yourself, the filters are cheap and should be changed every two months. Change your furnace filter once a month. Dirty filters reduce airflow, making your furnace work harder and lowering the performance and efficiency of the entire heating system which ultimately costs you more money
Remember, saving on the heating bill can come from very quick and easy patches in the system. Ignoring these drains on heat use may only cost a few to several dollars a month but these numbers add up quick. And saving on heating costs not only helps the family budget but helps reduce emissions and helps the environment. Cuddle up under that blanket at night with a movie at home and save money while you save the environment.