Reduce Utility Bills

The top reasons people use their vehicles are:

• Shopping
• Work
• School
• Recreation
• Social activities
• Travel

This post is going to focus on shopping. By implementing a few strategies, you can make an impact on reducing your gas costs each month. Planning will need to be done before starting out shopping.

Planning:

• Make a list of all purchases you will need to make in the upcoming week. Separate the list into three columns:
  1. Purchases that can be done on the way to and from work, school, or other location that you travel back and forth from on a regular basis. You should not have to deviate from your regular route by more than a mile or two.
  2. Purchases that can be done on line. Often online prices and online specials will offset the cost of shipping. Some stores like Wal-mart offer free shipping with site to store at Walmart.com. Many online purchases can be delivered to your local store free of shipping charges and often at a better price than what is offered in store. If the shipping costs are more than what you’d spend in gas, skip it unless you want to do it for environmental reasons.
  3. All other purchases that need to be made

• Organize the items that will be purchased by store

• Plan a shopping route that minimizes the miles driven

Sometimes it is worth missing a sale at one store to eliminate it from list because the cost of gas to go to that store may exceed the savings.

A well planned once per week shopping day will reduce the amount of money you put into your gas tank. A fringe benefit of once a week shopping includes spending less. The more often you shop, the more likely you are to exceed you budget and purchase items you could probably do without.