There are many ways to save on your monthly bills. While Getting out of debt may seem a far away thing right now, there are many things you can do now. One of the things you may want to look at is your Utilities, power, heat, phone and cable.
There are 2 ways to approach saving on utilities, One is by trimming costs of your bills directly, the other, is to find ways to reduce your cost and use.

The best way to approach this is to pick one bill to work on first. It might be your easiest and most straight forward, or perhaps the bill that is costing you the most. Either way pick a place to start, and look at your bill from both approaches.

Phone Bill

Phone bills are a great place to start, there are so many choices, these days it is often hard to decide what best meets your needs for the best price. First off, you need to decide, what type of phone you want to go with. There are three most common ones now, the traditional land line that offers you the basic traditional coverage, and allows you to choose from a multitude of long distance carriers. If you don’t have a great deal of long distance needs, or don’t need a phone on the go this is probably the phone for you.

Cell phones are becoming increasingly popular these days, and with their free long distance, and mobility why not? There are two main different types of cell phones, monthly package plans, and pay as you go. Most offer free long distance, and allow you to roam most anywhere, for the same per minute charge. The pay as you go phones are great for people who only need cell phones for emergencies or rare occasions, and have a regular land line, for most of their phone needs. While more expensive per minute, you only pay for what you use, and if you don’t use much the cost is much less than traditional cell phones. These phones can cost you as little as $7 dollars a month to maintain. The key with cell phones is to do your homework, and shop around. Have a clear idea of what you are using the phone for, whether it will be your main phone or a backup, will you be traveling, and will you be using a lot of long distance. When you go shopping, look at coverage maps, long distance plans, per minute usage, and with plans, what the per minute usage should you go over your plan amount is. There are many plans but not all of them are equal, you would not be the first person to be shocked by a 300$ cell phone bill, at the end of the month.

New on the scene and looking very promising, are the VOIP (voice over internet phones) this uses a regular phone, and a special modem, and travels over broadband connections. If you already have a broadband connection and use a lot of long distance, this is an option you should really check out. These phones act in everyway like a regular phone, but the services are much cheaper. One carrier, charges 15$ for a limited account, and 25$ for unlimited, free long distance to the US and Canada, and very cheap international rates. They offer virtual phone #s which are great for families that have kids in college, you pay 5$ a month, and they can call you with a local number. PLUS most of your pay extras are free with VOIP, so if you need voice mail, caller ID, call forwarding etc, you will save here as well.

Bottom line is, shop around, and do your research. Every one has different needs and what might work for you will not work for another. Our family current has 2 pay as you go phones that cost us less than 10$ a month, and The VOIP service. It has cut our bills to about 1/8th of what they used to be, and offers us far more flexibility than we ever thought.

Your Power bill

Did you know, in many areas you can shop around for a different power carrier? You are not stuck with the rates your power company charges you, depending on where you live, you have the right to shop around for a better rate. Your power company is required to give you the information on this, if you request it, so check with them to see if this is available in your state.
Aside from rate shopping, saving on your power bill is entirely up to you. Be aware of what it costs to run each appliance you use, how much it costs to keep them plugged in, and how much you save if you turn them off when not in use.
Most people are not aware that even when they are not using many electrical appliances they still draw electricity. If you have a lot of stuff plugged in that can really add up. One thing you can do is to purchase power strips, to put all your appliances on, and turn off the power strips when you are not using the items on the strip. Here is a page from Seattle City light, that shows you what each appliance cost to run. This is based on Rates for their power company, but if you know what you pay per kilowatt hour you can make your calculations. http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/light/a...pp2.htm#Kitchen
This site has a great calculator that helps you to calculate the usage of your appliance based on what you are charged for electricity.
http://www.powerhousetv.com/stellen..._gs_000508.hcsp

Some other Ideas to reduce your electricity usage? Don’t use your range for everything, use your crock pot, microwave, or toaster oven, they cost a fraction of the amount that your range costs to operate.

Hang a load of laundry, your dryer is one of your most expensive appliances, I once figured that I saved $20 a month hanging my laundry, but you can save a lot just hanging one load, it all adds up!

If you use a dishwasher, don’t use the dry cycle, that is what takes most the energy on your dishwasher, let your dishes air dry, or dry them by hand.

Turn those computers off, OR if you don’t want to turn them off, put them in sleep mode, they use about 20% of the power that having them on uses.

Purchase the type of power strip that you can turn off. Many appliances continue to draw electricity even when they are off, by cutting the power at the power strip you can save a good bit of electricity.

Switch to Fluorescents, by doing this, you can look to save about 50% of your lighting bill. The light of a normal 60 watt bulb, in a fluorescent is only 13 watts. Some find the light hard to get used, but after a time you really won’t notice it.

Take advantage of natural light. When the sun is shining on the windows, in the winter open the curtains. Let in the light, it will provide a natural source of heat, and light. In the summer, keep the curtains drawn on sunny windows, and open up the shaded ones.

When purchasing new appliances, take careful note of the energy stickers, there is a significant difference between appliances, which can add up to a lot.

The bottom line? You won’t save a fortune with any one thing, but they all add up, and will save you a significant amount if you practice several of the things listed here.

Heating

This one is a biggie this year, with the cost of natural gas and oil soaring so high.

Installing a wood burning stove, will give you a cheaper alternative source of fuel. Stoves can be bought used in the newspaper, ebay, and auctions for a good price. Check around your community for people that deliver firewood, or get a permit and go cut your own. Pellet stoves are slightly more expensive, but still a cheaper alternative than heating oil and gas.

Get your furnace serviced. This is something that a lot of people miss. We all know a car will use more gas, if the air filter is plugged, the spark plugs are fouled, or the car needs an oil change. The same is basically true with your furnace, the more efficiently it runs, the more efficiently it burns.

Purchase a programmable thermostat. Having different programs for day, evening, and night, will cut out the need to remember to turn your heat down. Program the thermostat, by your families needs, and set it to turn down low at night. This will save a great deal of fuel.

Insulate your heating ducts. If your ducts go thru an unheated part of the house, insulating the heating ducts can result in less heat lost, and more heat making it to the rooms in your home. This means the furnace will run less.

Plug up the leaks. Caulk your window, put plastic on them, weather strip your doors, put something at doorways, to cover up any cracks in the bottom of the door. Close off storage areas, that don’t need to be heated. Any where there is an airspace, is a place that heat can leak out to places it is not needed.

Window quilts, heavy curtains and shades…. In other words insulate your windows well. Windows are a large source of heat lost, and short of replacing them with the most up to date insulated windows available (big bucks!) anything you can do to put layers between them and the heated indoors, will help a lot. Window quilts, can be very basic and hidden under your curtains. Two pieces of fabric with batting between, sewn together, with loops in the back thru which to place a curtain rod. You could also use sticky Velcro to seal the window quilts to the windows, for a tighter fit.
Again open the curtains when the sun is shining. It is natural heat, and light that will help reduce your electric and heating bills.

Shop around!! In many states you have choices you can make about your energy, and heating providers. Not everyone is the same, so it really does pay to shop around. If you use heating oil watch for specials, or prebuy in July or August. This allows you to lock in the price on your heating oil for what ever amount you buy. It means you will not be the victim of higher winter prices.

As you can see there are a lot of things you can do to reduce your bills, which will not cost you a fortune. With a bit of research and effort, it is not hard to save 30% on your heating bills.

Patty Getz is the owner of several websites, including http://www.totallyfrugal.com, http://www.frugal-cooking.com, http://www.oldfashionedfamilies.com http://www.sahmoms.com. She is dedicated to teaching families, how to make the most of their money, and their family life. She can be reached at totallyfrugal@totallyfrugal.com