Tag Archives: saving money

Health Care, Managing Money

Shopping Around For Health Products

No matter who you are, you probably know that the cost of health related supplies or pharmaceuticals can be pretty costly. Even though you can write off some of these costs, you can’t be happy paying high prices for it up front; no one is.

What we find is that people tend to go to the store or pharmacy that’s closest to home. It turns out those stores don’t often offer the best deals. In some cases, there are stores and pharmacies that will offer special deals for people with specific diseases like diabetes and cholesterol issues. This is helpful to know when your insurance company either doesn’t cover the bulk of the cost of your medication or other supplies.

For instance, one local store considers itself the friend of diabetics. If you’re on insulin and have a valid prescription, they’ll give you syringes for no cost. As a comparison, most of the other stores in the area charge between $30 and $45 for the same 100 syringe supply; you can’t save any more money than that.

Another local store offers some cholesterol reducing medication at a drastically reduced rate than most other stores. For instance, at most stores a prescription of Pravastatin at 20MG costs around $40 for a 30-day supply. This one particular store offers it at $37 for a 3-month supply.

Most people are willing to do a lot of shopping for the lower price of things like groceries and appliances, but when it comes to health care related items, even health care services, for some reason people are reluctant to try to find the best prices available. While it’s true that the cost of health care can be high sometimes, there are still deals of all sorts to be found by taking a little bit of time, picking up the phone and calling around.

For that matter, sometimes you can look online and find lower prices for some medical supplies you might need. It turns out eBay is a pretty good place to find a lot of medical supplies at a reduced rate. Sometimes the seller requires you have a prescription for those items, but most of the time it’s just a straight up transaction. For some items you might have to check out expiration dates, but in doing some research we’ve found that most supplies are actually good past those dates for up to a year.

You can save a lot of money if you’ll take the time to shop around for the best deal possible. As always, don’t drive 30 miles to save a dollar, but if you can save a lot for the same thing then it’s worth exploring.
 

Budgeting

Have You Started Budgeting Yet?

One of the earliest posts we wrote on this blog concerned budgeting. We started with the topic The Basics Of Budgeting as a baseline on how to get started. It’s still a pretty big deal to us, as it should be for you, which is why we’re revisiting the topic again.

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Our bet, if you did start back then, is threefold:

* your bills are under control

* you have more money in your checking or savings account

* you have more peace of mind because you’re not as worried about paying your bills
Continue reading Have You Started Budgeting Yet? →

Managing Money

4 Ways To Save Money On Heating Bills In The Winter

For those of us who live in central New York cold weather is nothing new. However, for many people trying to figure out ways to save money on heating bills is usually a major chore. If the temperature stayed around 32° most of the winter it might not be so bad. But how are we supposed to save money when temperatures drop below zero, which they did last night?

We’re here to help. These ideas might not all be inexpensive to implement, but if you can get them done you’ll save a lot of money for the rest of winter and for years to come. Here we go:

1. Buy a kerosene heater. It turns out kerosene heaters aren’t close to being as dangerous as people think they are. A good one might cost around $150 but you could find yourself saving as much as 35% on your monthly winter bills, depending on how cold it gets and the area you have to heat.

If you don’t have to keep every room in your house heated throughout the day a kerosene heater could keep a large area of your home comfortable, and on a full tank it can usually run for up to 10 hours. However, what you’ll find is that you’ll probably only need to run it at max about 90 minutes, which might even be too hot, so you’ll be able to stretch your dollars even further.

Kerosene can run anywhere from $2- $4 depending on where you live, but if you’re not running it for 10 hours straight all the time you might be able to get through almost 2 days before you have to add more.

2. Buy a humidifier. Most people buy humidifiers to help breathe better inside because winter weather seems to dry the air in your house. Turns out that it’s a great conductor for heat, thus it can make you feel warmer.

However, here’s an interesting tip. Turns out if you get a kerosene heater with a flat top you can put a pot on top of it and it’ll act like a humidifier and help heat your rooms faster. However, if you live in an area with hard water you could have a film of calcium getting on your walls, so you might want to also buy some distilled water to help take care of that issue.

3. Insulate! It turns out that most homes don’t come close to having enough insulation to stay energy efficient. Adding insulation to areas such as walls and attics could help you save a lot of money both for winter and summer because it keeps outside temperatures outside better and helps both your heater and air conditioning work better, if you need to run them at all. This option isn’t inexpensive though, as it can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 depending on the size of your house. However, in some states you can finance it through your power company or potentially qualify for special programs that help even middle class families with tax breaks, and it’ll protect your home for years.

However, there are some small things you might be able to do that can help. Try to cover up spaces under and over doors. Make sure your windows are sealed well. Putting up plastic on some windows can help with drafts but if you have windows that you’re not worried about having to look outside of you can add towels or blankets to help insulate them better. Finally, don’t forget to change from screens to storm windows if you have them, both on your regular windows and your screen doors. These are inexpensive little things that could end up saving you a lot of money while keeping you warm.

4. Check your vents and registers. Are you sure you’re getting all the air you should coming into your rooms without some of it scattering in other areas of your house that don’t need the heat? If you’re not feeling strong pushes of air coming from your vents it wouldn’t hurt to pay to have someone come over to check your vent system and also clean it out so you don’t have to deal with dust and other nasty stuff getting into your air.

Luckily, this doesn’t cost as much as insulation. There are many companies that charge less than $100 for this service, but you should shop around because you might find someone who might charge a little bit more to check your furnace, filters and even your hot water heater to make sure everything working efficiently.
 

Finances

Will You Have Financial Goals In 2015?

Back in 2013 we had an article on the blog titled Setting Financial Goals. In that article we laid out what we considered the 3 most important things for any financial goals one might wish to set: saving money; reducing debt; and increasing income.

Money Shirt
Creative Commons License Rob Lee via Compfight

Every once in a while we get the opportunity to work with clients to help them set financial goals for the year. The year doesn’t always start at the beginning, but it’s a good time to do it because it fits with the tax time period.

Almost everyone that comes in wants to talk about one thing, which doesn’t quite fit any of the three, though comes closest to saving money; reducing how much they might owe in taxes. It must be an occupational hazard for being a consultant because, though it’s a big part of what we do, it’s not the only thing we do.

Truth be told, taxes aren’t a major concern when other needs are met. Although you sometimes hear a few rich people complaining about having to pay too many taxes, the overwhelming majority don’t have a problem with it because they have enough money and, if they’ve got good accountants, all that is taken care of and they still have lots to play with.

If you’re worried about having to pay taxes, learning how to save money and cut corners on spending will provide you with enough to pay your taxes. Also, if you’re really good you can make sure you’re having enough taxes taken out of your paycheck if you’re still employed.

If you reduce your debt you invariably end up with more money. That’s because as you pay your bills down you owe less, and even if you keep paying them at the same high rate you’ll pay off the debt sooner, which means you’ll have a nice chunk of cash you can move elsewhere.

If you increase your income… well, we already touched upon that part. 🙂

With that said, do you have any ideas on what types of financial goals you really should have? If not, we’ll give you 3 to think about:

1. Find ways to generate more income in 2015. There are so many ways for people to do this that all it takes is an hour of uninterrupted thought every day for a week to plan it out and you could be making more money in another week. The idea is to think about what you can do, how much more money you’d like to make, and then go for it. Many people are doing it; you can also.

2. Set a goal to pay off one of your bills where the payment starts at least at $100 a month. If you don’t have anything like that good for you. If you do, realize that if you could pay one of those bills off you have the opportunity to have an extra $1,200 a year and it’s tax free! Pay off more debt and you’ll have more money the same way.

3. Think of one thing you’re willing to give up or alter that will help you save even a little bit of money. For Christmas one of my friends got a coffee maker and many bags of special coffee that can be made at home. The reason was her daughter hated knowing that her mother was stopping at a national coffee location buying expensive coffee every day, both going to and coming home from work.

Suddenly, her mother can now save $10 a day, which equates to around $300 a month, which can be applied to other things. And the coffee will be just as good, maybe even better because that same brand can be bought in many stores if she wishes to stick to that brand and will still cost her less than paying someone else to make it.

Financial goals don’t have to be really big to make a big impact. All it takes is a little bit of ingenuity adn the willingness to make a change here and there. After all, isn’t a new year a good time for resolutions and goals?

We wish everyone a safe and happy new year, and of course a financially successful year as well.
 

Budgeting, Managing Money

Are Sales Always Economical?

This weekend is one of the biggest sales periods of the year, and every year around this same time it seems like the best deals of the year are coming up. Whereas it seems like the best time to save money, one has to be wary of some of the deception that takes place at the same time.

For instance, there are many smartphone deals this weekend, and all of them might seem like you’re going to save a lot of money. You might, but you need to pay attention because most of the phones on sale are already obsolete. It’s rare to see the latest models having big discounts at this time of year, and truth be told, if you see a discount it’s probably not a new discount but something that was already available with a switch in plan that’s just been renamed for the holiday.

There are also places you’ll go to where you’ll see discounts of up to 50%, but if you do some homework and look at the prices during the year you’ll see those items have been marked up and then discounted, to the point where your savings aren’t really what they’re purported to be. That’s pretty sleazy but there’s nothing illegal about it.

The biggest thing to take into account is whether the item is something you actually need versus want; that is, if it’s for you. If you’re buying gifts for someone else we’d hope that you had a budget for that sort of thing. If not, it’s worth taking some time to think about things you really need, even if it’s for business purposes, and then determine if it’s worth the purchase.

Business furniture is always a good purchase at this time of year because it’s an industry where, sometimes, moving inventory is relatively static. It also works because things like desks and chairs rarely goes out of style.

Computers are something you need to take a good look at, even if you need one. It’s good to have an understanding of things like RAM and storage capacity and chipset. For instance, if you need office computers mainly for email and bookkeeping then you don’t need anything with 8GB of RAM, whereas if you’re making 3D models and the like the extra capacity is a great benefit. The same goes for storage, since most businesses will never reach a level where they’re going to need terabytes of files. As for chipsets, there’s mainly two (the names of which we won’t mention here) and, truthfully, both are good but one has a name that gets more respect and thus can drive the price of a computer higher than needed.

Overall, it’s best to figure out how much money you’re willing to spend after you put together a list of things you want, whether it’s for business or pleasure. Also, the best thing about shopping in today’s world is that you can take some time to do a little online research to see where you can get the best price.