Money Saving Tips

Saving money isn’t always easy, but thanks to our money saving tips and tricks section, you’ll always have new ways to try and save more money.

  1. Use coupons, but only for things you would normally buy anyway, and only in quantities that you would regularly buy. Many coupons are designed to get you to buy MORE by seducing you with a lower price per item, but this does not help you save money. You actually spend more when you buy more than you normally would. Sure, you might end up using it eventually, but how long will it sit on your shelf before you do? What could you have done with that money during that time? If you buy “extra” every time you shop, your bill won’t change, but your home’s clutter will increase.
  2. Shop around for auto insurance at least every two years, every year is even better. Car insurance companies reset their rates every few years based upon how much the claims in each state cost them during the last year. If an insurer paid out less than expected, they may lower rates. If they paid out more than expected, they may raise rates. All insurers will have approximately the same costs, BUT they do not all review them at the same time. That means that if rates are going up, Insurer A might raise them a year or more before Insurer B raises them. Likewise, if they are going down, maybe someone else has lower rates that your current insurer does already.
  3. Raise your home owners insurance deductible to $1,000 or $5,000 – A dirty secret of the insurance industry is that if you file too many claims on your homeowners insurance policy that you will be dropped from coverage by your insurer. “Too many” can be as few as one or two depending upon the area and the claims. In other words, you should NOT file insurance claims for the “little stuff.” Of course, if you aren’t going to use your insurance for the little stuff, then you should pay for it to cover the little stuff either. Check with your insurer and see how much the difference is in rates for a $1,000 deductible versus a $5,000 deductible. Sometimes it’s less than $50 per year, so lower might be better. In other cases, the different might be $250 or more each year. Go with the higher deductible then.
  4. Do you need a umbrella insurance plan? If you have assets that exceed your insurance coverage by more than a $100,000 or so, you might need umbrella insurance. Umbrella insurance typically offers $1 million of liability coverage above and beyond your traditional home owners insurance and auto insurance liability coverage offers. The catch is that most insurers require you to carry higher liability limits on your other insurance policies in order to qualify. If you have a lot of equity in your house, or if you have a large nest egg, or inheritance, you should probably look into umbrella insurance. The cost is not very high in comparison to other insurance coverage and could be the difference between having to sell your house or cash in your stocks should something unforeseen happen.
  5. You Don’t Need Shredder Oil – A paper shredder is an important tool to prevent identity theft. When you buy a shredder at your local office supply store chances are they will also try and sell you oil or lubricant for your paper shredder. Don’t buy it. Most paper shredders say right in their own instructions that just a little cooking oil drizzled on a piece of paper that you run through your shredder is all the lubrication your shredder needs for regular maintenance. So, skip the expensive, and unnecessary, shredder lubricant oil the salesman tries to sell you when you check out.saving-money-piggy-bank

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