Ways to Slash Spending on Daily Family Expenses
- De-clutter your home and have a tag sale. Or donate the items to charity and get a receipt to claim as a deduction on your income taxes.
- Refinance loans to a lower interest rate
- Transfer credit card balances to a card with a lower interest rate
- Evaluate deductibles on homeowner/renter and auto insurance – where appropriate, you may be able to increase deductibles to lower premiums.
- Shop for lower cost homeowner/renter and auto insurance
- Be sure you are not paying double – ie. member of AAA or other auto club and have towing coverage on your auto insurance
- Shop less often and have a list of what you need
- Grocery shopping
- Set your budget and closely monitor your total as you shop
- Use coupons and sales whenever possible
- Shop every two weeks (not weekly). This allows you to
- Have less opportunity to spend unnecessarily
- Become more organized regarding your purchases
- Boost your knowledge with free online colleges. You may need to buy books or download special software, but it can prove to be much more affordable than going to traditional college.
- Your car:
- Compare costs for car gas at gasbuddy.com, gaspricewatch.com, and others.
- Fuel efficiency drops about an average of 5mpg for each 10-mile speed increase over 55mph. Jackrabbit starts and stops reduce it an additional 3mpg.
- For every 1-2 pounds it carries, your car can lose 1-2% of fuel efficiency. Remove all unneeded items from your car’s interior and trunk.
Also: Do not buy anything that is not a necessity without first waiting 24 hours or more. If you still need it 24 or more hours later, then evaluate if you should buy it. Quite often you will find the second time you look at it, you realize it is not that important and you don’t really need it.