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The first thing to do when evaluating you financial life is to understand your budget. How can you change your monthly utility costs? When you are trying to squeeze your budget to give yourself more spending money, you need to take a hard look at what you may think are your "fixed" expenses: utilities, housing costs (rent or mortgage payments), and living costs (food and transportation). In a series of articles, we will take a look at ways of improving where you stand on each of those in turn. Utilities Most people have some of the same costs: heating, electricity, water, phone and TV. List all of yours and check at least your last three bills so you can have an average monthly cost. There's no sense in lying about the numbers, so try to be as accurate as you can be. Consider what you spent on each the previous year, as, for example, heating costs vary greatly per month. Include your cell phone, internet access, lawn care, etc. Now go through each one in turn and see if you can trim that item down. Here are a few examples of easy trimmings: - Long distance: use an instant messaging program to chat more online without long distance charges - easy as the increasing use of the Internet has grandparents as well connected as their grandchildren. - Electricity: replace regular light bulbs with energy saving bulbs, and be conscious of turn off lights and stereo equipment when not in use - these alone can cut the average electrical bill in half. - Heating: invest in a programmable thermostat that can keep your home comfortable when you are home and awake, and lower the usage of your AC or heater when you're not - another sure fire way to nearly halve your heating bill if you drop your "at home" temperature to 21 in the winter and 23 in the summer, and letting the "away or asleep" temperature settle at 18 in the winter and 26 in the summer. As you put a few of these changes in place, you will find that a $100 electricity bill can become $75 or less. Adding up all of these savings, and not only to get the equivalent of a raise to your salary giving you extra money to use in your budget, but you can feel good about keeping the planet a little bit greener.
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