8 Easy Ways to Lower Energy Bills This Year

Many people struggled with the rising cost of living in 2012. In 2013, with a few easy tips, you could save a lot of money on your energy bills. Here we have compiled ten of the easiest ways to save money on your energy for 2013.

1. Use Energy Saving Light Bulbs

If you haven't already, we recommend you change your light bulbs to energy saving bulbs. It has been reported that if you switch your light bulbs to more energy efficient ones you'll save around £30 over the lifetime of that bulb. Even though these light bulbs might be more expensive to purchase, they actually last up to 10 times longer than regular light bulbs. So such a simple little change, this is an easy way to save money.

2. Turn off the Lights

We often forget to turn off lights. It's every father's pet hate, forgetting to turn off the light when we're not using it is a cardinal sin. Just try your best to get into the habit of turning off the light when you leave a room, you could save a bundle.

3. Unplug Appliances

Here's another easy way to save money on your energy bill. Just unplug appliances that you're not using. One report found that, in an average home, 6% of the electricity is consumed by appliances while they are turned off. So when you're not using appliances, unplug them. Leaving appliances on standby is costing you money!

4. Choose the Right Appliances

When you buy new appliances for your home, get energy efficient ones, just like your light bulbs. Although these energy efficient appliances are a little more expensive to buy, you'll save a lot of money. Items like kettles, dishwashers, clothes dryers and fridge freezers use most of your electricity. Using energy saving ones could half the price of your energy bill.

5. Wash Your Dishes

How hard is it to wash your own dishes? Dishwashers use a lot of energy, you could save a lot of money by doing them yourself or getting your children to clean and dry them. If you'd prefer to have your dishwasher clean the dishes you should at least turn off the energy sapping "heat-dry" setting. Letting your dishes air dry instead is a much simpler way to cut your power bills.

6. Use Fans and Open Windows

If you have the privilege of owning air conditioning for your home, you'll know how costly they can be during the summer. But there are far cheaper ways to keep your house cool. Use fans and open windows to cool your home. This will save you quite a bit on your energy bill through the summer.

7. Get Curtains

Covering windows with curtains and window covers can help keep your home cool during the summer. In the winter, thick curtains will keep your house a little warmer too. So not only do curtains look nice, by covering sun exposed windows your air conditioning unit won't have to work as hard.

8. Or Don't Use Your Heater

If you're really desperate to save money on your energy bills, turn off you're heater. Instead of turning up the heating, try putting on a second layer of clothing or wrapping up in a blanket before you turn up the heating.

Emergency Management - It's an Investment, Not a Cost

When setting your budget or making a case for the necessary funds for an emergency management program a common assumption may see your endeavours not reach their full potential. Many people, Chief Executive Officer's and Chief Financial Officer's alike, view requests for funding with regards to emergency management as a cost. Like everything else on their spreadsheet, emergency management is something that incurs allocation of valuable revenue and competes with every other project or running cost.

Changing that point of view from a necessary cost to an investment in the safety of the premises, business and its employees may be the difference you need to make your case, or the different point of view required by a CFO to approve the expenditure.

In the aftermath of many industrial accidents and emergencies it is astounding how often investigators discover that companies, in an effort to save a few thousand dollars, create or overlook a safety deficiency or take shortcuts on implementing emergency preparedness. This saving, in so many instances is so small as to be insignificant when compared to an incident that ends up costing the company millions, if not billions of dollars in lost production, damaged or destroyed infrastructure or stock loss, reputational damage and customer backlash, legal fees and compensation.

Two very prominent examples include firstly, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion 2010. In January 2011 the White House oil spill commission released its final report on the causes of the oil spill. They blamed BP and its partners for making a series of cost-cutting decisions and the lack of a system to ensure well safety.

Secondly, the Kings Cross, London Underground fire 1987, a subsequent public inquiry determined that the fire was caused by a lit match being dropped onto the escalator, a careless action or accident leading to the deaths of 31 people. London Underground were strongly criticised for their lax attitude to fires because there had never been a fatal fire on the Underground. Consequently, staff had been given little or no training to deal with fires or evacuation.

These are but two examples in possibly thousands of incidents, accidents and emergencies stemming from the perception of saving money by safety and emergency short cuts.

Next time you are preparing your emergency budget, don't make the case for the expenditure as "How much will this program cost?" but rather "How much could this investment stand to save us?"

Getting Support When Getting Out of Debt

While working your way out of your debt, you should get somebody on your side to support you to stay on track. In the event that you are not married, lots of the details present here may still be applicable. If you are married, you will discover this process to turn out to be difficult and also gratifying as you work together.

Assuming you're not married, I would suggest you find a friend who comprehends exactly what your main goal will be and will not make fun of you for trying to end up being out of debt. Better still, chose a close friend who wants to do so at the same time and assist each other. Believe it or not, lots of people do not understand the drive to be financially free. This is apparent by the current state our country's economy is in. But I don't want to get into politics here. Should you not have any good friends able to help, the next ideal thing is to use books, blogs such as this one, radio programs, or anything else that'll provide you with encouragement and help you stay on the right track.

For anyone married, it is important for you to both have the exact same objective. That is to get out of debt. Two individuals with the equivalent goal are a powerful force. You will discover working with your better half to be both challenging and pleasing. I know it has made my relationship with my wife stronger. We honestly enjoy discussing money now when before we feared it. Having a common objective brings you closer to each other.

Anytime you are working together with your spouse, you must learn how to keep calm anytime things go wrong. Things will go wrong, they have for many of us, and money is a very stressful matter in the first place. As a result it's vital you do not blame or yell. Calmly discuss what actually happened and then come up with an idea together intended to correct the situation and make it possible to not get into the situation again.

I can offer you the instance my wife and I; we struggled with all too often and at times still battle. That is we'd spend beyond our means on our grocery allowance. Sometimes, we might drastically overspend. We tried a number of things to get our spending in check in this area. We attempted increasing the dollar amount we could spend, using only cash for the groceries, etc but it was still very simple to overspend if you happen to made small purchases. The idea that ultimately solved the problem was to take advantage of the smartphone version of our budgeting app (which you can find below) and register purchases against the food fund right after they occurred. Then you always see how much is actually remaining. Never guessing or estimating because that typically ends up in exceeding your budget.

Cell Phone Plans to Cut Your Costs Down

One of the most expensive bills we all have is our mobile cell phone. Thankfully with each passing year more and more affordable cell phone plans hit the marketplace. There are more and more ways to save money, depending on the cell phone plans you and your family are signed up for.

I used to be with at&t and I was paying over $100 per month. I had a limited number of minutes I could use each month, with anytime minutes after 9:00 pm., and free weekends too.

This meant that I had to wait until 9 every single night to make Free phone calls - Or postpone those calls till the weekend to avoid paying overage fees by using up my allotted minutes.

To top it off, I was in a contract so I could not leave and go to another company without first, having to pay an arm and a leg to get out of the contract I was in.

Does this scenario sound familiar to anyone else?

Perhaps you are in a similar situation with a different company?

Changing my cell phone plan was on my list of things to do - and luckily for me my contract was almost up. There are pros and cons to all things, and so naturally being in a contract does come with some benefits, such as the ability to pick up a phone and visit a store to deal with any issues you may be having.

Unfortunately most of these companies sell insurance plans separate from their cell phone plans, and so even though you're paying lots of money, make sure you do not lose your phone. If you do lose your phone, let's hope you have insurance or else you'll end up paying full price for another one.

Right now there are 3 Big Phone Companies that are dominating the cell phone industry right now. They are At&t, Verizon and Sprint. T-Mobile is a close, but distant 4th. While there are more and more MVNO's popping up, the majority of these companies are unheard of, and rarely trusted.

So what can we as consumers do to level the playing field?

I'd start by suggesting we educate ourselves about this industry.

Too many of us just go with the big boys, when we should take the time to research what other options we have in the marketplace. It's a marketplace that is ever-expanding and improving.

There's a lot of good news for us as consumers, however if we continue to just go with what we know, we'll all continue being stuck in cell phone plans that break us each month, rather than provide us with quality service.

My recommendation is to start with the Mobile Virtual Network Operators that are buying space on the networks from the big 3 - and are then able to determine what their customers will pay each month.

However, also be sure to investigate each one - some are start ups that frankly are not backed by enough money to be a long term option for you. You'll save money but will sacrifice quality. That's not something that anyone wants to do.

Please keep in mind that competition is always a good thing. The more choices you and I have the more competitive these industries will become and that always brings down price.

Ways to Renegotiate Your Mortgage

Australians are increasingly making more and more bad financial decisions. We are far removed from the times of our grandparents who would have never borrowed to pay their expenses. Borrowing in our times is a must, it would be difficult to maintain a high standard of comfort and quality of life without borrowing, but in doing so we need to be astute knowing what we are getting ourselves into so that we do not end up in a situation which will cause us to sink financially.

One way to get control of your finance before it spirals into a massive debt monster that you can no longer control is to refinance your mortgage.

Refinance to get peace of mind with a fixed rate, or to reduce your monthly payments. You can use a refinancing product to consolidate credit cards, personal loans or other debts to reduce your interest rate and monthly repayments.

Refinancing can also unlock the equity in your home to finance a renovation or free up some capital for property investments.

How to Refinance?

Refinancing your mortgage has a similar process to when you originally took out the loan to buy your home. Your lender has to approve your eligibility. However, you're not obligated to refinance with the same lender.

Your home loan-to-value will be considered along with your current credit rating. The best thing about refinancing is that you can shop around for the best loans. If you've had a great history with your lender, he may offer you a better financial product if you bring other competitive offers to the table.

We look at ways to get you out of difficult financial situation and there is always possible solutions to whatever problems one could face and often is being creative and to be able to find that way out. We cannot be an expert in every field, so that's why it pays to consult with someone who has the expertise in the field. No matter what field it is. We move from one shop to the next in order to find the best price for a sofa. a television or any household item and yet people often do not shop around when they are seeking to secure a home loan which they will be paying for the rest of their life. Strange enough this is the fact of life