Small Changes Can Save You Big Bucks
Five years ago my husband’s annual income dropped $25,000 overnight due to corporate salary restructuring. We had four children with the oldest planning to begin college in a couple of years. We had always thought of ourselves as “thrifty,” but overnight, a strict budget became essential. The more we learned, the more we enjoyed being able to save without compromising our lifestyle too much.
In those first few months, we learned how to cut our electric bill in half, reduce our grocery purchases by one-third, lower our car and homeowner insurance by $1,200 a year and buy designer clothes for less than half of what we were paying for regular brands on sale. Here are just a few of the ways our family saves money - and how anyone can live the same or better lifestyle for a lot less money.
UTILITIES: We replaced half our light bulbs with the new compact fluorescent bulbs and watched our electric bill drop $40 a month. When our dryer broke, our bill dropped another $50 a month, so we never bothered to fix it, hanging clothes outside in summer and on drying racks. Those two items alone cut our electric bill in half, saving us $1,080 each year. In addition, attaching a ZTI Power Saver to our refrigerator and washing machine cut their electricity usage by 30 percent and significantly increased the life of those appliances. We recently installed the new Lite Savers on all lighting fixtures where we still use incandescent bulbs. They make a regular light bulb last 100 times longer and reduce electrical usage 10 to 35 percent.
FOOD: We eat less meat, both for money and health reasons. This has reduced our grocery bill $35 per week, or about $1,800 per year. Prepackaged produce, priced by unit, provides an easy opportunity to save. By putting bags of carrots or heads of lettuce on a scale, I noticed differences in weight of up to half a pound, giving me free produce for the same price.
We garden in a 45-foot by 45-foot spot in our backyard and grow fruit, berries and a wide variety of vegetables. Many of our summer meals come from the garden. I make some jam and preserve our home-grown herbs by drying or freezing. I also freeze whole tomatoes in plastic bags to use later in chili, soup and spaghetti.
One of the main ways I save is by planning the menus around the items on sale at the supermarket. I stock up on sale items for use throughout the month. I consider buying food at 20 to 30 percent off an excellent investment. Investors in stocks and bonds would be ecstatic over that high of a return on their money!
INSURANCE: We lowered our auto and homeowners insurance premiums by $1,200 per year by raising all the deductibles and eliminating coverage we didn’t need, such as collision on a 7-year-old vehicle, and coverage for furs and jewelry we didn’t own.
MISCELLANEOUS: We saved in many other areas as well. I began cutting my family’s hair (saving $500/year), making all our bread ($500/year), slashing Christmas spending by about $2,000 per year and paring down on activities and expenditures we had grown accustomed to. Vacations, dining out, landscaping and decorating were all pared down.
We withstood our financial difficulties, kept our house and met all our monetary obligations. After the first year, I realized other people needed the same kind of information that had helped us and that a newsletter was a perfect format for sharing money-saving tips with others. In January 1992, I published the first issue of The Penny Pincher.
Our income is still down, but we have been successful because we have grown closer as a family and have helped thousands of others. We now have subscribers in all 50 states and five countries. Our readers pinch pennies for a variety of reasons. Some want to get out of debt, others are planning for a secure retirement, many want to stretch their dollars further to pay for college, vacations, their first home, or to begin their families.
In a recent radio interview I admitted that if I could go back in time, I would still choose to go through the same financial challenges I faced. My family has learned a great deal and come to more clearly understand the importance of health, happiness, family and friends.
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