25 Ways To Improve Your Financial Situation In Under 10 Minutes

Turn down the heat

I am by no means a great do-it-yourself person, but I can do basic maintenance. One of the best moves I ever made was replacing a manual thermostat with a programmable model in the first house I purchased. My heating bill in the winter and air conditioning bill in the summer dropped about 20% with its installation and it was wonderful to wake up on cold winter mornings to an already warm house. Even if you have to hire someone to install it, it’s well worth the price since it will save you a bundle over time and make your living conditions a lot more comfortable.

Report some savings

The government lets you obtain a free credit report from each of the 3 major credit reporting agencies each year at annualcreditreport.com. I have it arranged so that I get one report every 4 months which I feel gives me a better idea of what is happening to my credit over the entire year rather than requesting all of them at once. I request my Experian report in January, my Equifax report in May and my TransUnion report in August. This allows me to see if there are any problems or mistakes (which can lower your credit rating and mean it costs more to get loans) and monitor to make sure there hasn’t been any identity theft that has taken place.

Freeze!

When my wife had all her credit card debt, I threatened to take her credit cards, place then inside a container of water and stick them in the freezer if she didn’t stop using them until they had been paid off (a step that a good friend of mine had taken years ago to stop himself from using his credit card). Although it never came to that, she did take them out of her wallet and put them in the back of her desk drawer where they did remain until the debt was paid off. The simple act of taking your credit cards out of your wallet and placing them somewhere else means that they can’t be used for impulse purchases.

Timing is everything

I have to admit that I love to take long showers. This drives my wife crazy and doesn’t do much for our water and energy (for heating the water) bills. My main problem is that I used to do a lot of my thinking and article brainstorming while in the shower so I wouldn’t even realize how long I had been in there. My wife solved that problem by bringing in it a kitchen timer that I now set at 10 minutes every time I take a shower. It does mean that I have to do my article brainstorming on walks instead of the shower, but our energy and water bills have gone down quite a bit since the timer was introduced.

Make a switch

In my younger days when my wife and I first got married, we used disposable plates, chopsticks (we live in Japan) and napkins for practically every meal. They seemed relatively inexpensive and clean-up was a lot easier, but when we realized we were spending several hundred dollars each year on all that disposable stuff, we switched to plates, regular chopsticks (silverware when in the US) and cloth napkins. An added bonus is that we produce a lot less trash than we used to as well.

Get rid of a load

This is something that I used to be really bad about. I basically was carrying around an entire sports store in my car’s trunk for a couple of years. Now the only thing in my trunk is an emergency kit and whatever supplies I need for where I happen to be going. Not only does it save me a bit on gas, I can actually fit things I need into my car now which makes my wife a lot happier.

Filter some savings

I remember taking a look at my mom’s furnace filter the last time I was back in the US. It was winter and the furnace didn’t seem to be working. It didn’t take long to realize the problem was the filter which hadn’t been changed for at least a year. Now when I call her it’s a running joke that I ask her if she has recently changed the filter. It takes a couple minutes at most to replace your heating or air conditioning filter every few months. You’ll find that doing this on a regular basis will make your systems work much more efficiently saving you money.

An audit you want

One of the best decisions I ever made was calling my local utility company and asking them to come out to do an energy audit on my house. Many offer to do this for free or they may charge a small price, but either way it’s worth it. In addition to doing the audit and showing me where I was losing money due to poor insulation and leaks (and how much it would cost to fix them), they also brought an energy saver kit with low flow shower and sink heads, weather stripping, toilet damn, etc. They offered it for less than half the regular price that it normally sold for and helped me install them. I could see the savings in my bills the next month. With energy prices at all time highs, making this call and setting up an appointment makes it even more worth the 10 minutes it takes.

See the light

We had slowly been making the switch to energy efficient CFL lighting inside our house as our old bulbs burned out, but made a full house switch a few years ago when an area store was offering them for $0.25 a piece as part of a Earth Day promotion with the local energy company. As soon as we made the switch, we wished we had done so earlier. Replacing one bulb at a time doesn’t seem to make much of a difference, but when we switched the whole house, we could instantly see the savings. Since then we have also gone to a motion sensor security light and solar lighting for the garden and pathway to our door.

Become a fan

I used to never pay much attention to the kitchen and bathroom fans in our house and I would often leave them running. I read an article that explained keeping these fans running basically sucks all the warmed (winter) and cooled (summer) air out of the house making your heating / cooling system work harder. We started to use them only when needed and turn them off religiously when we were done which resulted in a large dip in our energy bill. I still feel like hitting myself for not realizing this sooner.

Change you can believe in

My very first emergency fund was put together from the change in my pockets (it works even better in Japan where they have a $1 and $5 coin). I never liked carry change around so this was an easy saving method to implement and since coin changing machines in Japan are free (unlike in the US where saving coins can actually cost you money if you’re not careful), it was perfect. I still empty my pockets on a daily basis into a jar by our front door to this day (although now it’s our vacation fund).

Raise your standards

One of the first things I did once I had an emergency fund in place was to call my car insurance agent and raised my insurance deductible from $500 to $1000. I’ve always had the highest deductible I can get while still knowing I have the money to cover it in case an accident does happen. In fact, when our cars get older so that they are no longer worth a lot but still run fine, I drop all collision insurance.

Dephantomize your house

Did you know that the clock on your microwave oven probably uses more energy during the year than the actual use of you microwave? I ended up buying power strips to plug in all our appliances a few years ago when I learned about phantom energy use. All those appliances that you “turn off” are still consuming energy. While a single appliance by itself would not be a big deal, when you add up all the different appliances and systems in the average home, the phantom electricity load will reach $20+ a year and can even reach $100+ in houses that have a lot of electronics. Now I have a lot less phantom energy waste since I can use the power strips to keep the appliances from sucking up energy even when they appear to be off.

Flex your wallet

I can no longer participate in these programs since I am now self employed, but when I was working for a company that offered them, it was a great way to take care of all my medical needs tax free. Simply sign-up for a medical flexible spending account (FSA) if your employer offers one. You need to be careful because if you have any extra money in the account at the end of the year it gets forfeited, but there are a lot of things you can use the money for including over-the-counter medicines.

Bank on it

Opening up an online bank account was great not only because they pay much higher interest rates that traditional banks, but also because they are an excellent place to keep money that you don’t want to touch. There are plenty to choose from and you can even get sign up bonuses so that you are making money while you save.

While all of these ideas may not be appropriate for your situation, the ones that are should be easy to implement and begin helping your finances right away. Not that I want to sound like a Nike ad, but it’s true that the most important thing is to just do it. Once you get started it becomes much easier to work on other areas of your finances as well. These are just a few of the ways that you can improve your finances with little time involved. Feel free to share others that you use and have benefited from.

Photo credit: Images Money.