In addition to my advice to become a Costco member to save money on your groceries, household supplies, clothes etc., I’ll share with you 6 other ways on how to save money on your monthly expenses.

1. Car Insurance

Car insurance is a large chunk of money, so you’ll want to periodically review your policy. Since we’re in the pandemic and my wife and I are driving a lot less, I called my car insurance company and gave them updated mileage numbers and instantly saved around $400 on my annual premium! You can shop around with different car insurance companies too.

2. Home Alarm System

Technology is constantly changing and sometimes impacts the way we do things and what we pay for. Our home insurance company sent us a flyer about their new home security monitoring service and their monthly fee is about 50% of the cost of our current traditional home security monitoring monthly fee. I recently purchased a security camera that operates from an app on my phone, so my wife suggested I look into home security monitoring service through that company and I found out their monthly fee is about 20% of the cost of our current traditional home security monitoring monthly fee. So, now we’re saving about $480 per a year on home security monitoring service fees!

3. Buying Services & Products Locally

We bought an electric car last year and we took advantage of the $7,500 federal tax credit, the $2,500 California rebate, and the $599 electric utility rebate. See my articles about buying an electric car, getting lowest price on your new car purchase, and getting the highest price when selling your used car. Also, we’re saving money on gas and maintenance, as well as helping the environment.

But, the reason why I bring up our electric car for this article is that we bought locally and we noticed some local businesses are willing to negotiate more when selling to local residents. And, sometimes they offer special complimentary services that will save you money. The dealership we purchased our electric car at offers free car washes and free electric charging for life! Be sure to check out what your local businesses offer in terms of prices and complimentary services before you buy from a business that is not local.

4. Cleaning Your House

We, like most families, accumulate lots of stuff over the years. My wife likes to keep everything regardless if we use it or not. I like to get rid of things we don’t use often by asking myself how many times did we use an item in the past 12 months or has the item become obsolete. The only exception to my rule is for stuff like holiday decorations, camping chairs, etc. because while we may only use a few times a year…we still for sure will need to use them.

I recently cleaned out my garage and found lots of stuff we haven’t used and probably won’t use in the near future. For example, I found a couple boxes of video games my brother game me for the kids a while back. My wife wanted to keep them in case the kids want to play in the next 5-10 years. I explained to her our kids are currently too young to play these types of games and in 5-10 years we don’t know what our kids will be into. Currently they play age appropriate games on their Chrome books, who knows what they will want to play and on what system they will play games on in the future. So, I sold them online and to a video game store in town.

While I didn’t technically “save money,” I wanted to share because cleared up space in our garage and made some money that was then used to pay for stuff on our last camping trip. Win win situation!

5. Telephone & Internet Services

My wife is constantly reviewing the offers we receive in the mail from various phone/internet service providers. If we see an offer that may save us money, we first check with our current service provider to see if they are able to provide a similar deal. Then, if our current service provider can not provide a similar deal, we evaluate if the savings is substantial enough to warrant a change in service provider. If yes, then we change our service provider.

6. Shop Around Online

Whenever we buy anything, from groceries to home supplies to vacations to big ticket purchases, we always spend a few minutes searching for deals online. Sometimes Amazon (check out my article Amazon Prime 30 Day Free Trial) or Walmart or Target or Ebay will have good deals, but sometimes they won’t, so you’ll need to evaluate each time you buy.

I hope you found this article on how to save money on your monthly expenses helpful. Below are some other articles that you may find helpful.

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