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Cutting Costs in your Home

Saving energy in your home is going to cut down on the bills you pay monthly which means, overall you are going to put more money into your pocket, into the savings account or on the table as you have more money to feed your growing family with. 

To start cutting back on what you spend in the house, sometimes it can mean that you will have to spend a little now, to save for years to come. You need to make the expense a justifiable one, such as insulating your attic, putting in different light bulbs and such. While you aren’t going to be able to establish each of these ideas in one day, you have a good listing of goals to work towards to lower your bills for the long run. 

Cutting costs in your home does require you to review where you are spending money about every six to eight months. In the beginning you are going to have to learn to look at everything that you do, but after you have become established in your methods of cutting back, a good review of your bills and where you are spending is great. 

First let’s look at your utility company. In some areas of the world, you can choose who your electric supplier, or gas supplier is. Should you switch? Who is offering the best rates and who is offering rebates to ongoing long-term customers? These are the companies that you want to deal with. Some electric or gas companies offer free appliances if you are a customer for xx months or years to help you cut back on the energy that you use. 

To cut back on the heating and the cooling bills in your home, you need to have insulation in your home. If you have an older home, you may need more insulation that what you already have to keep your home warmer / cooler. In the attic, you need to have at least an R21 to an R30 thickness. Check with your local home retail supplier if you are unsure of what you have in your attic. This can be achieved with blown insulation or rolled insulation. 

During the day when you are gone at work, you can turn your thermostat down just two degrees. This keeps your heat from running all day when you are not there, but still your home is warm when you come home. If it is the middle of summer, turn your air up to seventy two or seventy four, your home will still be nice and cool when you come home from work without running up the bills from the air conditioner all day long. 

If you are going to be gone from your home over the weekend, turn the heat down to sixty. This is still warm enough to keep your pipes from freezing yet cool enough that you are not spending a lot on heat while you are gone. 

Do not turn your thermostat up a lot, meaning don’t turn it more than five degrees at any given time. You need to be a little patient in letting your home warm up if you are really cold. Turning the heat way up, is going to spend way more energy than you need. 

Turn your hot water down. If you have a gas or electric water heater, you don’t need it about 120 degrees. If you have a timer on your hot water tank, you could consider having your water turned off or down lower while you are gone during the day. Turning the temperature down below one hundred when you are gone during the day, not using hot water is going to save you lots of money!

If you have air coming in around your doors or windows, put up heavy drapes, put in new weather stripping, and put plastic up around these areas for the winter months. When you allow the cold air in, you are just spending more in heating than you really have to!