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Air seal your home buy having air leaks in your house you are ensuring that your fuel bill is much higher than expected. Unfortunately many houses are built to poor specification in this regard, and by spending an afternoon finding all the places that wind is blowing into your house you will find you have to have the heating on for less time.
Coupon clip this can be a huge saver, but only if you stick to things you would have bought anyway. Balance it against the time and hassle factor of getting the coupons together with the saving. Using this in conjunction with a large freezer can really help to boost the saving potential
Use energy efficient bulbs. Installing CFL (or even the most energy efficient LED) bulbs will save you significant amounts on your electricity bill, especially if someone is always in your house. Although they may cost more to start with they will generally last longer that incandescent bulbs. At the moment LED bulbs tend to be the most expensive, however as the technology gets more mature prices will drop. Generally though it is better to find out what works for you, in places where you are reading you may want to stick with normal bulbs if you do not like the light produced by CFL.
Turn off the lights if you are not in a room then turn the lights off, once you get into this habit it will be hard to go back and have your house fully lit. You can even get lights which are turned on with motion and turn off automatically. These are ideal for halls or bathrooms where you tend to spend little time.
Downsize your house as many people do not need huge palaces, it just makes more work to clean and heat. It also has the added benefit that you do not buy too much stuff because you have no where to put it. This needs to be adjusted to your own circumstances, but clues would be if you have a room or two that is just filled with junk that you never use.
Become a handy man often small jobs can be done by yourself, but if you get someone in it can cost a lot more. Painting is something that anyone can do, and anyone can do well just by following simple rules. Make sure to start small first, don’t start redoing the plumbing or you will probably end up very wet.
Find a cheaper place to live, the cost of a mortgage or rent is often the number one expense you will have in the month. You can save a huge amount just by moving location. Clearly this is not an option for all, with consideration needed to be taken to the neighborhood and the commute to work. But often times for some places the cultural aspects of a certain city end up not being used, in that case you might as well live somewhere else where you are not paying such a premium for being there. Also consider the option of living very close to work such that you can walk, and that this may mean you will save commute time and fuel, or even being able to ditch your car (even if you love cars you can always get one later once you have paid down your debt or got a good amount of wealth built up from the saving).

To effectively save money it is important to identify why you are saving money. It is much easier to stick to a saving plan if there is an end goal, which can be envisioned, being it a new house or a treasured holiday, or saving up for retirement. If you are not sure exactly why you want to save here are some ideas to get your started.

• Saving up for retirement can be a strong reason to start saving now, generally the support provided by the government is minimal, depending upon where you are located. At some point in your life you may want to slow down, or have to due to the effects of aging. In this case it is ideal to have a good pot of money saved up so that you don’t have to keep on working even though you do not feel up to it
• Saving up for a holiday another good reason to save up is a holiday, this can help to recharge the batteries as well as give a good opportunity to further bond with your family or friends
• Saving up for your children’s education another fantastic reason to start saving, giving your kids a good education is one of the primary things you can do to improve their life
• Saving up to get out of debt helps you to improve your situation by not having a constant drain on your income. Especially important if you are paying very high interest rates on your debt. Getting out of debt is more than possible, it just takes commitment and a recognition that you can’t have everything, at least not right away

Categorise your expenses

• Look through your bank statements for the past month and your receipts, to get an idea of what you spend money on.
• The monthly personal accounting spreadsheet has more categories to give you an example you can tailor it to your needs
• Keeping a record of where your money is going. Any large purchases or frequent purchases should be noted. Things you buy on a daily basis can quickly add up, for example if you spend just 5 dollars a day on coffee over the year that comes to over $1800.
• Aim to have as few unknown expenditures as possible
• Where possible and not too costly move yearly payments to being monthly, this will make budgeting on a monthly basis more easy and you can better see how much money you have left at the end of the year
• Consolidate providers for successful budgeting, where you have the option go with the same provide for example for gas and electricity, this will mean less bills to pay and will generally be cheaper
• Once you have a months worth of spending information you are ready to construct your budget from this.

Money saving tips with budgeting

• Each category is either an essential expenditure or non essential. Generally paying for heating would be considered essential while paying for going out would not.

Essential expenditure

• With respect to budgeting this boils down to shopping around for the best deal, when your auto insurance is up for renewal look for other providers
• If you have any outstanding loans then look to paying them of, ensuring that you pay of the loans with the highest interest rate first, it may even make sense to consolidate your loans into one loan as long as the new loan has a lower rate and the terms on the loan are not overly restrictive.
• Are there things in this list was are not actually essential? For example do your still need your land line? If you already have a cell phone you could do without the land line, this will help with your budgeting as you will have less bills to worry about.

Non essential expenditure

• In budgeting terms to cut down on non essential expenditure it is helpful to introduce a concept called marginal utility. This is the utility(usefulness or entertainment) gained from an increase in the amount available on that good or service. For example take two different leisure activities reading a book and going on a night out. Lets assume that reading a book for one hour gives the same entertainment as going out for one hour. Now we can work out which gives the best bang for your buck.
  Book (cost $10) time spent reading 10 hours.
  Going out (cost $50) time spent 5 hours.
  Book costs $1 per hour while going out is $10 per hour. So it is clear from this example (as long as both are equally enjoyable) it makes more sense to invest in the book than going out. Even in the case where going out is twice as entertaining as reading a book it still makes most sense to get the book.