I don’t know about you but I really like to save money. My ideal purchase would be to save $5000 or $7000 on the next car I buy. Of course, this is rarely possible. The auto companies and auto dealers are amazingly adept at making you think you had saved a great deal of money when in fact you hadn’t saved much at all. Fortunately, there are some good strategies for saving money and here are five of them.
1. Caulk and weather-strip your doors and windows
If you have warm air leaking out of your doors and windows, you might think of it as dollars flowing out. How do you know if you’re leaking air? Just walk around your house and light a match where your doors meet their frames and at the top and bottom of your windows. If you see your match get blown out, there’s a problem. You can eliminate these costly drafts fairly inexpensively simply by caulking and weather-stripping your doors and windows. My guess is that you could do them all for less than $20 and in just one weekend.
2. Cut the cost of your auto insurance
Most of us buy our auto insurance, keep making our premium payments and pay no other attention to it – unless, of course, we’re involved in an accident. That’s just not a good idea. You should get competitive bids on your auto insurance at least once a year. A good place to do this is www.insurance.com. You fill out just one application and can get estimates from as many as half a dozen different companies. This alone could save you several hundred dollars. If this seems like too much work you should at least sit down and review your policy, especially your deductibles. You might be able to increase the deductible on your collision insurance from $200 to, say, $500, which would save money. If you have a really old car, you might drop your collision insurance entirely.
3. Snip that cable
Cable or satellite television is very expensive. For that matter, I read the other day that the cable companies are increasing their rates once again. Many families have found they can actually live without cable or satellite TV. If you live reasonably close to your stations’ transmitting tower and have a digital TV, you could buy an antenna and get your TV over-the-air free. Many families now get their movies and other entertainment from sources such as Netflix and Hulu Plus. For example, I have a subscription to Netflix that costs less than nine dollars a month and includes an amazing number of movies and TV shows. Of course, you need to have a PC or Mac along with the ability to stream content from it to your TV. I use Apple TV but there are a number of other options such as Roku and Boxee. For that matter, you can even stream Netflix to your Blu-Ray player or Xbox.
4. Reduce your grocery bill
My guess is that you could cut your grocery bill by 20% just by shopping more carefully and by using coupons. Your Sunday newspaper is probably full of money-saving coupons as well as BOGOs (buy one, get one free offers) and specials of the week. If you don’t have or get a Sunday newspaper, you could go online to sites such as www.couponclipper.com and www.oneysavingmom.com and get coupons free or at a low enough cost that you’d still save money by using them.
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