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10 Simple Ways To Save $100

November 17th, 2006 at 01:15 am

Everyone wants to save money, but not if saving that money means they must give up something they like. The fact is, there is likely over $1000 worth of pain free savings right under your nose waiting to be taken if you want. That is savings where you are able to save money without having to give up any of the activities that you enjoy doing or changing your lifestyle in any significant way. Here is a list of ten that will save you over $100 each this year.

Call Your Cable Company: If you have cable TV, satellite TV or some other form of paid TV and you are paying the regular subscription rate, you're paying too much. This is an extremely competitive business and by calling with a competitor's advertisement in hand while threatening to switch, in most cases you'll get a much better deal than you are currently getting. For detailed information on how to do this step by step, you can read Saving 50% On Your Cable TV. The last time I did this for my mother, we saved $235.50 over 6 months.

Call Your Gym: Many people don't think about trying to get a better rate on their gym memberships, but this is another competitive industry where it is less expensive to keep you at a discounted rate than to let you go to the competition. Asking for a better deal on your gym membership is worthwhile if you are paying the regular membership rate. The last time my friend did this he was able to save $120 over three months.

Call Your Credit Card Company: If you have a credit card that currently has a balance on it, call your credit card company to try and get the interest rate lowered. Depending on how good of a customer you are, this can be easy or difficult to do. Always ask to speak to a manager (since they have more power to grant your wish) and you can follow this information to help you. If you can get your credit card interest rate lowered, you will save hundreds to thousands depending on your credit card balance and the time period it takes you to pay them off.

Call Your Car Insurer: If you are like most of people, you probably have the same auto insurance company that you had when you first signed up for your auto insurance policy. There are several steps that you can take to help painlessly reduce the costs associated with car insurance. 1) If you haven't been comparing rates on a yearly basis, you should compare rates to see if you are paying too much. You will also want to check the car deductible to see if you can get some savings there. Lastly, you want to make sure that you are receiving all the discounts that you qualify for (your agent may not have told you all that you do qualify for). Taking these steps should save you several hundred dollars at a minimum.

Call Your Internet Provider: Just like the other business mentioned above, the ISP business is highly competitive. Again, using competitors offers, it's likely that you can call and get the amount you pay for your Internet service reduced. It doesn't even have to be a large amount. For every $10 a month you can get in reduction, you save $120 a year.

Call Your Phone Service Provider: While I could break this category into two (long distance and cell phones), the principle is the same with both as with the others mentioned above. In addition to calling with competitors rates, be sure to have them analyze how you are using your phone. They may very well have a plan suited to your particular calling habits that can save you money. Between these two, it should be quite easy to save more than $100 a year.

Energy Audit With winter now upon us, call your local utility company to get an energy audit of your house. Many utilities companies offer these for free or at a very low cost. They will come to your house and do a thorough check to find out where the energy leaks are in your house that are causing your energy bill to higher than it needs be. They may even offer items to reduce your energy costs for free or at rates discounted more than you can find in retail stores. If you local utility doesn’t offer a free energy audit, you can do a free virtual energy audit at the government’s Home Energy Saver website which will also allow you compare your heating bill to others in your area. By finding out where you are losing money through energy waste, you will likely recoup more than $100 in savings during the year above any costs you have.

Wash Your Clothes In Cold Water: Simply walk over to your washing machine and move the switch from a hot wash to a cold wash. What people often forget is that it's not the electricity to run the washer that costs the money, but the energy needed to heat the water going into the washer. Unless your work can be featured on Dirtiest Jobs, a cold wash - cold rinse should get your clothes just as clean as a hot wash. Assuming that you average about a load of wash a day, running your washing machine with a hot wash - cold rinse setting will cost about $100 - $125 a year. Doing the same number of loads with a cold wash - cold rinse setting will cost about $10 a year. That's over $100 in savings and can be much more if you have kids and do more frequent wash loads.

Prescription Drug Coupons: If you have brand name prescription medication that you need to take, simple go to the website for that medication and sign up for their newsletter. Once you do, you will likely receive discount coupons for that medication which can result in hundreds of dollars in savings a year.

Mortgage: I debated whether to include this one as "easy & pain free" since there is more time and effort involved than with the others I have mentioned, but decided that it should be included due to the sheer amount it can save. If you can lower the interest by even a percentage point over what you are currently paying, that can mean tens of thousands of dollars in savings over the entire loan period. So while a bit of effort is required, the payoff is much greater than the others mentioned above. Just be sure that you don't confuse paying less on your mortgage with saving money.

The above options are all pain free meaning that you don't actually switch services or products. For example, there are a lot of discount options for long distance calling that you could use in place of what you are currently using. If you are willing to switch, you can save even more, but if you're not, these ten will still save you over $1000 without disturbing your current lifestyle.

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