Six Tips for Cutting Your Spending by $500 per Month

Consumer Reports listed six tips for cutting your spending by $500 per month in their recent issue. Here are the tips and my thoughts on each of them:

Find cheaper auto insurance. Annual surveys of CR readers have shown that many have stayed with the same auto insurer for 15 years. Depending on people's profiles and where they live, they might be able to save hundreds a month by shopping around.

You can save AT LEAST hundreds of dollars -- maybe even over a thousand dollars -- by shopping around for your car insurance.

Optimize your life insurance. Life insurance premiums have dropped so dramatically since the 1990s; it will probably pay for you to replace a policy bought years ago with a comparable new one.

Key points here: be sure you get the right kind and right amount of life insurance. And be sure your new policy is in place before you cancel the old one -- you don't want to be left without a policy and unable to be insured.

Shop smart for food. Plan menus around sales of fresh poultry, fish, meat, dairy, and produce, and make use of leftovers. Avoid costly prepared meals. Eat more low-priced high-nutrition foods like beans and potatoes. Try less expensive store brands, and sign up for store discount cards.

Basic money saving suggestions. A few from me: make the most of sales and coupons, weigh your produce, and grow your own food.

Stop paying bank fees. Bank at large institutions with lots of ATMs in convenient locations. Shop for free checking and strictly adhere to provisions for a minimum balance, direct deposit, or other conditions to avoid monthly fees.

These are what I call sneaky fees. They are easily avoided if you pay even the slightest attention to what you're doing.

Call up phone savings. Peruse your last few months phone bills to assess how many minutes you typically use on landline and wireless calls. Comparison shop among cellular service providers, the local phone company, and your cable TV company. Don't buy more than you need, such as an unlimited cellular plan if you rarely go over 900 minutes per month.

Better yet, get a free cell phone from your employer. ;-)

Pay off your credit card. Stop charging, then pay more than the minimum required each month until its paid off. Dig up cash for this from your U.S. Treasury stimulus check, garage sales, or extra work part-time.

Should I simply say "duh" here?

Over all, it's not a stellar list -- most of you are probably doing most of these (I'm doing them all already) -- but the piece does offer some good, basic suggestions for those who aren't that savvy yet at saving money.

Comments

["Mo" Money]

All good points. On the life insurance point almost everyone should have term insurance. If you have a whole, ordinary, variable life policy, or any cash value policy you can get term insurance much cheaper. Make sure you have the new policy in force before canceling the old policty.

[Another Personal Finance Blog]

I have actually found that banking at a small local bank can help reduce fees, provide a better customer service experience and offer better rates. I have free checking, free bill pay, free overdraft protection, etc. The area you may sacrifice in is online tools, but many are still very good.

[Life Insurance Canada]

Good tips. About the life insurance, as Mo Money said, term life is much cheaper, on the other hand, at higher age permanent gains some points. And somebody likes investing without any concerns and permanent can provide this feature, despite it's not the "most powerful" way how to invest your money...
Lorne