5 Tips for Saving Money

Without further introduction, here are 5 tips for saving money that you may not have thought of.

1. Use Natural Light. Oftentimes, I am in the house and it is not that nice outside, I am tempted to close the curtains and turn the lights on. If you do this whenever it is crummy out, it is likely that you are running your lights an extra 30-40 hours per month. This could add up to a significant savings over time.

2. Do full loads of laundry. There’s two reasons that this makes a difference. First, if you are doing small 1/2 loads, you have to use essentially the same amount of electricity to do the washing and the drying as you would for a normal load. Furthermore, you are filling the washing machine 2/3 of the way full anyway. It might as well be entirely full so that you are only using about 1/3 more water to wash the same amount of clothes. If you don’t have enough socks/underwear to wait until you get a full load, you might want to get some more, you will be surprised at the savings of water, electricity and time. It all adds up.

3. Drink water. I’ve written about this tip before, but I think that it is something that is often overlooked by people. It is so easy to pour glass after glass of juice or soda. But when you think about how cheap water is, it just makes sense to drink that instead of these other drinks, at least some of the time.

4. Shut off your computer monitor. People often leave their computer monitors on and this wastes huge amounts of electricity. Your computer might be set as a screensaver and you don’t like the hassle of dealing with turning the computer on and off. Instead of leaving it on, but with a screensaver, use the powersave mode on the monitor or turn the switch off. Your computer can stay on, and you will not cost yourself any time when booting up the computer.

5. Wait after you flush. It sounds silly, but often times, over time, toilets wear out — the components on the inside get worn down and dont work as well. The result is that you migth have a drippy toilet because the inside seal is letting water run. If that is the case, you likely have a huge water bill on your hands. Just fixing my two toilets saved me about 75 dollars on my water bill.

Simple tips like these can be found in all sorts of personal finance websites and blogs. The upside of these tips is that they are easy, small things you can do to save money without really giving anything up. Its generally just about changing your behavior.