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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