If you’re like most of us, you are reading this site (and other personal finance sites) because you’re trying to get a handle on your household finances. Maybe you’re in debt. Maybe there has been a change in your financial situation and you’re just trying to learn how to keep from going into debt. There are any of a hundred reasons you’re visiting here today, but one thing that is constant is that each of us has (had) to learn our starting point.

You may have heard this before… maybe even a hundred times before, but you can’t get “there” unless you know where “here” is. The prospect is indeed very scary. When I introduced my sister to Mint, and she saw where her money was actually going instead of where she thought it was going, she said she felt exposed in a way she wasn’t expecting. I heartlessly told her to get a fig leaf and keep on trucking!

So what if you learn you spent $15,000 eating out last year (like I found out in 2007!) or you spend $50 a month at iTunes? Doing a status check and finding out what your financial standing is and where your money really is going isn’t about recrimination. It’s about educating yourself on your real situation, instead of what you guess your situation is, and making small and sustainable changes to improve things for yourself and your family.

Where to start?

• With the paper trail (electronic or hard copy… makes no difference how you access it).
  • Gather all of your bank and credit card information
  • Gather all of your bill information
  • Make a list of all of your obligations (yes, that $30 a month gym membership you don’t use does count)
• Figure out what your balances are.
  • Bank account balances (and make sure you factor in outstanding transactions!)
  • Credit card balances
  • Overdue on any bills? Need to figure that out too
• Categorize your expenses for the last 30 days
  • This is as easy as setting up a Mint account and adding in your account information. You may have to re-categorize a few things, but chances are it’ll be pretty darned accurate.
  • OR input everything in a spreadsheet, if that’s your thing.

Once you know what your status is, you’ll be in a better position to make any needed adjustments to your spending… or perhaps to boost your earnings. Maybe you’re even doing just fine! You won’t know until you get your status check done though. **NOTE** There is a “No beating yourself up” rule that comes along with this status check. You can resolve to do better. You can resolve to make adjustments. You can’t, however, waste time and energy on “coulda, woulda, shoulda, but didn’t”.

If you’re like most of us, you find yourself heading out to eat more often than you really want to. Your afternoons are packed, you’re run down, tired, and just not up to spending an hour in the kitchen! What if I told you that for the amount of time you spend driving to your favorite restaurant, picking up take-out or waiting to be seated, you could be having a home cooked meal, at your dinner table, with your family, and eating FAR less calories, sodium, fat, and sugar … for about the cost of one adult meal purchased at a restaurant.

There are a lot of choices, so you can choose one or all of them to suit your family’s needs.

1. Crock Pot Meals – Put all of your ingredients for a pot roast, or bean soup, or chili, or barbeque chicken, or any of the other thousand variations of crock pot cooking, into your pot in the morning before work. Turn it on low. That’s it. When you get home, you’ll have a hot, home cooked meal ready and waiting for you. All for the time it takes to chop a few veggies and tossing them in the pot.
2. Grilled meat and/or veggies and a salad – More of a meat and veggies person? Toss some frozen meat into a baggie with marinade and put it in the refrigerator to thaw before you go to bed. By the time 5:00 rolls around the next day, your meat will be thawed, marinated, and ready for 10 minutes on the grill. Wrap fresh veggies such as zucchini or carrots, or sliced potatoes along with some garlic and olive oil in aluminum foil and toss on the grill next to your chicken or pork chops.
3. Cook Extra – make double batches of meals on the nights you do cook. Halve the food immediately and put the extra into microwave safe containers and freeze for re-heating on a night when you’re rushed.
4. Stop at the grocery store – Kroger, Publix, Costco, and almost every other major grocery store has a deli section with roast chicken, or other hot and ready meat. If you haven’t laid anything out for dinner and you don’t have extra helpings in the freezer, stop in at one of those stores, pick up a roast chicken, bag of salad, and loaf of bread. That’s a full family meal, in under 5 minutes, for less than $10.

Have you ever tried to have a budget discussion with your significant other(s) or family members? How often do they end well?

Money is a highly charged topic for most people. As one lovely friend of mine put it “It’s like I’m showing you my dirty underwear.” The only way around fighting over money is to learn to effectively communicate about it. I learned this the hard way when my husband and I started budgeting more carefully. In his eyes, we were doing all we could with the planning and cutting expenses. He felt that as long as he agreed with my perspective, there was nothing to discuss. “No more lunches out, done. What’s to talk about?”

Very seldom do all of the people in the household have the same money styles. Some do not like to deal with bills or finances in general. Often, their process for bill paying is very simple… pay the bills when the shut off notices arrive (or the utility in question is actually shut off). This leads to bounced check fees, late fees, and reconnect fees. Rather than continue to carry stress around regarding the bills, the “responsible one” handles the bill paying and the finances.

Of course, this means that the person in charge of the budget and the bill paying too often has to be the bad guy. When the family is feeling the pinch of budgeting, when the spending limits are imposed, when the other members don’t agree, it’s the fault of the budget maker. When the resentment starts because the family isn’t REALLY on the same page, it’s the “responsible” one who becomes the fall guy.

So set aside time to review spending reports and discuss how everyone thinks the budget is going, where the family can improve spending, and/or where they need to allow for more. Work on ways to engage everyone in the conversation without making anyone feel as though it’s going to be a “finance lesson” or an opportunity for everyone to gripe about money.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be sharing a series of articles on taking the pain out of money discussions.

1. Put more clothes on. Seriously.
   1. Wear thick socks – When your feet are warm, the rest of your body tolerates cold better
   2. Invest in footie pajamas – They cover you from neck to toes, and they’re perfect for spending time lounging around the house
   3. Use a lap blanket
   4. Layer your clothing
   5. Wear a sweater inside
2. Install a programmable thermostat
   1. Winter – Program the temp at 68 when you’re home and awake. Program it to lower to 60 when you’re normally asleep or not home.
   2. Summer – Program the temp at 78 when you’re at home and awake. Program it to 83 when you’re normally asleep or not home.
3. Warm up your bed
   1. Try getting a mattress warmer or an electric blanket
   2. Turn your heating pad on low and put it under the covers where your feet rest 15 minutes before getting into bed. Your partner(s) will thank you!
4. Keep the drafts out
   1. Caulk
   2. Weather Strip
   3. Insulate the ceiling and walls – Especially around outlet plugs and switch plates. These are typically very drafty.
   4. Put plastic over your windows
   5. Seal off rooms you don’t use
5. Keep your furnace healthy
   1. Get your furnace serviced
   2. Replace the filters every month during heavy use
   3. Have your ducts cleaned
6. Move More
   1. Play games with the kids
   2. Do jumping jacks
   3. Fold the laundry
   4. Dust the shelves
   5. Whatever it takes, just move.
7. Cook
   1. Using the oven heats the house – make your food at home!
   2. Spice up your food. A few hot peppers never made anyone feel cold (yeah, this one has no scientific basis that I know of, but just work with me here.)
8. Entertain
   1. Throw a pot luck dinner. Having all those folks in your house is sure to heat it up.
9. Go outside
   1. Go for a jog
   2. Walk the dog
   3. Rake the leaves
   4. Sit on the porch and take in a sunset
   5. Whatever you do outside in the cold, it will feel toasty warm when you get back inside the house.

Here are some links to a bazillion tips for saving on your heating bills:

• Save Money On Heating Your Home at Momma’s Blog
• Ten Tips: Reduce your heating bill at MSNBC
• 12 Tips to lower your heating bills this winter at Sixwise
• Simple tips to reduce heating bills from the Kansas Corporation Commission
• Top Tips: how to lower your heating bills at CNN Money
• Tips to reduce your home heating bill at CNBC
• Tips to lower your heating bill at Thrifty Fun
• 12 tips to lower your heating bill at FIRE Finance
• Tips to lower home-heating bills at Better Connecticut (WFSB)
• Efficiency tips to lower your heating bill at NPR Vermont Edition

That’s all I have for today. What are your favorites?

]]> http://www.householdfinancecoach.com/lower-your-heating-bills/feed/ 0 http://www.householdfinancecoach.com/where-are-your-money-leaks/ http://www.householdfinancecoach.com/where-are-your-money-leaks/#comments Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:20:11 +0000 IdaDavidson http://www.householdfinancecoach.com/?p=61

It’s impossible to chart your monetary course without some preliminary work. After all, how do you get “There” if you don’t know where “Here” is? The first step to figuring out where your money leaks are is to keep a written record. Grab a small notebook and write down every penny that leaves your hands every day.

That’s all there is to it. Stop at the gas station for a cup of coffee? Write it down. Left a $1 tip at the coffee shop? Write that down too.

Photo By Suat Eman

If there are other people in your household, encourage them to log their spending too. Household finance isn’t just about one person. Getting your money moving in the right direction requires a everyone’s participation.

Choose a good day and time, once every week or two, and review the spending log. If there are other adults in your household, make sure everyone is involved. When you start to review your spending, something amazing happens. You really see where your money holes are! It’ll go like this: “WOW… I didn’t know I spend $28 every week on cigarettes (or sodas or coffee or candy or video games or …)! That’s $1456 every year… That’s 4 car payments every year on junk! I can use that money to make our finances better by… (putting it in savings, paying off our debts faster, investing in my 401K, …).”

Over time, you’ll find that the knowledge that you’ll have to write down every single penny will curb some of your impulse spending. Your mind will automatically start equating the bad purchase amounts to good purchase amounts such as “I could spend this $3.00 on a coffee, or I can get a cup for free at the office and use that $3.00 toward building our vacation fund a little faster.”

After a few weeks, you’ll see a dramatic change in your impulse purchase (hopefully!) and be well on your way to making your money work for you, instead of the other way around. Cutting $20 a week in impulse spending will save you $1040 a year. Broken down a little further, that’s $2.85 a day. That’s it. Less than one gallon of gas or half of a McDonald’s Super Value meal. All for the cost of a $.99 little notebook to track where your money is going.