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#01 - Electricity Saving
As Tenaga Nasional Bhd is calculating electricity usage different rate at different stage of usage. The more electricity you use, the higher the rate TNB will bill you. So it is wise if we can minimise our usage so that our electricity bill will stay at lower rate.
Switch off the lights or fans whenever not using. Unplug all unused electrical devices as most electronic devices constantly draw a small amount of electricity even we are not using it.
Purchase those energy saving appliances will further help on electricity bill.
#02 - Plan Your Shopping In Bulk
With the increasing popular of online shopping and the regular sales campaign. Plan out your shopping will save you a lot.
Still there are many daily goods that offer bulk purchase can be cost effective. For example like toothbrushes, toilet rolls, baby diapers and etc.
If shopping online, look out for FREE shipping option or additional discount option through purchasing in bigger quantity. Sometime with addition unit purchase by hitting the quota, the seller may offer some discount or provide FREE shipping.
Be careful of over stock also may cause some of the goods expired to use and eventually cost you more money. We need to strike the balance. For example daily food like vegetable, egg and etc may ended up wasting money if it spoils before we have a chance to use it.
If we do it correctly, online shopping may further save on petrol and parking fees by going to the mall and shop.
#03 - Reduce Membership and Subscription
You can consider cut down gym memberships and look for alternative of exercising at home or at the park.
Your monthly subscriptions on cable TV show, internet, cell phones, and magazine or newspaper. All these subscriptions can be revised to see any better plan for better rate that suit to your needs. Some time we do not need higher plan where we only use small amount of usage.
#04 - Reduce Dine In
You can reduce your dine in will help to save on additional order on drinks. Sometime you can just pack some food from home and eat at the office for lunch.
Preparing and eating meals at home can save a lot of money. If you don’t have time to prepare meals during the work week, make something on the weekend.
#05 - Support Local Products
Support local product not only will help our local economy, generally speaking local product will be lower cost than import product.
Support local product will also create more work opportunities and boost the overall local community.
#06 - Pay Your Credit Card On Time
To avoid paying the penalty of being late, pay your credit card on time and pay your credit card in full. Paying your credit card in full also avoid the interest charges.
#07 - Water Heater
Take shower earlier instead of late night so that we do not need to turn on the water heater. If water heater is un-avoided, try to lower the temperature on your hot water heater. The water heater is a major energy drain. Use wisely can minimise the electrical bill.
#08 - Air Conditional
Nothing come easy. Start everything with small but think big. Be consistent is the key to success. The best investment in the world is to invest in yourself. Take baby steps and improve every day.
#09 - Use LED Light Bulbs
If you have not upgraded all your lightbulbs to LED, it is wise to change it. Generally speaking the LED bulbs are four times more energy saving and LED bulbs last longer. Over the long period of time, you will save you some money on the electrical bill and also the frequency of changing the bulbs.
#10 - Use Power Timer
Make good use of power timers to turn on and off of electrical devices. For example you may need to keep your main entrance door light on at night and set the timer to turn off when you no longer needed.
#11 - Keep Vehicle Tire Inflated
Everything when pumping petrol, check the car tires and make sure they are all inflated. The inflated tires will help you to save some petrol and eventually will save you some money.
#12 - Remove Excess Weight from Car
Remove those things not in use from the car. The extra weight will cause the car consume more petrol. Things like roof rack, boxes, toys, baby car seat, bicycle, wheelchair and etc. Keep your car boot clean. More weight means more fuel to pull it up those hills.
#13 - Avoid Full Tank Petrol
Some car may be able to fill up more petrol at one time. This significant amount of extra weight to carry around will eventually cause you more petrol consumption. Only fill up the petrol tank with what you needed can be efficiency on fuel consumption.
#14 - Driving Style
Your driving style might have impact on how much petrol you will consume. Avoid unnecessary accelerate your car and keep your driving smooth. Gentle accelerate your car will reduce your fuel consumption.
When approaching junction or traffic lights, ease off the acceleration earlier will reduce your fuel consumption further.
#15 - Grow Your Own Food
With the advance of internet, you can easily look up how to grow your own vegetable in your home. It helps with your budget. Focus on vegetables that are easy to grow and produce.
#16 - Consider Term Life Insurance
Life insurance policy are cover for the whole life and it is one of the instrument useful in personal financial planning. To have full coverage on life insurance, it will cost us on high monthly commitment. We can consider a cheaper term life policy instead.
We can plan out our insurance coverage with Life Insurance and Term Life Insurance.
When our family is no longer so dependent on our work income, for example children has grown up and they can generate their own income, we will no longer need so much of insurance coverage. Term life insurance is suitable to be used on this situation.
Another common example is we have housing loan to serve. Term life insurance can be useful to protect the house owner in case he no longer be able to serve the housing loan due to accident or sickness. But when the housing loan is fully paid up, we may not need that much of life insurance coverage and the Term Life Insurance can be terminated.
#17 - FREE Insurance
Some of the finance instrument provide some free insurance coverage through Group Term Life Insurance policy. Leverage on this type of FREE insurance coverage with the combination of your existing Life Insurance and Term Life Insurance to plan out your insurance protection. This will allow you to save up some insurance cost.
#18 - Buy Used Items
There are many second hand stores that you can source. With the online purchasing, some of the expensive used stuff can be found online easily. For example used car, used Notebook or computer, used cell phone and etc.
One of the common area you can consider purchase used item is technology. As technology keep on changing, we do not need the latest technology to live our life every now and then. We do not need to consume our technology devices with the latest model or latest technology.
When source for used items on technology, we can always source for one or two generation behind the latest model or latest technology. With this, you can save up a lot on spending the latest technology or latest model.
In the fast moving technology world, it will be very costly if we want to always keep up to the latest model or latest technology.
Some of the supplier even provide one year warranty and proper receipt for you to file your tax deduction.
#19 - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Things like clothing, appliances, furniture can be repair and reuse.
Borrow, rent or share items that is not frequently used like hardware tools, party decoration, or baby equipment like stroller.
This strategy not only helping you to save money but it also help to protect the environment.
Securing a lower interest rate not only save you money from the loan, it also lower your monthly instalment payment. Lower your monthly instalment payment also means you increase your monthly cash flow.
When refinancing the loan, some banks require some process fees and stamping fees but there are banks actually offer zero cost or special rate. Do your research properly may save you some money.
#20 - Refinance Your Housing Loan
Make some efforts to find out your existing loan interest rate and the latest offer rate from the bank. If the bank is offer lower rate than your existing loan interest rate, you can consider refinance your loan.
Conclusion
These are just some of money saving strategies that you can consider in your saving habit. Embracing some of them will help you towards growing a bigger savings fund that allow you to have some extra money to invest for your future or pay off your debts faster.
We may not be able to implement everything into our daily life. This will cause our life become miserable and life become meaningless especially when we were working so hard to earn a living.
We just need to pick some of the ideas above and strike the balance. The whole idea is find ways to save up some cost without affecting much on our daily life. We use that saving to clear off our debts as early as we can so that we can live our life with less debts burden. The earlier we can clear off our debts, the faster we can reach the financial freedom status.
On the other side, we can use that saving to invest into some instrument which will automatically generate income to fund for our future expenses. The saving can help us to put aside of lump sum as down payment for us to acquire a properties, stocks, unit trust and any income generator instrument. If we can automate our monthly income to fully fund for our monthly expenses, there is also another way to achieve financial freedom.
We do not need to always look for ways to cut our expenses. As long as our financial status is better, we can always enjoy a better life. But before we reach a more comfortable zone of our finance status, we need to build our foundation strong.
If we are discipline enough to cut down our expenses and increase our income, we can be financial free earlier and enjoy our retirement earlier or spend more time on things we like to spend instead of just working hard for money.
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