Search Results for: budget

Add Up Your Household Energy Savings

July 22, 2014 By Shane Ede 10 Comments

We’re deep into the hot summer months. Air conditioners across the country are doing overtime keeping our homes and businesses cool and comfortable and keeping the heat outside. Unfortunately, it won’t be that much longer before we’re turning on the heat and repelling the cold of winter. All of that comfortable air, hot or cold, comes with a cost. Sometimes you’ve got to do what you can to find whatever energy savings you can.

Here in the northlands of North Dakota, we’ve got plenty of options for powering our air conditioners and furnaces. Predominately, we use natural gas for heat and electricity for the air conditioning, but also have options for dual gas/electricity appliances. Our house uses electricity for AC and gas for the furnace.

If you’re looking for energy savings, comparing services is a great place to start, but there are some other ways that you can help cut the cost of your energy and make it’s impact on your wallet a little lighter.

Adjust the temperature

Adjusting the temperature on the thermostat a few degrees can reduce the amount of time that the air conditioner runs in the summer or the furnace runs in the winter. Turn the thermostat up a few degrees in the summer and use some small fans to help move the air around to adjust the comfort level. Do the opposite in the winter. Turn the thermostat down a few degrees and use blankets and heavier clothing to help adjust your comfort level.

Invest in thermal shades

Even if you have a really efficient home, you’ll still lose thermal mass. And the biggest culprit for that is your windows. Investing in thermal shades and blinds can help keep the heat out in the summer and the cold out in the winter. They’re more expensive, but unless you’re redecorating your house every year, they’ll last years and make up for the added cost in energy savings.

Program your energy savings

Does it matter to you if your house stays nice and cool during the summer while your at work? Or nice and warm in the winter? If we’re honest, we really only want our house warm or cold when we’re there. If the house is empty for 8 hours or more a day, there’s really no reason to waste all that energy while we’re gone. Buying and installing a programmable thermostat is the best way to be able to adjust the temperature while your away and still assure that your house is comfortable when you return for the day. Set a schedule to adjust the temperature up or down by 5-10 degrees while your out of the house (or sleeping) and to return to your “comfortable” temperature just before you return home.

Spread the cost out

Once you’ve maximized the full energy savings potential, you still won’t be left without any energy costs. There’s still going to be a bill showing up each month that will need paying. If you’ve got one energy supply feeding your air conditioner in the summer and another feeding your furnace in the winter, like I do, chances are your bills will spike during the hottest and coldest months of the year. Most utilities will have some sort of payment system that will allow for you to pay an even amount each month. We’ve got both our electricity and gas accounts on such a program. We pay a relatively flat rate each month to each utility, and avoid paying large bills during the extremes of the seasons.

What other ways do you employ to create energy savings for your household or business?

Spend a Fixed Amount at the Grocery Store Every Week or Stock Up During Sales?

May 12, 2014 By MelissaB 8 Comments

A few months ago, I went grocery shopping in the morning on the first of the month, and I couldn’t believe how crowded it was. After all, it wasn’t a Saturday morning when the usual grocery shopping rush occurs, but a Wednesday morning.

I waited in line to pay for over 20 minutes. When I asked the cashier what was going on, she said that it was the first of the month, so many people’s SNAP benefits had just replenished. These people were stocking up after possibly having had very little to eat at the end of the month when they were out of funds.

This phenomenon is not unusual. Many people who are living on a tight budget (with or without receiving SNAP), after scrimping and doing without for the last 10 to 14 days of the month, are happy to go shopping and stock up. The problem is that this stock up can consume most of their food budget, and the cycle starts all over again.

I mentioned in my last post that my family is experiencing a period of low income and a tight budget. Luckily, I don’t foresee this situation remaining stagnant for years. Within another year or two, my husband will be eligible to apply for a much better job, and as my kids grow up and become more self-sufficient, I should have more time to grow my freelance business.

However, for now, we sometimes run into this feast or famine pattern. In our high cost of living area, we budget $700 a month for groceries for our family of 5. (We have food intolerances including beans, gluten, dairy, and eggs, so we have to eat a special diet.) The last week of the month, we’re eating an odd mix of foods, and we don’t have as many fruits and vegetables as we’d like.

Spend the Same Amount Every Day to Avoid Feast and Famine

I’ve been researching different strategies to help with our grocery budget. One that I found is rather basic–determine how much you can spend per day on groceries. For instance, in February, we can spend $25 a day on groceries ($700 divided by 28 days), while in May, we can only spend $22.58 per day.

If I’ve not been to the grocery store for 6 days, I’ll theoretically have $135.48 to spend on that trip, based on a 31 day month.

Using this pattern, I can avoid the feast or famine food cycle by making sure I have enough grocery money, even at the end of the month.

Drawbacks to Spending the Same Amount Every Day

The biggest drawback I see to spending the same amount every day is that there is not much flexibility to take advantage of sales. For instance, if I normally buy ground turkey for $2.95 a pound, but it’s on sale for $2.45 a pound, I should stock up. Maybe I’d buy 25 pounds at this discounted rate. That right there would cost me $61.25, or almost half of my weekly budget.

However, it would save me $12.50 on ground turkey, and the stock would last us a few months.

While spending the same amount every day helps even out the feast or famine cycle, it may not be the best way to stretch your grocery dollars. Instead, I prefer to buy on sale in bulk so I pay less and get more food, even if it means at the end of the month, each meal with meat has ground turkey in it.

How do you handle your grocery budget? Do you set a fixed amount to spend each week, or do you set a fixed amount for the month so you can take advantage of sales?

How a Drop in Income Turned Out to Be a Good Thing

April 22, 2014 By MelissaB 5 Comments

Over the last few months, my husband and I have lost some income. Not a little drop in income. About 20 to 25% of our monthly income. And let me tell you, we weren’t earning more than the median income for a family of five to begin with.

Our budget was already tight, so when the drop in income happened a few months ago, I’ll admit, I panicked a bit. I felt a little bit desperate. I’m sure those of you who’ve been in a similar situation know the feeling.

And then I took a deep breath, and told myself we’d be alright. And we are alright. We’re actually better than alright.

Taking Stock of the Positive

The first thing I did, after I calmed down a bit, was to look at the positive side. We had already paid off half of our debt, so we don’t have several debts to pay monthly. We’re only left with one student loan payment every month, so that is a relief. (When we started our debt repayment over two years ago, we had five monthly debt repayments that totaled almost $1,000 a month. Now, we only need to pay $315 a month.)

Secondly, we’re used to living on a tight budget because we’ve been doing so as we try to pay down debt. Our income drop, though not slight, was not going to throw us into a completely different style of living that we weren’t accustomed to. I’m used to buying my clothes second hand. I’m used to cooking all of our meals from scratch and not going out to eat. The only adjustment we had to make was buckling down even more.

Why Our Income Drop Turned Out to Be a Good Thing

While our budget is lean, we still had some fat there. We subscribe to Netflix for both streaming movies and DVD home delivery. After the income drop, I decided the home delivery at $11.99 a month could go. I had been thinking this for awhile, but I was afraid we’d miss the service. Guess what? We don’t. I can borrow most of the movies for free from the library.

In addition, I think much more carefully about purchases now. Buying something on a whim is no longer a possibility. I have to think carefully before making a purchase, which has made me realize I don’t need many of the things I’ve been thinking of buying.

I also took other frugal steps that I’d been to lazy to take previously. I had always read that making your own laundry detergent can be a big money saver. A year ago, I bought all the supplies that I needed, but I never got around to making it. Well, I finally did a few weeks ago, and it works great. Sometimes it takes circumstances to prod me into changes I should have made a long time ago.

Of course, we don’t want to live with such a tight budget indefinitely. But now I know that there are many cost cutting measures I’ve implemented that aren’t difficult. When we make more money, that just means I’ll have room for greater savings and paying off that last student loan.

Have you ever experienced a tight budget? If so, did you find it to be a good thing as I have?