Stop Spending & Save, Economize on your household expenses

Millions of people have already lost their jobs
What are you going to do? Look for a new one in the newspaper where 1200 people lined up for 35 openings (recent news).

If you lose your job cut expenses quickly
Living on unemployment benefits, savings, or a lower paying job demands an immediate budget scaling down.

STOP $$ going out the door
• Ditch the cell phone
• Cancel DirecTV, cable TV, etc.
• Stop calling out for pizza, eating out at restaurants
• Quit drinking, smoking, or other costly habits
• Save on utilities, lower your bills
• Buy in bulk items you use a lot of
• Learn to shop like a purchasing agent
• Learn to work on your car to save mechanic bills
• Act fast to preserve your money, to hold on to it as long as possible. You have to get out of every obligation you can't carry in your new financial circumstances. 

• Without a job your new daily job is survival while you look for a new job.

• Don't count on getting another job like the one you lost. Take proactive steps to find new ways to create income while you wait for "things to go back to the way they were." You may have a long wait.

Save on heating bills
• Cover windows. One way to save on heating is to stop heat losses during the cold winter months by hanging spare blankets over bedroom windows to act like heavy drapes. I hold them in place with those push pins you use on an office bulletin board. Same for a glass door to an unused deck area off my living room. Large thin glass just throws the heat away in winter. Luckily I had 6 spare bedspreads & acrylic fiber blankets to use for my impromptu drapes.

• Hot air rises, right? Place an 8" to 10" electric fan up on the top of a bookcase or something similar pointing down at a 45 degree or so angle. What that does is blow the warm air that rises to the ceiling back towards the floor. It really works great! I leave the fans on low so the noise isn't a problem and leave them running all winter. 

I had a very drafty, cold bathroom due to a leaky small vent window. A 24" square of plywood fit the recessed area, with a bit of caulking now it is air tight. No cold drafts. If you lose your job and have time on your hands do projects like that to save money.

Don't spend money to save money
A tankless water heater saves a ton of money off your utilities bills. But don't rush out to buy one at full retail, then pay a plumber to install one just yet.First research how much you would save, what the entire process (purchase + installation) will cost to learn how long the payback period is.

However, if you need a new water heater because the old one is too old then do it. Better if you can install one yourself—but often places such as Home Depot will not sell these unless you have a contractors license. They don't want you to burn your house down, or electrocute someone. Neither do I! So if you don't know what you're doing do not practice on your own—learn from a professional to be safe.

Drive your car gently
A man lost his job, then the engine went out in his van. He couldn't afford $3,500 for a new engine through his mechanic. So he was buying one from a junk yard to install with a friend's help. But why?

It's a familiar story; people drive their cars hard & aggressively as if they are toys. Yet never change oil, brake pads, coolant, never clean the grease & dirt off the engine, etc. Then when it breaks down only the broken thing is fixed. An automobile is a series of systems that all work together. They all require careful attention, service at regular intervals.

It is a common mistake to "let things go", like the guy who lost his job, blew the van engine through abuse & neglect of maintenance, then had to pay $2,500 to a junk yard for a used engine. But he didn't change his ways. He neglected to care for the "new" junkyard engine. Soon that one needed repairs.

This is how people throw money out the windows until they can't pay rent, or mortgages, or insurance payments, etc. Don't go there. Take care of what you own, make it last.

If you don't you'll be riding a bicycle, walking, bumming rides, or waiting for a bus. A car is a valuable, essential item needed to get to work, pick up groceries, etc. Care for your car, drive it gently. Learn to service it.

When you maintain your car you feel better driving it. You can develop a friendship with machines. After all, they are made of the same chemicals & energy as all of life is. After all, everything is a part of God. To think that a machine is not part of God is to fail to understand what divinity is.

Let the engine oil drain for a long time to get out all the old oil. I leave it overnight for a 24 hour oil draining. Be careful, if there are children around you don't want to leave a car up on jack stands unattended. I lock the garage door, then come back to fill the oil the next day.

Never use off-band cheap oil. Personally I use Castrol 5W-30W (Honda recommended), and make sure I get the "good" oil filter as opposed to the cheap little one.

Pre-fill the oil filter with oil. I fill it the day before and keep topping it off so it absorbs maximum oil before installation. Always change the filter, every oil change.

TIP
Clean your engine at the spray auto wash. You have to learn where NOT to spray the water but it is OK if you know how. I leave the engine running, hold the spray wand about 3 feet away. Don't spray into the air cleaner, air intake, or distributor!

Live frugally
• Learn to cook at home to make economical foods like stews, soups, crock pot meals, salads. Stir fry, bake beans, get a rice cooker, make chicken your favorite meat.

• Give up buying bottled water! Huge waste of $! Instead buy a filter to attach to the faucet; then use that filtered water to fill Brita (or other brand) pitchers to re-filter and chill in the frig.

This saves money! I gave up buying soda & saved about $12/week. Plain flat water was too dull to drink so I make my own sparkling water with a CO2 tank. I love that! Every day I make 2-liter bottles of carbonated Brita filtered water. The set up with CO2 tank, regulator, hose, filler and capscost about $150 to get started.Hey, that was $600/year going out the door just for mineral water.

This fits a 2-liter bottle; a CO2 tank pressurizes it through this special cap.

• Buy an electric water distiller; I use that for watering my rare plants (a home business), as it requires about 4-5 gallons/week.

Buy in bulk
Costco has deals on basics, but I'd never buy a TV or computer there. One person told me "Oh, Costco! Every time we go there we spend $600." We? Many people think shopping is family entertainment.  Don't do that! Make a shopping list and shop alone.

That family, by the way, bought processed foods such as frozen pizzas, hot pockets, and other unwholesome items. Read (or listen to the audio book version) Ultrametabolism by Mark Hyman, M.D.

Give up the paper towel addiction
20 years ago I bought a pack of white cotton shop towels from Costco. These are like face cloths. I have never bought paper towels since then! Before I used paper all the time—no more of that money waste. 

Keep a plastic tub of them in the kitchen. As they get dirty I toss them into the laundry room. Now I have about 50 in circulation, washing them in cold water once a week with my regular laundry. 

Use these cotton cloths in place of napkins, for clean up; essentially to replace the wasteful cost of paper towels. But to be fair I do have one pack of paper towels in the workshop to use around my car, tractor, etc. for oil & grease. I got tired of trying to run oily rags through the washing machine. To keep my hands oil & grease free I use disposable exam gloves sold in the pharmacy section.

How to save big in bulk
20 years ago I found myself in the local supermarket line every 3 days. I got sick and tired of those lines, all those trips to the store. I figured there had to be a better way, so began shopping in bulk at Costco.

Friends at work objected with "Oh, I can't buy in bulk because we can't afford to buy those big sizes. Its like you have to invest in a year's supply of stuff..."What nonsense! 

Someone else said "Oh, we don't have room to store all that stuff in large sizes..." What nonsense! You need to save money by not buying little sizes over and over again. You need laundry detergent every week; so why keep wasting money with little boxes? Toilet paper, detergent, shampoo, 

Buy the bulk size to refill a small container. Leave the 25 pound bag of sugar in the pantry, but refill convenient size jars with it. You only have to make storage space, something anyone can do given what I've seen of people's kitchen cabinets.

Stop lying to yourself that you "can't afford" to buy in bulk. Once you get started you save a ton of money. Monitor how much less you have to run out to the store because you ran out. When you run out of something add that item to the shopping list.

Many years ago when I began buying in bulk
• Take a shopping list, never just go and start buying by impulse. Train yourself to add items to your list by leaving pad & pen in the kitchen. 

One day I was at the checkout conveyor at Costco. The cashier looked me in the eye with a smile "You really know how to shop Costco! You get all the bulk essentials. More people should shop like you do." I knew exactly what he meant because it drove me nuts how people came in to buy one thing such as a package of meat, or families who loaded up the cart with impulse items, soda, DVDs, frozen pizza, etc.

Sample, Costco shopping list

Case canned cat food 25 lb. bag dry cat food Bag of red onions Whole chickens in 2-packs 18 count cartons of eggs 24 pack toilet paper 5-gallon pail of laundry detergent Canned tuna, 6 pack 3-pound bag coffee beans 2-bottle pack extra virgin olive oil 25-pound bag salt, sugar, pinto beans Case of canned corn Box or oranges Bag of avocados 33-quart box powder skim milk Gallon size dish washing liquid 3-pak toothpaste 2-pak Listerine 2-pak large shampoo Pak of AA batteries

Reduce housing expense
Can you move to a cheaper area? If you lose your income in a region around a city maybe you can move out to the country.  The best places to live don't go through the newspaper. You have to find them. Places for rent in the paper are the ones no one else wants so the owner has to advertise.