As we’ve been working to reduce our expenses, I am noticing that many things that we are saving money on are also helping the planet. We are producing less waste and being more purposeful with our spending. Whether you are looking to cut expenses or reduce your impact, here are twenty-five things you can do right now that will help you do both.

Utilities

Install a low flow showerhead - a typical shower can run 5 gallons a minute. If you install a low flow showerhead, you can cut that to 1.5 gallons a minute.

Turn off the water when brushing your teeth or washing dishes - If you aren’t actively using the water flow, turn it off in between uses and save some water.

Install CFL bulbs - CFL bulbs use about 75 percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer.

Vary your cooking methods a little - Certain kitchen appliances use less energy than others (for a great list of costs for food prep, visit the City of College Station). Instead of using the oven, which costs over 85 cents/hr, can you use a crock pot which costs about a penny per hour?

Unplug unused electronics and appliances - That TV that is turned off may still be drawing power in standby mode. So is that microwave with the clock. Unplug those devices when not in use to save some electricity.

Plant trees - Depending on where it is planted, a single tree can block the wind in the winter, saving on heating costs. It can also provide shade in summer, saving on cooling costs. Trees are great for absorbing carbon dioxide.

Turn your thermostat down in the winter - There’s no golden rule that says a home must be at 70 all the time. In the winter, set your thermostat a little lower during the day and wear a sweatshirt around the house. In the summer, turn the thermostat up a little and wear lighter clothing around the house.

Caulk around doorways and use weather stripping to seal drafts. - A single draft in a room can make you feel a lot colder. Seal up the drafts and feel warmer in your home so you can keep the heat lower overall.

Use cold water for washing laundry - Did you know that 90% of the energy used for washing clothes is for heating the water? Give cold water a try when washing your clothes and also use cold-water detergents. As long as your clothes aren’t too soiled, they can come clean in cold water.

Hang dry your clothes - Dry your clothes on a clothes line outside or find a rack for drying your clothes inside. Save the electricity or gas that would be used by your dryer. Note: Sometimes clothes can get pretty stiff with air drying. What you can do is let them air dry most of the way, then pop into the dryer for a little bit to help them soften up.

Turn off your lights - When you aren’t using a light in a room, turn it off. That holds true even if you might be returning a few minutes later. The power surge of turning on that light only equals a few seconds of having that light on.

Around the House

Use natural cleaners - Avoid the harsh chemicals and save some money at the same time. Being Frugal has some easy cleaner recipes.

Give reusable coffee filters a try - Instead of loading your coffee maker every morning with a new filter, try a reusable one. They aren’t very expensive, but can reduce waste and save you money over the long run.

Use rechargeable batteries - It’s sometimes hard to fork over the money for rechargeable batteries. But they quickly pay for their cost in money saved if you are using electronics that drain batteries quickly (like cameras).

Forgo the plastic baggies in lunches - Instead of using plastic bags, use reusable containers if possible. The same goes for storing all types of food at home. If you need to use a plastic bag, try to reuse it if it held dry goods.

Get a reel mower - Go back in time with a reel mower that is updated for this century. They can do the job, you get some exercise and you don’t need fuel to run it.

Use both sides of paper when printing - If you are printing something for reading later, see if it would work to print on both sides of the paper. Some programs offer the option of printing even or odd pages, so you can try to match the pages up correctly. If the ink is too dark, try printing in draft.

Buy used furniture or find some for free - Instead of buying new, you may be able to find a perfect end table (or another piece of furniture) for low cost or maybe even for free on freecycle.org. A piece of furniture doesn’t end up in a landfill and you have the furniture you need. It’s a win-win!

Reduce junk mail - Save some paper and possibly prevent id theft by visiting the Federal Trade commission site that details how you can reduce unsolicited mail.

Switch to online bill payments - Many banks are offering online bill pay and some have it for free! Save a stamp and save on paper usage.

Mend anything that you can - If an article of clothing needs mending, don’t throw it out. Try to do it yourself by learning some basic sewing techniques.

Out and About

Carpool whenever possible - Not everyone can do this, but if it’s a possibility then jump on the chance to save some money and reduce carbon emission.

Ease up on the gas pedal - Drive moderately (not aggressively) and lower your speed to save some big bucks and help the environment at the same time. For some great results on tests, see Edmunds.com.

Skip the bottled water and refill your own - Save on plastic waste by filling a reusable water with your tap water. Don’t like the taste of your tap water? Try a filter.

Instead of spending the day inside, go outside - Get everyone out of the house and head outside for a fun day outdoors. Make sure you turn off everything when you leave the house. Go for a walk/bike ride or maybe plant a few flowers. Enjoy some time outdoors.

Photo Credit: 1

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Tricia is the blogger behind Blogging Away Debt. In her blog, she documents her family’s journey to pay off over $37,000 in credit card debt. Part of her debt reduction plan included a loan from Prosper.com. It originated in June of 2006 and was paid in full in October of 2007.

Growing up, us country kids would often pick up a long stick and then start doing a limbo dance. One of us would start humming a tune and we’d take turns trying to navigate our bodies under the stick. After each successful pass, we would lower the stick and see how low we could go.

We all were pretty bad at it at first, but we still did it. After some time, all of us improved with how low we could go. It was fun!

I realized that when it comes to our spending, we playing a limbo game with it. Instead of a stick we use our previous spending and with each month we tried to spend less. After we were able to do it, we would lower the spending some more. We kept repeating the process to see exactly how low we could go. Now, we rarely spend money on non-necessities. And for the necessities, well, we’re spending way less on those too!

Here are some of the things that help us to play “spending limbo”:

We have no spend days. On certain days, we avoid the store. All too often, we were visiting the store every day to pick up a few things…which turned into many things. First we tried one no spend day, then we’d add another day and then another day. Now we can go a full week without spending any money (not counting paying bills).

We sometimes take it pretty slow. How low can we set our heat? During the day, while my son is in school and my husband and I are the only ones home, we have our heat set at 64 degrees. We tried doing it like that right off the bat, but we both were freezing so we turned the heat back up to 67. After a while, it went down to 66…then 65…and now it is at 64. It may even go lower by the end of winter.

We don’t purchase things on impulse. We were $37,000 in credit card debt. We were very good at impulse purchases! For the first level, if we saw something attractive in the store, we would walk around the store a while first before purchasing it. Sometimes, we would change our minds. For the next level, we had to leave the store. Now, if I see something attractive in the store, we go home and I’ll often research it on the web and if it still looks nice we’ll go back to the store in a few days.

We plan purchases. We used to make a mental list of things we needed before we went to the grocery store. The result? We were spending way too much with each trip! We’d forget what was on the list and buy tons of things that weren’t on the list! Now, I have a computerized list of things that we regularly purchased. Before each trip, I go through my sheet and take a quick inventory of what we have so we have a clear plan of what we need to buy.

We understand that sometimes we may slip. Just like with the limbo dance, you can’t always get under the stick the very first time. We don’t always reduce our spending every time. The key with playing “spending limbo” is to keep trying and to keep challenging yourself. We view it as a game, and even though some months we may not be able to lower the spending bar, we are having fun trying.

Photo Credit: 1

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Tricia is the blogger behind Blogging Away Debt. In her blog, she documents her family’s journey to pay off over $37,000 in credit card debt. Part of her debt reduction plan included a loan from Prosper.com. It originated in June of 2006 and was paid in full in October of 2007.

Back in June of 2006, I became an official my Prosper borrower when my loan for $3,500 was funded by thirteen Prosper lenders. While I loved the concept of people-to-people lending, I also had to make sure that obtaining a loan through Prosper was worth it. Before listing my loan, I made some rough calculations. For this article, I decided to take a closer look.

Before we get too far into the numbers, I want to point out that I ended up paying off my Prosper loan early. To keep things simple, I am only going to look at how much I would have saved if I took the full three years to pay my loan.

Directly from my Prosper truth in lending agreement, I see that my loan closed at 10.59% resulting in a finance charge of $595.64. Prosper also took their fee ($35) by reducing my total amount financed, so that finance charge is more like $630.64.

My credit card at the time was a little over 13%. We’ll round up to 14% for this example because they did later end up increasing my interest rate to a little over 14%. The payment to this card will be the same as the monthly payment for my Prosper loan ($112.77).

Using the handy calculator at Bankrate.com, I plugged in the numbers and turned them into the graph below.

If I took the full three years to pay off my Prosper loan, it would have saved me $240 in finance charges. That may not seem like a lot. But, there is something else that is important to consider with credit cards. They may raise your interest rate!

For instance, some credit cards have a universal default clause written into your agreement with them. So, if you pay any bill late (not just that credit card bill), you may find yourself with a raised interest rate.

Then sometimes, credit card companies raise their rate across the board or they magically raise your rate, claiming that your debt load is too high. Trusting that a credit card interest rate will stay constant is almost like trusting that kissing a frog will turn it into a prince. You can’t.

Because of the unpredictability with my credit card interest rate, I had to factor that in as well. So I included in the graph below a spot for the same debt balance at a 29% interest rate. That seems to be the max it may increase to (at least that I’ve read for my particular credit card company).

As you can see from the above graph, the total finance charges paid would have ranged between $631 (Prosper loan) and $3,048 (credit card at 29%). I’ll never know for sure exactly how much I would have saved if I took the full three years to pay off my Prosper loan. But I think it is safe to say that I would have saved between $240 and $2,400 by transferring my credit card debt to a Prosper loan.

To me, the savings was worth it

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Tricia is the blogger behind Blogging Away Debt. In her blog, she documents her family’s journey to pay off over $37,000 in credit card debt. Part of her debt reduction plan included a loan from Prosper.com. It originated in June of 2006 and was paid in full in October of 2007.

Way back when, I thought we were doing well financially. We were making money and we were able to pay all of our bills. Every few weeks I would sit down and cut some checks for the amount showing as due.

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I always paid the minimum amount due showing on my credit card bill. Why do I need to send more? Just cut a check for the amount that they want and it’s all good.

I was wrong… very wrong.

Now that I’ve learned a few things about our finances, I see the error of my ways and I am going to show you what I learned (thanks to a handy calculator at Bankrate.com). Take for example the graph below:

Let’s say you have $5,000 balance on your credit card and you do not use it anymore. You decide to only pay the minimum amount due on your bill in order to pay it off. In this example, the minimum payment is 2.5% of the amount owed. Each time you pay the minimum payment, your balance would go down a little bit and so would your next minimum payment. It would take you over 20 years to pay off your card using this method.

On the other hand, let’s say that you decide to take that first minimum payment (which is $125 in this example) and set that as the amount you are going to pay to your credit card every month. You are used to the payment, so why not just keep paying that amount?

It’s a pretty good idea because your debt will be paid off in less than 5 years by doing it this way.

Pretty amazing, isn’t it? It makes me feel a little silly to admit that I used to only pay the minimum payment all the time (and we were also still charging on our cards, but that’s a different story!).

That’s not all, though. Just look at the money you can save by paying more than the minimum:

You can save over $2,700 in finance charges by paying $125 a month versus just the minimum payment! I can think of a gazillion better uses for $2,700 than giving it away to my credit card company. What about you?
It’s easy to get in the minimum payment trap. I was there and back then I didn’t think twice about only paying what our credit cards said we had to pay. But when you run the numbers, paying a fixed amount a month can make a huge difference.

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Tricia is the blogger behind Blogging Away Debt. In her blog, she documents her family’s journey to pay off over $37,000 in credit card debt. Part of her debt reduction plan included a loan from Prosper.com. It originated in June of 2006 and was paid in full in October of 2007.