Before we got custody of the younger children, and before me quitting my job started to look like a necessity, my husband and I had already started to do some things to lower our monthly bills. The thing is, we are both a little careless with money and I always got a little seasonal layoff in the summer/fall. This made it hard to budget. So last year, when we got our income tax return, we decided to use part of it to lower our monthly bills. Since then, we have found other ways to lower our output every month. Some things required a little upfront cost and some didn't. Here are 5tips on how to lower some monthly costs.
1. Cut your water bill in half.
We replaced both of our toilets, our shower heads, and our dishwasher. Obviously, this involved a decent chunk of upfront cost. We replaced our toilets because they were original to our home and were put in around 1985. At that time, large amounts of water was the main way that toilets were engineered to get rid of everything. They literally used several gallons of water every time they flushed to push the funk out with force. Now their are several toilets on the market that use very little water to flush. Another plus side is the tanks are much smaller. When we replaced our toilets, it actually made our small bathrooms look bigger because the tanks were several inches smaller than the old ones. We bought our new toilets at Lowe's and chose a model that only costs about $100 because it had great reviews. (find it here) We changed out the shower heads for inexpensive ones as well. We also found them at Lowe's. The ones we bought cost under $30 but personal preference will vary greatly in this area. We also replaced our dishwasher. Ours was about twenty years old and needed to be replaced anyway. We didn't go high end in our replacement but we did make sure it was energy star. The plus here is that it is designed not only to use less water, but less electricity too. All these changes made our water bill go down by half, from $80 a month to $40. (A $480 savings per year for our then family of 4.)
2. Get rid of cable.
One day, I saw a commercial for Amazon Fire TV. It works through your internet to stream shows and movies. We already pay a yearly fee for Amazon Prime which gives us access to a lot of shows and movies. The Fire accesses all those free shows and streams them to our TV. It also recognizes popular streaming apps like Hulu and Netflix. We figured out that there were only a few shows on TV we really wanted to keep up with regularly. One of these was American Horror Story which doesn't play free with a Prime membership but costs as low as $1.99 per episode. I don't know about anyone else but paying $8 a month for the one show I really want to watch seems a much better alternative than paying $60 or more per month on cable. Don't forget your kids' game system. Xbox and PlayStation can both access Hulu and Netflix among others. You can also hook your laptop up to your TV for free options.
3. Get your kids off of your phone plan!
If you are not in a situation where you are sharing a plan then you are probably paying way too much for your kids' phone service. I am a firm believer kids don't need phones until they are in High School but I know I am not in the majority here. That is fine, we will have to agree to disagree. Let's face the fact though that it can be impossible to share a data plan with kids who always want to play online games or use other data sucking apps. So if they are on your plan, look into getting them into a prepaid like Strait Talk. For a month of Strait Talk, it only costs $45 for unlimited talk, text, and data. The reason I like this is that I can ground my kid from his phone and I don't have to pay for it. Or if you have younger children and you just want one phone for them to share when they leave the house or are walking in the neighborhood, it won't break the bank. If you do share data, get the most out of it. Make sure your phone is set to pull internet service from your home wifi when available. If you do this, your phone is not pulling from your data plan.
4. Look for unexpected costs in your utilities!
In our rural area, we have a security light in the yard. This is a pole with a light on it (like a street light) but it is in our yard. In our case it is in a very inconvenient spot and it is an eye sore. It is difficult to mow around and nothing will really grow next to it. It also shines in our home in an irritating way and is on all night using electricity that we pay for. What really infuriates me is that we pay to have this thing! You got it, we pay like $7 a month ($80 a year) for the privilege of having this big ugly pole in our yard! What you may not know is that you can have it removed. Instead, install some motion detection lights that use LEDs outside. They would be cheaper to use and probably alert you in case someone was actually in your yard. We also purchased a modem from Walmart that was better than the one the cable company provided for us, saving the rental fee of $5 a month ($60 a year) and letting us actually use the speed of internet we were paying for.
5. Weather seal and lock your windows!
We have replacement windows. I love them, but I noticed drafts. So we got simple weather striping at Walmart and put it on both the bottom ledge and top ledge of all the windows in the house. Then we locked the windows. Locking them actually makes them close tighter which closes the gaps better and makes the weather stripping create a good seal. Remember with double hung windows, you have air leak opportunities at both the top and the bottom of the window because they open in both places!
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