Make Your Money Work For You
Some of us are feeling the pinch of inflation here in Logan. Prices have risen by a lot with no relief in sight over the past few years. We’re all trying to cut back on our spending and while that’s not bad, it’s only part of the equation. To get through tough times, you want to make sure you get the most you can out of your money. Here are some ideas you can try.
How To Stretch Your Money Further In Logan, Utah
Photo by Mikhail Nilov
1. Find Hidden Money In Your Budget
According to Ryker Woolsey at Edward Jones, the budget is the best tool for managing money that anyone can do. Keeping a regular budget on a monthly basis will help you understand exactly where your money is going. The more detailed, the better.
Planning out your monthly meals, for example, will help you avoid overspending on food that you only end up throwing away. If you cook at home, you can save a lot. According to Forbes, ordering out or going to restaurants will cost you up to 5 times as much as cooking at home. Planning out your food spending so you can cook meals at home on your budget can cost you as little as $4 per person each meal.
Budgeting things like this can help you cut costs on a lot of things, letting you get more money out of what you do spend.
2. Vehicle Maintenance
When it comes to places like Logan and the greater Cache Valley area, a car is basically a necessity. Cars are expensive, though. Even a used car may run you around $10-20K or more. If you’re buying a used car, something you absolutely want to plan for in your budget is maintenance. Repairs on a car will quickly add up to a lot of money. For some types of repairs, such as engine or transmission replacement, it’s more beneficial just to buy a whole new car! The best way to avoid expensive repairs is to do yearly maintenance on your car.
Maintenance will cost you around $800 a year. That might seem like a lot, but how much would it cost you to get repairs if you let your car break down? Well, that varies depending on what goes wrong. If the check engine light comes on, it’s going to run you between $300-400 just to find out what’s wrong. The most common problem causing that is the catalytic converter, which costs $1300 on average to fix! The older your car is, the more often it may have problems, problems you can usually avoid by having a mechanic check up on your car just once a year to make sure everything is in good working order.
This makes regular maintenance a good way to stretch your money further when you spend it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as I’m sure somebody still says.
3. HVAC Maintenance
The most expensive part of our power bill comes from heating and cooling. Up to a third of our power expenses just go to this alone. Like with cars, regular maintenance can help keep the costs on this down. For one, the regular use of your HVAC system causes it to wear out, making it less effective over time. You’ll spend more energy (and more money) to get the same results. Maintenance will keep your HVAC running at peak efficiency.
Also, just like with cars, repairs to the HVAC are much more expensive than maintenance. Without proper maintenance, you may find yourself replacing your HVAC twice as fast. The costs of replacing your system, or even just its individual parts, will add up to a lot more over time. Better to keep it in good shape rather than wait for something to go wrong.
4. Local Savings on Kid’s Clothes
Everybody needs clothes. To quote Mark Twain: “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little influence on society.”
Here in Logan, we’re very family oriented and that means lots of kids. Kids need clothes, too, but they grow up fast, growing out of old clothes very quickly. Nobody wants to spend too much money on clothes that they’ll just grow out of, so if you want to stretch your money, then you’ve got to find kids clothes at reasonable prices. Second hand shops and hand-me-downs are a great way to do that. Some of the best quality clothes can be found in places like Little Sprouts, which provides only top quality clothes. They even have items for the teenager range, which can be the hardest to find good quality items in.
5. Look for Sales
Stores have to keep their merchandise going and that means any store around Logan will have sales regularly to keep their inventory fresh. Keeping an eye on what’s going on around Cache Valley can let you find some amazing deals. Lee’s Marketplace case lot sales, for example, will let you buy whole boxes of canned food for cheap, allowing you to build up food storage at a huge discount. For regular shoppers, their rewards program lets you get money back for every dollar you purchase on a monthly basis.
Plenty of stores in the area have similar deals you can check in on. Just keep your eyes open and see what’s available.
6. Clean Your Appliances
We have a lot of appliances that we use and they all get dirty. Even the highest quality appliances need a little cleaning now and then. Just like with your car, that maintenance can keep them going, saving you lots of money on replacing them. Some of it you can do yourself, like running a cleaning cycle on a self-cleaning oven, but for some more complex appliances, it might be a good idea to get some help. Machines with complicated parts, or electrical components could present a danger if you don’t know what you’re doing. For that, someone like Cache Appliance Repair can help. Keeping your appliances in good shape could cost a fraction of what it would to replace the appliance later.
7. Clean Your Dryer Vent
Does it seem like your dryer vent is taking longer to dry out your clothes? Does it take an extra cycle to finish the job? Maybe it gets extra hot and damp in the laundry room. You might be surprised to know that the cause is probably lint build-up in the dryer. Lint builds up in the vents and slowly chokes the air flow over time. The longer and less straight the vent is, the more the build-up effects you. You’d be surprised how many old homes have these long, bendy dryer vents.
As the dryer vent clogs up, it becomes harder to move the hot and damp air out of the dryer. That’s why having a clogged vent forces your dryer to take longer, which uses up more energy and increases your power bill. Not to mention the risk of fire. Nearly 30% of house fires are caused by lint in the vent catching fire during a drying cycle.
For small, straight dryer vents, this might be something you can clean yourself. If your vent is longer, with multiple bends, there are professional cleaners who can do the job for you. A quick cleaning will lower your power bill, prevent an unnecessary build-up of heat in your laundry room, and give you peace of mind knowing one of the biggest fire risks isn’t a problem for you.
Enjoy Life on a Budget
We often talk about “budget friendly” to mean cheap or low quality, but it doesn’t have to be. With good budget planning and knowing where to spend your dollars, you can stretch your money further than you might think. You can enjoy life without overspending. Good money management can save you a thousand or two on yearly spending, giving you more room to save for emergencies, or maybe even a vacation or two! You just have to know where and how to spend your money to get the most out of it.
