Cats And Coupons

Want to streamline your budget? Ask your utility company if they have a twelve month budget plan. We’re on one for both our electric service and our natural gas service. What they do is average out your monthly bill over the past year, and make that your payment amount. Somewhere between eight and twelve months in they may evaluate the numbers again to adjust the average. It’s much easier to plan a budget when you have the same amount to spend on something every month. And there’s no more giant electric bills during the summer because you’re running the air conditioner, or giant gas bills during the winter because you’ve always got the heat cranked up.

Not so long ago every time I went to the grocery store I ended up spending a fortune. Here’s a few tips on how I manged to spend less.
Shop with a grocery list. It will save later trips for items you forgot.
Buy items on sale. If you needed a can of tomatoes and buying two is almost the same price as buying one, buy the two and you’ll have another for next time.
Separate into portions. Anytime I buy more than one serving of anything I separate it into portions and freeze them. This especially applies to meat and poultry, and also to other things such as trays of muffins from Costco.
Make homemade take out favorites. Save money and order out less. It’s easy to make your own pizza, subs, tacos, burgers and pretty much anything else you can order out.
Eat your leftovers instead of throwing them out.

One of the ways I save money is by occasionally evaluating our expenses. Some things you should do regularly, such as check your cellular phone bill. Other things you should do once or twice each year. Go through your regular monthly bills and be sure you’re on the best plan for you.
For example, for television if you have every channel and watch only the local news, drop down to a less expensive package.
For cell phones, check your plan. Are you paying a lot in overage fees, or not using most of your minutes? If the answer is yes, check out the next higher or lower plan.
For your house phone, see if there’s a plan that includes all of your needs such as long distance, extra numbers or features such as call waiting and voicemail.