How to Cut Household Expenses

By Amber Ortega on December 26th, 2008

Having a family can become expensive, especially with the price of everything on the rise. Here are some ways to cut your household expenses, without having to do without any necessities.

Gas and Electric Bills

Cutting down energy costs can make a huge difference during the heat of the summer and cold of the winter. Try these tips to save some money.

Weatherproof your home. You can do many things to help cut down energy costs for heating and cooling your house. Using a little bit of caulking around your windows can cut heating costs immensely.
Do an Energy Audit of your home. This will give some ideas on how to save energy in your home.
Invest in a programmable thermostat. This will assist in regulating the heating of your home.
When you are not using small electronics, unplug them from walls. Even when they are off, they still use a small amount of electricity.
Keep your doors and windows closed. This seems simple, but you don’t know how many times I have followed after my kids and had to close doors because they were heating or cooling the neighborhood.
Check with your local company to see if they offer budget billing. We subscribe to this and are charged the same amount all year, regardless of usage. This is done by reviewing the past years usage and taking the average. This ensures you know each and every month what your bill will be, instead of being surprised by a bill that is more than you have available.

Telecommunications

Call your cell phone company for an analysis of your usage. They can look at your usage compared to your calling plan and assist you in ensuring you are not paying for minutes you are not using or paying too much in overage.
Many phone companies have partnered with cable or satellite and Internet companies to offer special bundle packs. Subscribing to a bundle pack can save you a lot of money each month, as these bundle packs offer special pricing that is not available if you use each service individually.
If you have a home phone, do you use it? Many people use their cell phones primarily and would be able to do without a home phone. Even a basic home phone can cost a minimum of $30, that would be a savings of $360 a year.

Food

You can not go without eating, but you can reduce your spending very easily.

Do not eat out. This includes eating lunch while at work. We realized that my husband was spending on average $4 a day on breakfast and $5 a day on lunch, each day. This is about $45 a week or $180 a month. Can you believe that? Brown bag it and you will save a bunch!
Plan out your meals. This sounds difficult, but it is really easy. Personally, I recommend using Menus 4 Moms for assistance. I follow her plan and can feed my family of five for about $60 a week and this gives enough for me to send left overs with my husband for lunch.
Shop the sales. Each week you should get advertisements in the mail, keep track of what is on sale and buy extra of things that are really great deals. Some stores will price match as well, this is helpful so you don’t spend extra gas driving around town going to different stores.
Cut out your alcohol consumption. Drinking alcohol gets expensive, cutting this out will save you quite a bit.
Clip those coupons. If you clip coupons and shop sales, you can sometimes get things for nearly nothing. There is a website, The Grocery Game which tracks what is on sale and what coupons are out. They will let you know what to buy and where because you can get it for a really good deal. I have a friend that does this herself and on a regular basis is actually given money BACK when getting items. It amazes me, but it can be done.
If you use a store that price matches, take some Post-It notes with you. Put a note on each item that you have found at a different store for cheaper. This makes it easy for the cashier to ring up the correct price and you don’t forget to tell her about a sale somewhere else.

Vehicle

Most families have more than one vehicle, there are many ways you can save on your vehicles.

Use public transportation or car pool when possible. This can save a lot of gas and maintenance money.
Plan out your trips. If you need to run to the store, will you be passing by the library where you need to return books or other errands? Think about other things that you need to do before leaving the house so you can get everything done in one trip.
Check gas prices. You can use websites like GasBuddy.com to check the lowest gas prices in your area, We always check this prior to putting gas and have saved up to $0.20 a gallon!
See if local stores offer gas credits. We have grocery stores that also sell gas and depending on what you spend will get you up to $0.15 off each gallon. This can make a huge difference, especially when you are buying groceries that you already need.
Check your car tires. You want to be sure your tires are inflated properly to conserve gas.
Perform regular maintenance on your vehicle. Make sure you change the oil at the correct times.
If you are able to perform maintenance yourself, save money there. I have found that buying the supplies to change the oil ourself costs about $10, where if I take it to get an oil change, I am charged about $40.

Credit

As my dad has told me since I was very young, if you can’t afford it now, don’t buy it. Although this isn’t possible for everyone, there are some ways you can save money with credit cards.

Pay off your credit cards. Making only minimum payments will cause you to pay much more than you had actually borrowed.
Even if you can’t fully pay off our credit card, always try to pay a little extra. Even an extra $10 will make a huge difference in your balance.
Don’t use your credit cards to buy things that you don’t really need. It is simple to look at the new iPod Touch and say, I can put it on this credit card…no biggie. My husband is notorious for this, he needs any new gadget he can get his hands on. This is the reason I will not get credit cards.

These are just some ideas of things you can do to cut down on your spending. Be conscious of what money you have available and what you can do to save a little.