How to Save Money Without Thinking

Part 1: Utilities

Stop eating out! Don’t buy lattes! Make rice and beans for dinner instead of trying that awesome new restaurant down the street! Stop taking pleasure from things that cost money!

That’s how most money saving advice sounds.

You don’t want to feel guilty about money all the time and neither do we. In fact, Gathering is in the process of building a tool that will make saving effortless so you can pay yourself first while still enjoying the finer things in life.

But in the meantime, there are tons of ways you can start saving money without drastically changing your day to day life. You don’t have to skip the morning trip to Starbucks or cancel Friday night’s dinner plans to save.

In this series of posts, we’re going to show you how to do that in the key areas of your life. We’ll start by taking a look at your monthly utilities.

Electricity, gas, water … unfortunately, the costs of your place don’t stop with the rent check every month. The bills come in every month, we pay them, and that’s the way it is.

Much of these monthly costs are out of our control and depend on how big our place is, what the landlord does or doesn’t cover, and the like. However, there are some really simple things we can do to cut these costs and add a nice chunk to your savings.

Using the tips we outlined below, you could cut your monthly energy costs by as much as a third.

Unplug stuff you aren’t using

It may seem painfully obvious, but why keep things plugged in and draining power if you aren’t using them?

How often do you leave your phone charger, kitchen appliances, game console, and music players plugged in? If you aren’t using them, they’re just eating up power and adding up in your bill.

Get in the habit of unplugging devices as soon as you’re done using them, like when your phone is 100% charged.

You can even automate this in a few ways:

• Keep everything on one power strip you can easily turn off when you leave the house or aren’t using the devices. You can also get strips that are controlled via remote so you can turn them off from the comfort of your couch.
• Get a smart power strip that is programmed to one main device (say, your TV) and turns off everything else when that’s not on (like your Playstation, Sonos, etc).
• You can also use a mechanical outlet timer for your devices. If you have appliances or other items that tend to get used in the same time frames every day, install the timer and set when they turn on and off.

Adjust your A/C or heat

There’s no need to go crazy and dress up like a sherpa during the winter or do weird things like put ice in front of a fan, but even slight adjustments to your place’s temperature add up. It’s likely that heating and cooling is your biggest utility expense, so get some nice bang for your buck here.

According to Energy.gov, adjusting the temperature by just one degree can get 1% of your total heating and cooling cost back as long as that change lasts for eight hours or more.

So bump the A/C up a degree or two (or more!) and do the same scaling back the heat in the winter months. You’ll barely notice the difference and save money every month.

Turn off your lights

It’s so simple that it’s almost not fair, but most of us spend more money on electricity each month just by leaving lights on.

Any light you aren’t using should be turned off, plain and simple. The savings are bigger than you might imagine, as Jason Chen of Lifehacker points out:

Each 60 watt bulb uses 0.060 kWh (more or less, depending on your wiring) per hour, and you probably have somewhere between 2 to 4 bulbs in each bathroom and kitchen, which makes for 120–240 watts of wasted electricity per hour. In comparison, my 27-inch iMac takes about 130 watts with the screen on and everything powered up. Two (inefficient) lights use the same amount of power as a large computer! A laptop uses about 40 to 60 watts, in comparison, so you could do an hour’s work by just shutting off a light.

Go around the house right now and turn off any lights you aren’t using. Every time you leave a room, turn the light off. Simple and effective!

You can automate this, too. Get the aforementioned mechanical outlet timer and specify what time lights should turn on and off if you find yourself forgetting too often.

Use energy efficient light bulbs

As mentioned above, standard 60 watt light bulbs use, you guessed it, 60 watts of electricity per hour. Of course, they are the cheapest available at about 50 cents apiece.

However, just switching to a compact fluorescent (CFL) bulb cuts the electricity usage. For just 50 cents more, your usage goes down from 60 to just 13 watts.

Jason at Lifehacker breaks down the costs:

Here’s a simple calculation that illustrates my point. If you keep a 60 watt bulb on for 12 hours a day, every day of the month, it would cost you about $2.77. A CFL used under the same conditions would cost $0.60. The difference there is already enough to cover the purchase of a new bulb, for just one month’s use.

Some people complain that CFL’s aren’t great at providing quality light. If this makes a big difference to you, try just using them in places like garages or closets where lighting isn’t as important, as Trent from The Simple Dollar suggests.

Optimize water usage

Depending on your situation, you may not be paying for water (many renters don’t). If you do, take a few simple steps to ensure you’re not paying too much.

Getting low-flow fixtures for your faucet and shower head at $10-$20 a piece will save you 25%-60% on your water bills, per Energy.gov. They recommend shower heads with a flow rate of less than 2.5 gpm and faucet aerators that have flow rates of no more than 1.0 gpm.

Be sure to double check your plumbing to ensure there aren’t any leaks, so you’re not wasting water (and money).

You’re done and saving money!

With some simple tweaks, you can save money on your bills every month. Try these suggestions and see the difference in your utility bills — then send that money straight to savings.

Will it make you a billionaire? Probably not. But you’ll take another step towards saving more and paying yourself first.

Be sure to follow this series on saving by following us on Medium, and sign up at Gathering to be one of the first to try our new product that automates paying yourself first.