Increasing Your Income to Pay Off Debt: Start With Reducing Your Utility Bills

When working on paying off your debt and getting your credit back on track, you generally have two choices: increase your income or spend less. Or better yet both, but chances are if you are still in debt your income hasn't increased and you're still spending more than you make. If budgeting is your #1 alley, spending less is #2.

After doing our initial drafts of our budget (remember: it will take you at least 90 days to get it right) my wife and I began looking for ways to start cutting back.

Aside from setting up a budget, getting our credit cards on Balance Liquidation Programs (BLP), and looking into getting a loan modification, we looked for ways to spend less. Beginning with our utilities.

The first thing we asked ourselves was, do we need a home phone and a cell phone? We decided that we need both as cell phone service is extremely poor in the area of our home. Our cable provider offered a packaged deal that included cable, Internet, and phone service. So we dropped our phone line with our phone carrier and transferred it to the cable company.

This saved us the expense of the phone bill, which was an average of $38, and it lowered our cable bill by $15. So we had about $50 more that could either go towards our debt or savings.

We had a toilet tank that had been running after it was flushed pretty much since we lived in our current home, which has been two years. We finally fixed it and our first water bill after the repair was $10 less. If we had fixed this when it first started we would probably be $240 richer. Check for leaky faucets and get them fixed. It could save you small fortune over time.

When we did our budget we had originally averaged our utility bills, which really would cause our budget to be off in the long run. With both gas and electric fluctuating from the summer and winter months this was going to cause regular balanced budget problems. So we set up those utilities on a equal payment plan. This way the gas and electric companies do an average for you and base your payment on 12 month average. Now this doesn't really save you money, but it does help figure them into your budget a lot better because you know exactly what your bill will be every month.

We also have begun to switch out our incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent light bulbs. A compact fluorescent light bulb uses one fourth the energy that a regular incandescent bulb uses but gives off the same amount of light and lasts 10 times longer. In fact, you can save $23 if you choose to use one compact fluorescent light bulb instead of 10 standard light bulbs.

We also began using our barbecue grill and microwave more. Microwaves use 40 percent less electricity than stove because they cook faster and at a lower wattage. The monthly costs to use a stove one hour each day is about $6 compared to $3 for electricity used by a microwave daily for 30 minutes.

So if spending less is the only way to increase your income, then hop to it find ways to reduce your spending so you can get that debt paid down and get your financial life back on track.

If you found ways to save money on your utility bills then share your techniques with us. We'll share them on a future post. 

[This post is written and copyrighted by Financial Elite (http://financialelite.blogspot.com/ ).]

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