Moolah Blog!

image from astoriafederal.com

This article was written as my response to the following article. I’ve taken some pieces of it but have personalized it and shortened it to the three ways (from the list at money.cnn.com) that I use to effectively save money. Bellow is a link to the original credited article:

10 easy ways to save $500 or more

I’ve been looking at some of my expenses and have found these three easy ways of saving money to be extremely effective in saving money. Sometimes up to a couple hundred bucks could be saved by doing one of the following three things:

With gas hovering around $3 per gallon, you don’t have to cut back on much mileage to save $500 in a year. You’ll save that much in gas alone by driving just 50 fewer miles per week, if your car gets 15 miles per gallon. Over 50 weeks, that’s 2,500 miles in a year — not much. Say you have a 25-mile commute. Persuading the boss to allow telecommuting one day a week, or squeezing 40 hours of work into four days, will put you ahead about $500 per year.The cutback doesn’t have to be extreme. Trimming a couple of unnecessary short hops out of your routine is enough to hit the target. You might have the kids take the school bus instead of schlepping them in the car, consolidate three trips to the grocery store into one weekly excursion, or vacation at the lake instead of taking a family road trip. Personally, I’ve taken the bus more often now and have saved over 90 bucks in a month alone! You can always try and do things you have to “on the way” to places like church or work or school! Try to get more done along the way! Check out Mike who has saved money by driving at 60 mph!

2. Conserve energy

Dad was right. Turn off the TV when you leave the room. Using less energy is a painless way to save. Heat and air conditioning are the largest home-energy hogs. The U.S. Department of Energy points out that during each 24-hour period, you will save about 3% on your energy bill for every 1 degree that you lower the thermostat setting (or, conversely, raise it when air conditioning is the big cost).

For example, let’s say you normally keep your thermostat set at 73 degrees in summer. If you raise it to 76 degrees, you will save about 9% (3 degrees times 3%). That’s 9 cents for every dollar you spend on air conditioning costs. If you’re spending $2,000 per year, that small change will save you $180. Buy a programmable thermostat and turn the system up 10 degrees during the day when no one’s home, and you’ll save much more.

3. Drink-to-go!

Stop buying coffee at the coffee joint down the street from work. Bringing coffee from home in a thermos or making some in the break room will not only cut costs, it will improve the quality of your morning shot of energy. You can get 40 cups of coffee from a pound of beans. Even the gourmet ones can be purchased for $4 per pound. If you’re spending $2 per day on coffee — easy to do in most workplaces — you’ll go from spending $500 a year to about $25 by making your own. Same goes with Tea!

Tea is a healthier alternative in my opinion! You Dont have the same jolt experience as with coffee. With tea you get a nice balanced in and a nice balanced out of the stimulant. If you buy a cup of tea, you would usually spend about $3.50. If you make your tea at home or even bring some tea with you to work. You would be potentially spending only $.15 or saving $3.35 every cup! Again, going back to my previous save a cup of coffee (long term affect) you might just be able to save huge amounts this way!

Save even more by taking cans of soda or bottled water to work instead of buying them out of the vending machine! Bottled water sells for 14 cents a at a bulk store, and soda is 16 cents a can (less for off-brands)! Compare that with the $.75 that you’ll spend at the vending machine. Your saving a nice chunk of change! You can go even further by refilling your plastic water bottles with drinking water from a gallon jug or water fountain. If you want to go further, you would be doing something good for the environment as well!

If you have saving mechanism that you enact in your life, tell me about it. I’d like to save a whole lot more folks!

Respectfully,

Tony Tovar