Save $$$ on everyday expenses 2017

As you may have seen, saving money is a common theme on my site. To be honest, all of these things that I do, anyone can do. Most people will spend their time watching TV, working out, spending time with family and so on. If you spent a few hours a year on trying to reduce your monthly bills of common services that you need or want you could be saving hundreds each month and have more $$$ to spend on your family or yourself.

I will lay out the many different services that I have saved money on over the past few months and how much it will add up over a month and a year. Small items may not seem like much, but they all add up. All links where to find more information is provided on the side "Information Links" section.

Insurance 

Home

Recently after receiving my renewal notice for our house insurance it had drastically increased. But why? I called and without any reasonable reason to the increase I decided to do some shopping. The first stop and should be yours as well is InsuranceHotline.com This site will take your information and give you back results from multiple insurance providers. But where I found the most savings from was Square One Insurance. This place do not do too much advertising thus passing savings on to it customers. Its a no frills home insurance provider, meaning you can pick and choose what converges you want and need without bloating the policy with things you don't. This has saved us about $100 a month reducing the monthly home insurance bill from ~$175 -> ~$75 a month. Read more about my review of SquareOne.

Car

Again much like home insurance, InsuranceHotline.com is the best place to start. They also have the option to combine your search of insurance products together to get greater savings. Make sure when looking for car insurance to search for group quotes as well, these will not be advertised, but there will be an option to search or provide group information such as a school you graduated from, your workplace, if you have a CAA membership, and even if you belong to your local community association. If your willing some car insurance companies will provide you with a device to install in your car or an app to put on your phone to track your driving to make of drive profile of you offering you up to 25% savings (see my Ajusto review). These things add up and you could be getting further savings that you did not know existed. As for me I did not combine home and car as I was able to find better deals by having them separate and I was not fussy on having someone to "track" me. I was able to get a great rate using the Personal with a group code. This has provided me with a savings of ~$50 a month reducing the monthly bill from ~$200 -> ~$157 a month or ~$512 savings a year. (This was for 2 cars and 2 drivers)

Hydro

Ah, good ol' hydro. My love hate relationship that is hydro in Ontario. Hydro in Ontario is Fu***d and that's an understatement. It has been poorly managed over many years bringing it to a point to where its nearly impossible to survive from many families across the province. I have written many articles about hydro savings (how to reduce your actual kWh usage) and also about the hydro situation in Ontario. Back to the first articles, I was able to reduce my KWh usage to less than half where it was. This was directly related to two main things. 1.) Installing a smart thermostat in the house to monitor your time in the house to turn on and off heat and cooling when needed or not. (read article here) 2.) Install LED bulbs everywhere in the house (Article: Part 1, Part 2). These two will cost you money up front but will save you greatly more in the months and years to come.

Cable & Internet

I decided to break up with one of the big three, Rogers. Rogers is a pain in the ass, they will give you a great OK deal only to see it disappear a few months after or have new fees and charges added. I decided to take the jump to vMedia, they run there internet off of Rogers or Bell's lines at a reduced cost compared to the suppliers. They also have a TV option, IPTV. IPTV is something fairly new and provides TV over a internet connection. Though I have have a few hiccups with them over the past few months, it has been worth it for the savings. $41.50 a month. Cable & Internet switch to vMedia full review.

Banking

I done a couple of reviews in the past of ING Direct now known as Tangerine. I have been a customer of them for many years now and they have been improving each and every year adding new services and products to their portfolio. They continue to provide FREE or very low cost typical banking products as well as RRSP's, Mortgages, Lines of Credit and a Credit Card with lots of great cash back options.

Overall Savings:

As you can see from the above table, spending a few hours a year to make sure you are getting the best bank for your buck can save you hundreds and even thousands over the year. These are only a few of the bigger things that you can do to make your money work for you. Now pair that with bringing your lunch each day to work, making your own coffee and such and the savings number can swell even higher. After a year do a trip, buy something that you have wanted or just invest the money to see it further grow.

Oh, and make sure you don't get sucked into what I call a Go Fu*k Yourself fund!