Are you Leaving Money On The Table?

Being home more than usual lately I've been trying to save money in ways that will become habitual..

Sounds strange I know, but it's been proven that it takes two weeks to create a habit, so I figured I have plenty of time during the winter home bound months to start creating some 'good' habits and extricate the bad ones.

I've been doing some reading on ways to save money and realize that I'm not as far off the mark as I thought I was.  How about you? Are you thrifty? Or, do you think you could do a better job of saving money?  Every penny does count in the end no matter what.

Here are some ways that I have personally saved and have avoided leaving the money on the table. Maybe you're doing the same?

- Before going food shopping I always make a grocery list and try not to sway off it. I will visit my stores website to find any online coupons.  Speaking of coupons, I do collect & cut, but only those that are normally on my grocery list.

- I bring my own canvas bags to the grocery store. Why not? Even if you have plastic ones, it's still money saved, even if a few cents.

- I try to save electricity by unplugging appliances that I don't use everyday, for example, my toaster.  A couple years ago my electric bill was sky high and I couldn't understand why! I called my electric company and had a valuable conversation with woman. She asked me a series of questions to which I opened my eyes wide. WOW! I was not unplugging, and I was chugging electric by the second with a very old freezer that I had. Sure enough, the golden oldie was the problem. I got rid of the freezer and cut my electric bill in half! 

- To further my energy savings, some months ago I was reading the small print on my JCP&L bill and realized that I was not chained to them as a supplier, but I could explore different options. Sure enough, a couple weeks later a company called "Gateway" called me and before I hung up the phone thinking it was just another 'sales call' I heard the word 'electric' which turned my light on!  I now am a Gateway user and have further saved in my monthly electric bills.

- I will reuse my paper that has only been used on one side. I get a lot of faxes and some of them are garbage. I turn the paper upside down and put it in the printer again.

- Naturally I am a composter, thus I will collect all my food scraps in a container and when full, I add it to my my composter. This will save me a fortune in fertilizer in spring!

- I hardly run my dishwasher, but when I do I make sure there's a full load, this also goes for my laundry ritual.

- Why not conserve water and use your dish water to water your plants? I do all the time! Plus, the soap serves as a good insect deter as well.

- If it says, "concentrated" then keep it to a minimum. This took me a long time to get used to as we've been trained, that 'more is better', but in reality, 'less is more'.

There, I started the list of ways to stop leaving your money on the table..  Let's see how many pennies you can add on to the list!