Don’t Let Your Electric Bill Zap Your Budget

In the previous post on household saving tips I wrote about conserving water. This post will focus on your electric bill. We’ll go over some personal finance basics regarding on of your larger utility bills. Hydro bills are especially high in the summer, with air conditioners raging. If you’re in the north and have baseboard heaters, you’ll find that hydro bills skyrocket in the winter as well. Here’s three tips to help reduce your hydro bill.

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Are the holiday bills finally catching up with you? Do you find yourself in a pile of debt and not sure where to start digging to get out? Do you wish you could just have someone come to your house and teach you what to do? If you answered yes to the above questions then our new product, The Debt Solution System, may be the right answer for you. Try it for 60 days risk free.

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Think of all the elements in your home that us Natural Gas to run. My parents have a gas stove, fireplace, furnace, hot water heater and a clothes dryer. Now they are in need of personal finance help if they want to reduce these costs. When they figure out their budget, they’ll know if they gas bill is in line with what it should be based on their income. I’ve sent them to our resource link to get a comprehensive budget spreadsheet and other financial calculators, but they could also search google. Here are three quick gas saving tips you can implement in your home.

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Don’t Flush Your Hard Earned Money Down the Drain – How would you like to reduce your water bill. Do you find that it’s just one more of those bills that adds up and catches you by surprise every month? Once you’ve set up your budget and are looking for more ways to reduce the total in the expense column, you will have to learn how to manage money more efficiently in areas of household utilities. If you haven’t set up a budget yet, I will remind you again to make sure you find a good tool to help you with it online or in our resource link. Here are the three most obvious tips to reduce your water bill.

Reduce Your Toilet’s Water Usage – Your toilet uses approximately 30% of your household water usage. Before the 1950s, toilets used 7 gallons per flush. By 1970, 5.5 gallons per flush, 3.5 gallons in the 80s.Today, a new toilet uses no more than Read the rest of this entry

Don’t flush your hard earn money down the drain. Household expenses can really eat away at your personal budget. Before becoming a personal financial consultant, I was never really good at taking control of my utility bills. I’m going to go over a few general tips on how to save on household utility costs that I found helpful when I learned how to manage money. My first step was to develop a comprehensive budget. If the expenses were over what they should have been based on my income, I worked to reduce them. You should do a budget as well, as a first step in your quest to learn how to manage money.

The Four Major Household Utility Expenses

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Written by Gary Foreman

The Dollar Stretcher Blog

Surfacing this time of year are all kinds of forecasters, prognosticators and swamis. The temptation to join them is too much. But, in the interest of trying something a little different we’ll forecast things that will NOT happen in 2010.

The credit card company will not lower the interest rate they’re charging on your balance this year. Even though other interest rates are near record lows. New laws make it harder for them to raise rates on troubled accounts. So they’ll protect their profits. It will be harder to get a rate decrease even if you deserve it. So, if you get an unsolicited letter from your credit card company offering to lower your rate, check your calendar. It could be April fool’s day.

You will not win the lottery. Ok, it’s possible that one or two of you might win a sizeable prize. But, this prediction will be right for almost every reader. If you doubt it, check the odds on winning the lotto game you play (how many decimal places can you count?). So, if you quit playing you’ll be ahead of the game in 2010. In fact, you could be the real winner.

Contrary to a popular request, your savings account will not grow magically. Unless you put money into savings and leave it there to accumulate interest, the amount that you have in savings will not increase this year. Feel free to make me a liar by regularly depositing money into your account. I’d be happy to have you challenge my forecasting ability when you tell me how much larger your account is.

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Hope for a Spendaholic

The Dollar Stretcher Blog

Written by: Gary Foreman

I have been married 40 years, I am 59 and am a spendaholic. I have been following Dave Ramsey’s plan and trying to get my credit cards paid off. We have no money and no retirement. Is there any hope for us?

B.

Yes, there is hope for B. It might take awhile and may not be easy. But just because she didn’t overcome her spendaholic tendencies in the past doesn’t mean that it cannot be done.

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Those of us who have had the luxury to travel understand how expensive it can be. The cost for anyone who has done so with an entire family can often cost a small fortune. When I would go on vacation, thinking about ways to manage my money rarely crossed my mind. After all, I’m on holidays and I want to do anything and everything. I’ve learned that coming home to an empty bank account can be rather upsetting and I realized that budgeting is important while traveling. Do you want to travel on a budget and still make it the best vacation you have ever had? Here is a list of money saving vacation tips.

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