Everyday Cheapskate: Little Ways To Raise Big Money

2010-04-19

Think you've cut your expenses all you possibly can? You might be wrong. Check out these seven simple ways to find money to grow your savings account.

—Reduce kitchen paper. The average American family rips through 1.5 rolls of paper towels each week. At $1.25 a roll, you're paying at least $65 per year for disposable towels. Reduce that to one roll per month. Use cloth towels for cleaning the house and for spills. Throw them in the laundry instead of the garbage. Annual savings: $50.

—Unhook the cable. Make a one-year commitment to live without cable television. Don't worry. At the rapidly expanding Web site Hulu, you can watch hundreds of popular scripted TV shows — such as "Family Guy," "House" and "The Office" — reality shows, such as "The Biggest Loser" and "Top Chef," news clips, including those from "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams," and tons of shows from Fox News Channel, HGTV, Food Network and many more channels. What you can't find at Hulu you likely can find on the individual networks' Web sites. Annual savings: $600.

—Cut child care costs. Sign up for a dependent care flexible spending account, a valuable employee benefit that hardly anyone uses. With an FSA — offered by 85 percent of large companies — you deposit pretax dollars in an employer-sponsored FSA to pay for up to $5,000 of care, including summer camp for dependent children younger than 13. Even if you only partially fund a dependent care FSA this year — assuming you are in the 28 percent tax bracket — you could save up to $75 a month on your child care bill without making any changes in service providers. Annual savings: $900.

—Drop the land line. The average family spends $90 per month for home phones, cell phones, pagers and phone cards. With all those connections, maybe it's time to join the 20 percent of American households that have dropped their land lines. Annual savings: $300.

—Reduce dry cleaning. One study reveals that 65 percent of the clothes we take to dry cleaners are machine-washable. You can put most textiles in the washer on a delicate cycle with a gentle detergent, or you can wash them by hand. Wash and press just two items per month that otherwise would have landed at the dry cleaner. Annual savings: $120.

—Cancel the gym. Instead, join the free online boot camp that will whip you into shape in no time flat. Marine Corps Fitness, modeled after the U.S. Marine Corps' physical training program, offers workouts that can be done at home, and no expensive exercise equipment is needed. Annual savings: $420.

—Don't print. Home computer printers can go through ink cartridges as if they were candy! The cost of ink cartridges depends on which printer you have, but none of them is cheap. Before you print anything, ask yourself whether you really need a hard copy. Could you just read it from the screen? When you do print, print only what you really need, not the pictures and ads, and print on both sides of the paper. Annual savings: $120.

Mary Hunt is the founder of www.DebtProofLiving.com and author of 18 books, including her latest, "Can I Pay My Credit Card Bill With a Credit Card?" You can e-mail her at mary@everydaycheapskate.com, or write to Everyday Cheapskate, P.O. Box 2135, Paramount, CA 90723. To find out more about Mary Hunt and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.