Archive for January, 2009

Posted on January 31, 2009 - by admin

Saving Money on Your Water Bill OOG 26

Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 26 January 31, 2009

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We moved the site to a new server this past week - so that has been the reason for the lack of posts. There was a huge ice storm in our state (Kentucky) this past week, but thankfully we were spared any damage.

You can get an idea of some of the damage by checking out these links.
http://wkyt.mycapture.com/mycapture/photos/Album.aspx?EventID=254131&CategoryID=27735

It was pretty wild though it was 60+ degrees Wed. morning. Weds. evening the temp was in the low 30’s.

Saving Money The Nitty Gritty -

Saving Money on your Water bill.

Last week we talked about saving money on your Garbage bill.

Everyone needs water. If you’re like most people you have a set amount of water you can use for a set price. That will be our goal number. We want to use up to that limit but not go over it. If you’re already there, congratulations you can skip this. If you go over your limit frequently then read on.

Here is an excellent resource -

http://frugalliving.about.com/od/householdsavings/tp/Save_Money_On_Water_Bill.htm

Some highlights include:

Switching to a lower flow shower head - taking quick showers.
Saving Money when you flush and only wash full loads.

Upcoming Tips
Tuesday we’ll talk about saving money on your Heating / Cooling.
2-3 Then we’ll cover Electricity
2-7 The Telephone bill / Internet
2-10 We’ll start on Household Expenses and Supplies (not including Food)

Posted on January 30, 2009 - by admin

Quick Note

We’re in the process of updating / upgrading the blog, so please be patient with us and stay tuned.

Posted on January 24, 2009 - by admin

Saving Money on your Garbage Bill — OOG 25

Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 25 January 24, 2009

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Hope you had a great week. One thing I’ve been doing some research on is the ‘possible’ new tax cuts for the economic stimulus package. From what I’ve been reading it looks like the cuts will not come in the form of a check like they did last time but in some type of payroll reduction, so you would see a little bit more in your weekly pay check.

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Saving Money The Nitty Gritty -

We talked on Tuesday about tracking your categories for spending. As promised we’ll take each of those categories, break them down and start talking about each of them. The big thing to remember is that a bunch of small changes will add up to big savings.

Saving Money on your Utilities.

Utilities are something that everyone needs, after all if we didn’t have them we would be back in the stone age hunting for sticks to build a fire.

Most of the Utility bills can be broken down into the following.

Heating / Cooling
Water
Electricity
Garbage
Telephone
Cable / TV
Internet (which could be combined with Telephone / Cable or be seperate).

Last week we talked about saving money on your Cable bill.

This week we’ll talk about Saving money on your Garbage.

Some of you may not have much of a choice when it comes to your Garbage bill. I know that we don’t. We have one vendor, and we get a bill every month. It doesn’t matter if we have one garbage bag for the week or we have 50, we are charged the same price.

Many people though are charged a flat rate for x number of bags and charged extra for any number after that. The goal for you should be to not have any extra added to the bill.

Here are a couple of links that will help you reduce your waste.

Here are some steps you can take to do a trash audit.

Here are 42 ways not to make trash. Some of them are pretty extreme, but some are easy to do.

Your city probably has a site that includes some tips on recycling.

Upcoming Tips
Tuesday we’ll talk about saving money on your Water Bill
1-31 Our next issue of OOC will cover saving money on your Heating / Cooling.
2-3 Then we’ll cover Electricity
2-7 The Telephone bill
2-10 We’ll start on Household Expenses and Supplies (not including Food)
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Posted on January 23, 2009 - by admin

Super Bowl Party Ideas

Having a party at your house can be a lot of fun (without breaking your budget). Get a list together of the people you want to invite and decide what you’re going to feed everyone. You can find some ideas on what to have on your menu by going here. We usually have Potato Skins and Chili , a variety of chips and dips, and drinks. Ask everyone on the list to bring something and everyone brings there favorite drink.

Print the following list on a sheet of paper. You can cut / paste to your favorite program.

1. The final score will be…..
2. The team that makes the first touchdown will be ….
3. The team that makes the last touchdown will be ….
4. The total number of commercials (from the kickoff till half time) will be…
5. The total number of commercials (from the the start of halftime till the end of the game) will be…
6. There will be —— beer commercials during the game.
7. Total points in 1st quarter (only) ____________
8. Total points in 2nd quarter (only) ____________
9. Total points in 3rd quarter (only) ____________
10. Total points in 4th quarter (only) ____________
11. The team that wins the coin toss will be.
12. The team ahead at the end of the 1st quarter will be ___________
13. The team ahead at the end of the 2nd quarter will be ___________
14. The team ahead at the end of the 3rd quarter will be ___________

You can use these as a guideline and add more if you wish. You can either have a prize or have folks contribute money to a pot as they come in.

Points - Exactly Right - 20 points
Closest to it - 10 points
2nd place - 5 points

Add up the points and the winner gets the prize.

Here are some ideas for additional games.
http://www.celebrations.com/article/Super-Bowl-Party-Games

Posted on January 20, 2009 - by admin

Cutting your Expenses - Doing an inventory on your spending

If you’ve been following along with our blog you should have already created a budget. If you haven’t had time to do that yet (if you have this will be even easier), I encourage you to do the following.

1. Gather your bills that you’ve gotten over the past month.
2. Create columns in a spreadsheet or on a sheet of paper. You can use any headings that you wish. What you want to do is to categorize your expenses. These are the columns that we used.
Utilities - House - Car - Entertainment - Food - Insurance - Medical - Home Repairs / Supplies - Childcare - Clothing - Taxes - Credit Cards - Interest - Gas - Home Improvement - Travel - Clothing - Misc.

I would also recommend creating sub sections for each of the categories… so for “House” you could have payments, insurance, taxes, etc.
2. Use the spreadsheet (or a piece of paper) and include everything that you’ve spent money on in the past month.

During the next months we’ll take each of the categories that we’ve listed and start talking about some ways that you can save money.

There is a very helpful budget spreadsheet that I found today - you can check that out here (note it is an excel spreadsheet file).

http://www.free-financial-advice.net/budget.xls

Posted on January 17, 2009 - by admin

How to Save Money on your Cable Bill - OOG 24

Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 24 January 17, 2009

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If you’re a volunteer then you can get a free cup of coffee from Starbucks.

Details can be found here -

http://pledge5.starbucks.com/

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Saving Money On your Cable Bill The Nitty Gritty -

We talked last week about some general ways that you can save money. We’re going to start going deeper into some ways to save money.

This week we’ll talk about saving money on your Cable Bill.

1. Do an audit of what you’re watching - do you watch all those movie channels - do you really watch all those channels - track things for a week or so.
2. Did you find any channels that you’re not watching? Now it’s time to check out your cable bill. It may be hard to read but dig in. Make a list of each item on a seperate sheet of paper.

- If you have a lot of seperate entries for each of your channels make a note of that. You will want to call and ask about combining your packages.
- You may find charges on your bill for things you aren’t aware of … like extra cable boxes, a wire maintenance plan, etc. Make sure to review all of the fees.

3. Once you’ve made your list - think of things that you can do without. I have never used the wire maintenance plan.. in fact the cable is online “inside” for a few feet. Ditching that would save me almost $10 / month or $120 / year. If you have extra boxes that you are charged for do you really need them… a cable splitter works pretty good. The only bad thing about that is you will have to watch the same channel, but it works very well for a bedroom.

4. Call your cable company and ask them for the best deal. You will be surprised on how easy it will be to consolidate things. Ask them to explain any of the items that you don’t understand.

Got any additional tips you want to add, please feel free to add a comment.

Posted on January 16, 2009 - by admin

To Do Ist help

I know I mentioned yesterday that we would list some shortcuts, but there are already a ton of them… so no need to list them twice. If you log into todoist - click on the top link that says

Posted on January 15, 2009 - by admin

How To Use To Do Ist - A video explains it

Below is a video on how to use To Do Ist. We’ll include some helpful hints on how to add things tomorrow in a blog post.

Have a wonderful day!

Posted on January 13, 2009 - by admin

Results of the Brain Dump

Did you get a chance to work on your brain dump we talked about? Here’s details if you’re joining the party late. If you haven’t done it… do it. You’ll be glad that you did. I averaged about 10 or so pages for each section. I definitely agree that putting pen to paper was very helpful. Now I’ll start working on that to do list.

We’re running a little late this week so, we should have the video we promised you tomorrow.

Posted on January 10, 2009 - by admin

Five ways to Save money you may not have thought of -OOG

Out of Gas Newsletter - Issue 23 January 10, 2009

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We hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday and enjoy this issue.

Gas news -

Prices have increased at the beginning of the week but then price of oil fell. The average price of a gallon of gas is still up slightly. Isn’t it funny how when prices rise the price at the pump immediately go up, when the price for a barrel falls…. there is definitely some lag time in the price falling and the price at the pumps reacting.

One reason I believe that this has been happening is because many people are buying huge supplies of oil (since it is cheap). After they don’t have any more storage capacity I think that oil prices will stabilize and then decline.

Useful Information -

An excellent site that will help you find a cheaper cell phone plan / credit card.
http://www.billshrink.com/

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Saving Money 5 ways you may not have thought of (yet).

1. Call the following people and tell them you want to downgrade your service. When you do this many times they will offer to give you a discount on the service. I got my Earthlink service (as a backup) for $8 / month.
Your cable company.
Your internet service provider.
Your phone company.
Your cell phone company.

2. Look at your phone bill - do you really need all those extra things? Call and ask them if you could combine services and save money.

3. Don’t buy one thing you buy at the grocery store that you think you could do without (example… buy 2 cartons of drinks instead of 3).

4. If you don’t pack your lunch to work - try doing that for a week. Make sure that you keep track of how much you spend (one note if you eat off the 99 cent menu from McD’s or Wendy’s you will probably not save money taking your lunch).

5. Skip one entertainment activity you do a week (if you can’t stand that then try one / month).