5 Tips for Saving Money on Your Monthly Utilities

 

How much do you pay for utitilities each month?  It seems like I am paying a fortune and I am tired of it!  This month alone I paid $60 to water, $350 to power and another $40 to garbage. For the purpose of this article, I am not even going to talk about the phone bill. The stupid thing is, I know how to get these bills down, I have just been really lazy about it lately.  That is changing now though! Here are my 5 tips for saving money on your monthly utilities that I plan to go back to ASAP, because I know they work.

 

  1. Turn the heat down.  I hate being cold, but I think I hate being broke more, so the heat will be turned down ASAP.  Even a drop of 5 degrees is going to make a big difference in our monthly bill.
  2. Unplug everything!  Seriously, I have been reading lately about people who literally unplug everything in their homes unless they are using it.  Some of these people pay just $20 per month on their power! While I don’t see us getting down that far, I am certainly going to be unplugging some stuff!
  3. Line dry our clothing.  I have recently joined some budgeting groups on FB to get some fresh ideas on saving money and I see a lot of people using drying racks in their homes instead of a dryer. I think I can get behind that idea to some degree.  I mean, I have 3 kids so there is only so much room I have to dry indoors, but once summer hits I will definitely be utilizing the clothesline more.
  4. Request a smaller garbage can. I know that I need to be more vigilant about my recycling and then I can request a smaller garbage can which would save me about $10 per month!  I can think of a lot of things I can do with an extra $120 this year.
  5. Use less water.  Turn off the water while brushing, take a 5 minute shower instead of a 10 minute one, etc.  Every little bit helps, right?