20 Ways to Save on a Shoestring, Part 4

Here's post #4 on an article I found at Money Central titled "20 Ways to Save on a Shoestring":

There are a thousand ways to live on less. But you don’t want to make your life a misery. Here are some of the most painless ways you can economize without losing out on quality of life:

Haggle. You’d be amazed at who will drop their prices, fees and interest rates: airlines, hotels, credit card companies, computer/appliance/rug salespeople.

Re-evaluate. Re-evaluate. Re-evaluate. That dinner out cost more than you spend on groceries in a week. That pair of shoes is worth half a commuter pass. Learn what your money is worth, and you won’t be so quick to dispose of it.

Don't overpay your taxes. Sure you love to get a fat refund from the IRS every spring. The fact is, however, you're effectively lending money to the government interest-free. Go through your tax return and see if you can plan your withholding so you get to Dec. 31 maybe getting a $100 refund. That way you can use your money NOW. (And bank the refund when you get it.)

Raise your insurance deductibles. Reassess the deductibles for various kinds of insurance. If you can raise them, your premiums drop.

Here's my take on these:

• Haggle. I need to get better at this. We do it well when we buy cars, but not really any other time.
• Re-evaluate. We do this all the time. It's a great habit and can really help those savings add up.
• Don't overpay taxes. Good idea. Something I try to avoid every year.
• Raise deductibles. We've done this on all our policies. Of course, we've had to increase our emergency fund to cover them in case we need to, but that's a one-time increase and we've saved much more on the premiums since we started doing this.

Click here to read part 5 of this series.

Comments

[robert the red]

Well, I over-withold my Fed taxes deliberately, since I'm not sure how much I'll owe due to cap gains, dividends, interest, AMT, etc. And the penalty for under-witholding is severe, while the penalty for over-witholding (say $3000) is small at current interest rates.