Steve and Annette Economides – America’s Cheapest Family
America’s Cheapest Family Show You More Ways to Shrink Your Monthly Bills,
From Clothing and utilities to transportation and entertainment, there are some monthly expenses that are unavoidable. But you can make a big dent in your monthly bills, slicing thousands of dollars off your budget in the course of a year.
That’s what our family has done, earning us the moniker “America’s Cheapest Family.” We got you started with some money-saving secrets in the October 1, 2006 issue of Bottom Line / Personal. Here are some more ways to shrink your spending. To save on . . .
INSURANCE
Price-shop every two years. Seventy-five percent of people who have auto and homeowners’ insurance never switch providers even though the rates on many of these policies creep upward over the years. Getting new quotes on your insurance is one of the easiest ways to save hundreds of dollars. Every few years, we check our rates against those of our provider’s competitors. You can either call the competitors you find in the phone book under “Insurance” or use InsWeb.com, which searches the rates of 20 to 30 different companies with a click of a mouse. These companies bid on your business, often offering lower rates than what you’re currently paying. Recently, we ended up saving $800 per year on our auto insurance!
GROCERIES
Shop strategically. When we shop for groceries once a month, we scour supermarket circulars, tracking the lowest prices for the items we regularly buy. These low prices are our “buy” prices, and we note them on our shopping lists. When we find a product at the “buy” price, we stock up. While some people may look at saving 24 cents on a can of sauerkraut as only 25 cents, we see it as saving 50 percent. By looking at your savings in terms of a percentage of the bill, you see that those small savings really add up. We freeze items such as meat and even milk, and eat produce in the order in which it perishes (bananas first, apples last) to avoid as many of those intermittent trips to the supermarket as we can.
Shop as a couple. It helps bond our marriage, is an efficient use of time and helps us curb impulse buys.
OTHER WAYS TO SAVE
Install self-closing hinges on your home’s exterior doors so they automatically close, reducing the loss of heat in the winter and cool air in the summer. You can purchase these an any home improvement store for between $8 and $15 each (we only use one per door).
Switch outdoor light bulbs and many of your indoor bulbs to compact fluorescent lights (CFLs ). Standard CFLS use only about 15 watts to produce the same amount of light as regular 60-watt incandescent bulbs, and they last longer and create less heat.
Vacuum your refrigerator coils annually. Dust reduces the appliance’s ability to diffuse heat and will cause the compressor to run longer.
Skip the heated dry cycle on your dishwasher, letting dishes air dry instead.
Bottom Line / Personal interviewed Steve and Annette Economides, coauthors of the best-seller America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right On The Money (Random House). They have five children ranging in age from 13 to 24. They are also founders and publishers of MoneySmartFamily.com.