Then there’s life insurance
When your major life expenses—mortgage, college, building a nest egg—are behind you, you can think about letting your life insurance lapse. If something happened to your spouse, would you be OK without a payout? Think about it this way: Could you invest your capital at a guaranteed rate of return, add that amount to any future income and have enough to live on? If so, you can stop paying for the policy. If it’s not quite enough, think about buying less coverage.
Go greener
Head to the Web site of your power company and see if it offers an energy audit. This is a process in which a representative goes through your home to show you where you’re losing energy and how to fix it; they also check out the efficiency of your heating and cooling systems and suggest ways you can conserve hot water or electricity. If you don’t go for the bigger fixes (like new windows), the less expensive ones (like caulking your old ones) typically enable you to make up the cost of the audit in a month or so.
Or you can do it yourself using the tips at energystar.gov. The site offers a home energy yardstick, which will help you figure out the degree to which you’re overspending. In some areas, you can also save by agreeing to a restricted use of power during times of high energy usage. (These load management programs vary by company, but many give you a discount for a limited number of months, say, June to September.) The power company will install a programmable thermostat, then, if there’s a crisis, it may turn off your air conditioner from a remote location for a few hours. Savings: from $60 to $200 a year.
Play hardball with your communications provider
You probably already know that you can save by purchasing phone, Internet and cable from a single vendor. You can also save by threatening to take all of that business to another company. I employed this strategy when Verizon came to my town—and knocked $60 a month off my Cable-vision bills for the next six months. Also, look around the house for communication redundancies. Do you need DVRs on every set? Also, how often do you use that landline? Nearly 20 percent of American homeowners have already dropped theirs.
