Monday, January 28, 2013

Being proactive with debt repayment and cost minimization


Despite being not as far as we’d hoped with debt repayment this month we’ve been kicking ass in other areas. For starters, I got a 60 cent raise on my hourly wage. I also found out that my contract has been renewed for another 6 months, which will take me to September. My boss was also nice enough to renew my contract at the next pay scale up! I’m going to commit the additional earnings to debt repayment.

I say we’ve been kicking ass in other areas because this month some of the things we’ve done to reduce our costs/avoid expenses were:

- Borrowed a crockpot from a friend for a work party rather than buying a new one (kids broke ours). Expense avoided!

- Got our phone, internet, cable, wireless provider to shave $40/month off our bill simply by calling to ask saying that I noticed rates were going up.

- Rather than buying new energy efficient bulbs, we simply switched out the less efficient bulbs in areas we use frequently of the house with the more efficient bulbs and put the less efficient ones in rooms we don’t use frequently. Additional expense avoided.

- I phoned our water heater rental company to ask about our water heater since we assumed the lease when we bought our house 1.5 years ago and hadn’t given it any thought at all. Turns out it is 2 years old and highly efficient. I lowered the heat a notch so hopefully we’ll save a little energy there.

- Made an appointment to speak with our insurance provider about lowering our monthly payments (we have house, life and car insurance with the same provider)

This year I really want to make a dent in our utility bills. Each month we use between 500-600 kWh on average. Most of our usage is during non-peak times so we're saving there but we'll need to do a bit more in terms of cutting back on our actual usage in order to realize more significant savings. Realistically, 400 kWh would be fantastic. 

What are others doing?


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