Spending Less and Saving on Insurance

Have you worked on your household cash flow worksheet yet? Did you separate your wants from your needs? Did you just throw in the towel after you removed your wants and you still didn't have enough money to put towards your credit card debt and start your emergency fund? Well look harder.

You need to look harder for ways to pay less for your needs. Think of how far you can cut your costs. As we have suggested before, you need a phone, but do you need a home phone and a cell phone?  My wife and I had done this and cancelled our phone service and rolled our home phone service into our cable bill. This packaged deal kept our cable bill the same, but eliminated our phone bill, which saved us $40 a month. Look at your cell phone too. Do you need the deluxe plan that that let's you text your financial life away, or might you be able to spend $50 less a month with a plan that has less minutes or services? Following these two suggestions could possibly save you $90 a month or more.

But I have done everything a possibly can to spend less. Have you really? Have you seriously done everything you possible can to reduce your expenses? How about your utility bills? There are simple things you can do like adding inexpensive insulation, unplugging unused electronics, and replacing burnt out bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs. We have discussed all this before and you are probably telling yourself. "Wow, this really sounds like some good ideas. I should really look into this." Don't just look into to it, do it! You just need to put some elbow grease behind it and I guarantee you can reduce your spending by at least 10% to 20%.

Insurance, whether it be health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, or life insurance, is one of your most important needs. Right behind food and shelter. Just like every other need there are ways you can spend less on your premiums without reducing your coverage. Here are some tips for saving on insurance:

• Reduce your deductibles on your policies. If you increase your deductible to $500 to $1,000 rather than $250, you can save about 10% on your premium. If you have an emergency fund you won't have to worry about out of pocket expenses.
• Keep all your policies with one insurance carrier. You could be eligible for a 10% to 20% multi-policy discount.
• Keep your FICO credit score up. A lot of insurers are now looking at credit scores when determining rates. The higher the score you have the lower your insurance premiums may be.   

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

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