Many years ago, experts advocated using hot water to wash your clothes because that was the best way to get them clean. Between the detergent and the high temperatures, it was difficult for germs to survive and difficult for stains to persist. However, with recent improvements to washing machine technology and detergent technology, hot water is no longer necessary. While hot water doesn’t hurt, using cold water is just as effective and can save you approximately $60 a year on energy costs.

It’s a small amount of savings but it’s like phantom electricity drains, why spend money on things that don’t improve your life? Why pay for hot water when cold water works just as well?

If you want to save some money on heating and cooling bills, consider installing a ceiling fan and using it to circulate air rather than turning on the air conditioner or heater. The typical AC unit will use thousands of watts of electricity and the typical ceiling fan will use less than a hundred, over the course of a season that can result in significant power savings.

Summer Settings

In the summer, you want the fan to be blowing down and spinning fast. Your ceiling fan will have a switch somewhere that changes it from spinning clockwise to counterclockwise (and vice versa). In the summer, you want it to be blowing very quickly and blowing downward. The wind will blow the heat away from your body and thus make you feel cooler.

Winter Settings

Since heat rises, all the heat in a room will be near the ceiling. In the winter, you’ll want the fan to be blowing towards the ceiling (so flip that switch) and spinning slowly so that it circulates the hot air down to the rest of the room. If you turn it too fast, you get more circulation than you need; you want to gently urge the hot air down into the rest of the room.

Did you know that many devices these days can draw power even when they are turned off? Nearly any electronic device with a soft switch will continue to draw electricity, a small amount, when turned off because of that “instant on” feature. These electrical drains, called phantom electricity drains, have the potential to cost you hundreds of dollars a year in power without having any benefit to you. Why not unplug them?

How can you identify whether or not a device is drawing power? Easy, look for a hard switch. Buttons are a tell-tale sign that the device isn’t off. If there’s a little red light (or any light), that’s another sign that electricity is being drawn. It’s only when you have a hard switch, like a light switch, is the physical connection broken. If you don’t break that connection, the circuits and switches in the device will provide resistance and draw power from the grid.

So, how do you use less power? The easiest way is to plug everything into a power strip and then pull out the strip when you don’t use it. Otherwise, unplug things you know you won’t use for a while. No sense paying for something you don’t need right? The power companies don’t need the money as much as you do!

Periodically, I’ll log into my credit card online access portal and see if they’re willing to lower the interest rate on purchases on my account. If the credit card doesn’t have that feature on their online interface, I’ll give them a call to see if they’d be willing to. Nine times out of ten, they’ll acquiesce and lower the rate by a little bit. Why do I bother? It’s the same reasons why I periodically request credit limit increases.

You Never Know…

You never know when you’ll need that credit. Maybe you lose your job the next day or there some big emergency that drains your emergency fund and forces you to tap into your credit cards for some relief. You never know what will happen so it’s always good to have as low a rate as possible on purchases. I never carry a balance and I’ve been fortunate to never have been in a situation where that would’ve been necessary. However, if I am, I’m comforted in knowing my rate is as low as I could’ve gotten it.

Your Best Shot Is Now

Whether you have a balance or don’t, the best time to ask is as soon as possible. If they say no, no big deal. If they say yes, then you immediately benefit. You don’t want to be in a pressure situation before you ask. For some reason companies can sense that.

Why Not?

Basically, why not ask? It won’t hurt you any.

If you want to figure out how to spend less money, the best way to is go entirely cash. Don’t charge a single thing to your credit card, don’t write a single check, and don’t pay for anything with anything else other than cash.

Going 100% cash is hard. It’s hard because we have grown accustomed to the features and conveniences of credit cards. We have access to a tremendous amount of capital with the swipe of a card and often find ourselves spending money we probably wouldn’t have if forced to carry around the cash to pay for it. We will be leveraging that same psychological feeling when we practice the art of going 100% cash.

The main reason this will save you money is because cash is real, whereas credit isn’t. There’s a reason why casinos use colorful clay chips rather than money – you abstract away how valuable the cash representation is. A $100 chip looks just like a $1 chip, it’s just a different color. Your $5,000 credit limit is personified by a smiling teddy bear on a plastic card with a magnetic strip. Your purchases will feel more “painful” because you have to hand over real money and so you’ll naturally spend less.

Another reason you’ll save money is because you generally won’t carry enough money with you to make huge purchases. Tempted by a $300 purse or a $500 Onkyo receiver? Unless you are rolling with that much cash in your wallet, you won’t be able to buy it when the urge strikes. You’ll have to go to the ATM, withdraw the money, and then return to the store if you really want it. By then, the urge will likely have subsided.

Try going entirely with cash for a week or even a day, you’ll notice that your spending will have fallen.

Did you know that expired coupons are valid at commissaries and base exchanges for six months after their expiration date? Me neither! So rather than recycle them, send them to someone you know or send them to The Happy Housewife. She’ll send them along to her and she’ll send them to the troops. Contact her at coupons4troops (at) comcast (dot) net for details.

Hat tip to Chief Family Officer for this hack!.

Did you know that many credit cards offer a price protection program? Yep. If you notice that a particular item you’ve purchased has gone on sale or is cheaper somewhere else, you can contact your credit card company for a refund of the difference. Usually stores will not honor online prices and require the price to appear in print.

With Citi cards that have Citi Price Protection, you can get up to $250 per transaction if you notice a price drop within 60 days, with a maximum benefit of $1,000 a year.

With American Express, the program is called the Best Value Guarantee. Coverage is up to $250 per item, excluding taxes, shipping, and handling, for up to 60 days and up to $1,000 a year.

Other card issuers may also have similar programs.

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Also, be sure to check out this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance in which DMH article Don’t Quit Jobs for Less Than an 8% Raise was included.

At the DMH household, we swapped out all of our regular incandescent light bulbs with the hot new squiggly compact flourescent lightbulbs. Did you know that replacing a 60 watt bulb with a 13 watt bulb can save you around $30 over the lifetime of the bulb? Yep, it clearly pays for itself and you use less electricity to boot. And the bulbs burn cooler and last longer.

That factoid, and many other money hacks, are available at this week’s Carnival of Money Hacks hosted by Moolanomy. Incidentally, that factoid was provided by GE Lighting in their Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb (CFL) FAQ.

Having a tough time saving? Consider a shopping fast one of these weekends. A shopping fast is where you agree, for one weekend, not to spend any money whatsoever. For one weekend a month, don’t spend any money and live off the stuff you already have. This includes no heading off to the mall and no going to the local watering hole for a burger and a beer.

No spend doesn’t mean you can’t watch TV because electricity costs money or skip showers because water isn’t free, I just mean that you should restrict yourself from participating in the consumerism of America in the sense that you won’t buy clothes or electronics or even fast food. Skip it all, just for one weekend. Do it every single month and you’ll save yourself some considerable cash.

Ever see someone pull out a notebook at the gas station? They’re recording how much gasoline they just purchased and calculating their fuel efficiency for the last tank. If you think they’re just stathounds who love to crunch numbers, think again. Tracking your car’s fuel efficiency is a great way to spot potential problems. If your car usually gets 25 miles to the gallon and you’re starting to see that slip, it might be a sign that your car is in need of some kind of servicing. Perhaps you need an oil change or a new air filter, or even a tune-up.

Be sure to account for seasonal changes such as increased use of air conditioning and your driving patterns. If your mileage increases, perhaps you did a long haul trek the last time and got higher MPG because of an abundance of highway driving. Ultimately, it’ll help in figuring out whether the increase or decrease is real or merely the result of a change in driving patterns.

It will also be useful in figuring out your car’s cost per mile driven, which can be useful for many other applications.