Bills, what to do?

I am pretty sure that everyone here knows to keep their heat down and if you can afford it, on a timer. You know to unplug appliances and chargers that are not in use, and to keep all of your appliances running efficiently. Maybe what you don't know is that many local utility companies have energy saving programs.
One example is when we moved into this house we had a very gross and old refrigerator. We dealt with it because we didn't have a lot of extra money, but at the time, this was before the housing bubble, we could save a little for improvements. Not much, so I looked into my electric company's energy saving project. They sent a person to my house who put in three or four florescent bulbs (this was 15 years ago, so they were very expensive) and even better, subsidized a new refrigerator for us that was better on electricity! We got a lovely Maytag refrigerator that is the right size for our household, brand new. We paid 250 dollars for it, on time payments. They even took away our old one which would normally have cost us an additional 20 dollars for the city to pick up. I strongly encourage you to look at your companies and see if they have this service available and then do it. If you are in a really bad spot like we are for now, the co-pay for a new appliance, if it is offered, may feel out of your reach. I get it, no money is no money, it doesn't matter how much it will save in the long run. Still, see if there is somewhere you can cut back for a few months and make payments if at all possible.

Both utility companies (electric and gas) offer special rates for people under a certain income level. You will find the program on their web site or maybe another source that has services listed for your area. If you are on food stamps (SNAP) you are usually automatically eligible for this lower rate.

You may have noticed that I have left out internet, cable and phone. That is because everyone has different needs. Personally I really believe that now we really need to have SOME access to the internet, if not at home, then at a cafe or library. If your needs are small these are excellent ways to check email and a social program or two. In our case we really needed to have internet in the house due to my research heavy workload at college and even more pressing, that both of my girls require a lot of access for their schools too. It is assumed that you have easy access to the internet. As an aside, my oldest daughter's professor actually assumed that all the young adults had data plans and smart phones! My daughter uses a flip phone. I thought it was strange because it is a community college, which is where people often go to cut college costs.

We found a plan through Comcast that gave us a land line phone and a limited bandwidth internet for 50 dollars a month. It has gone up about 12 dollars in the years that we have had it, but so far it hasn't changed. We don't have cable television, but we do pay 8 dollars a month to stream Netflix which helps us not rent movies that inevitably go back late, and we can watch what we want without paying 100 dollars a month for basic cable which, let's face it, kinda sucks now. I do wish we had BBC, but that is neither here not there, it is a small sacrifice. For cell phones we went about it this way. Our first phones were pretty cheap, but with all the payphones disappearing and my youngest daughter's school not allowing them to make phone calls from the office, they are sort of becoming a necessity. So, we got the inexpensive phones and use a pay as you go plan. 25.00 for three months. Each phone call is 25 cents a minute and each text is 20 cents. This is taken from the 25 dollars, so no surprise bills. My oldest pays her own, which is very helpful. My younger child knows that she must be very careful with using her phone and she has had to remind her friends that she can't just text all the time. It took a while, but they finally figured that out. When I got my student loan I paid the 100.00 for a year of time for her and myself. Since we only use it for important things for the most part, it isn't hard to keep the costs low.  So, 75.00 for three months worth of time. not too bad. I would rather not "need" this, as just a decade ago I had our phone turned off as a luxury because we had ready access to a pay phone. Not any more. My husband needs it for work, I needed it at first because I was away from home and my youngest was in elementary school and I felt safer with her having one on her because of the school's policy on using the phone at the school. If you feel you can do without, then by all means do! 

Weatherize. I know, we all know this, but it is important. There are less expensive ways of doing it. They aren't necessarily attractive, but they work. A long sewn up tube of a nice heavy cloth filled with sand or rice makes an excellent device for placing at the bottom of your doors. I do not know about you, but I remember my Gramma having these, with faces on them! You can also stuff newspapers in cracks to alleviate some of the loss of heat or cold.

Trash pick up. Many places include this in their taxes, but we have recently started being charged per bag, but recycling is free. With four people, three of whom are girls who have more trash and a cat who uses litter, we are able to keep our trash to under 1 33 gallon bag a week most of the time. We are lucky and have a garbage disposal, but we also have a compost. If you don't, maybe one of your friends would appreciate the contribution. We recycle everything possible. All junk mail, all glass, all plastics 1-7. If you order take out (come one, we all splurge if we can, it helps morale) look at the bottom of your clam shell. It may actually not be Styrofoam but a plastic and recyclable. They also have ones that are compostable which can go in with the papers. Since we really can't buy a lot of things, packaging is kept down, so it isn't terribly difficult to keep the trash down.

This sort of has to do with the trash. Go to www.freecycle.org and look up your area. Not only can you find things you may need second hand, but you can also list things that you want and, more importantly for me, things you want to give away. We recently had someone looking for clementine boxes! I have also found homes for my broken pottery, old toys and a fryer that was pretty gross. Yes, I was honest and told them that it was gross, dishonesty is a bad thing anyway, but especially here. If people get taken they tend to not trust you. We have found homes for many things that normally would have been thrown away, and since our trash costs, well, you can see where this goes.

So, look up your utilities, see if you can downgrade your cell phone and internet connection and take advantage of special pricing and programs to help you save money. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle! It is not only earth smart, but money smart too. Good luck!