These tips will not make you rich but they will certainly add up and make a difference in your daily expenses. Many of them have positive impacts to the environment as well.
1. Buy store brands versus name brands where possible. Almost all grocery stores offer their own brand or a generic brand of many of the consumable items and popular food items. People often shy away from these products assuming that because the prices are lower, the quality is also lower but that is not usually the case. Purchasing a store brand over a high end brand name will save on every trip to the grocery store – in some cases the cost of the shopping trip is cut by a third.
2. Wash clothes in cold water. Minimizing the hot water used in the laundry reduces the cost of electricity or gas, which not only helps with your monthly budget but it helps preserve our environment.
3. Run the dishwasher with only full loads. Reducing the number of times you run your dishwasher reduces your water usage, lowering your utility bills. This also helps preserve water and the cost of purifying.
4. Turn out the lights in rooms you are not using. This is something that is easy to do and easy to forget. By turning out the lights every time you leave a room, your electricity bill is reduced and the frequency that you change the light bulbs decreases, reducing your cost of electricity and reducing the cost of bulb replacement.
5. Use environmentally friendly light bulbs. The environmentally friendly bulbs are typically more expensive than regular light bulbs but last up to 5 times longer than a regular bulb. Compact fluorescent light bulbs uses two-thirds less energy than incandescent light bulbs.
6. Eat at home. For the same amount of money it costs of a family of four to eat at an average restaurant, you can purchase the groceries to feed that same family for at least a 3 meals and provide healthier choices for your family. The average amount for 1 person to eat lunch at a restaurant every weekday is $100. Taking your lunch to work 1-2 days a week saves $40 a month. Everything adds up.
These are simple techniques that most are aware of but they are easy to neglect. Using these basic tips can reduce your cost of living by as much as two thousand dollars a year.
