[This month's savings: $657]
Thankfully, we made it through tax season. Usually, this time of year, I haul out the TurboTax and every receipt I can find, along with the calculator and a perpetual pot of coffee. Last year, after going over all of our numbers, our business expenses, the quarterly taxes paid, and our plethora of donations and write offs—we still owed the government $3,000 and change. The previous year, we owed half that & our income hadn't increased (it actually decreased). Everyone I talked to said that something was off.
Turned out it was the new tax laws and the Turbo Tax software (and the fact that I'm not a CPA).
I ended up paying an accountant $100 to look over my taxes. With 5 simple changes (that apparently aren't widely known, unless you're a CPA), he cut our tax bill to $800. Come to find out, that was still over-paying (we should have been getting a refund all of those years when I was doing the taxes to try to save us money). LESSON LEARNED! This year, we're paying him to do our taxes from the start.
Here are the little things we're doing this month to pinch those pennies & save even more money:
April
Week 1:
- Continued to save on our Internet service (because we switched to TWC over AT&T)—[$12 savings per month]
- Used a SavingStar rebate for King Arthur flour ($3 savings, but I need $5 for a pay out)
- Some math:
- Bought 4 5 lb. bags of flour for $3.69 each @ Target. Used a 5% off coupon via the Cartwheel app — which saved me 19¢ per bag, bringing the price down to $3.50 each.
- Used my Target debit card for an additional 5% off, saving another 70¢ (or 18¢ a bag), bringing the price down to $3.32 per bag.
- Add in the $3 rebate and the price per bag is reduced to $2.57 each— a savings of $1.12 per bag or $4.48 total
- Bought supplies from CostCo—[$48.85 savings]
- saved:
- $32 on bulk brown rice (!!!)—This is a great buy as long as you have a place to store it.
- $1.25 on peanut butter
- $2 on butter
- $3 on grated cheese (60¢ savings when compared to b2g3 @ grocery store)
- $3 on tortillas
- $7.60 on organic maple syrup
- Made batch lunches (easier to take & go)—[$37 savings]
- Made batch dinners & froze
- Did meal planning based on what was in the pantry
- Baked 1 loaf of bread—[$2.49 savings]
- Used pet store rewards to get a free large bag of dry cat food (happens once a year)—[$32 savings]
- Bought cat litter on sale (but forgot to use my $1 off coupon, argh!)—[$1 Savings]
- Ordered 15 free LED light bulbs from our utility company (they offer deep discounts or free lightbulbs once a year)—[$45 savings]
- Used Cartwheel app (Target)—[$0.91 savings]
- Used Target debit card for 5% off—[$2.61 savings]
- Bought dried black beans instead of canned—[$4.20 savings]
- Used iBotta rebate and got 50¢ added to my total (still haven't reached the payout yet)
- Used grocery store rewards points for $2 off milk—[$2 savings]
- Turned off the heat for 5 days
Week 2:
- Baked 1 loaf of bread—[$2.49 savings]
- Made large batch of yogurt—[$3.64 savings]
- Used Target debit card for 5% off—[$0.86 savings]
- Bought airplane tickets on a Tuesday for bigger discount (the price dropped $50/ticket from the previous weekend. This doesn't always happen, so I think I just lucked out on the timing of it.)
- Brought lunches to work—[$37 savings]
- Continued to meal plan based on our pantry fare.
- Continued to eat leftovers.
- Used pressure cooker to cook one meal this week—[$0.10 savings*]
- Hired an accountant to do our taxes. He cost us $450, but got us a $1,700 return. Last year, when I did our taxes through TurboTax (based on the same income), I had to PAY $3,000 (after an extension that was winnowed down to $800). So, the $450 was well worth the investment.—[$1,250 savings] (and actually, if you compare to last year, we really saved $2,050.).
- Turned off the heat all week. (It's possible that Spring has sprung—knock on wood.)
- Limited grocery shopping trips
- Froze the leftover brewed coffee for iced-coffee later. Not sure it saved us more than a couple of pennies, but ICED COFFEE!!! WOO!! (sorry, coffee geek.)
*This isn't a huge savings over cooking on the stove top. Basically, using my electricity rates (which average about 12¢/kwh), if I were to cook two meals a week in my electric pressure cooker (which uses apprx. 0.35 kwh for 30 minutes of cook time), I'd save just over $10 a year in electricity.
Some people put the savings much higher (about $50/year)—but I wasn't able to make that math work given my particular model of stove and pressure cooker, as well as my specific utility rates.
Week 3:
- Baked 1 loaf of bread—[$2.49 savings]
- Started a vegetable garden (fingers crossed)
- Paid for yard maintenance tools and plants with the Lowe's credit card for 5-10% off & immediately paid off the credit card balance—[$8.93 savings]
- DIY electrical outlet repair—it ended up costing me about $30 to fix vs. $195 to have an electrician come out and do it—[$165 savings]
- Bought organic chicken on sale—[$6 savings]
- Used Target debit card for 5% off—[$2.93 savings]
- Used Cartwheel app (Target)—[$1.84 savings]
- Used ibotta app for $1.50 rebate (still haven't hit the $20 payout threshold).
- Used the MobiSave rebate app—[$1.50 savings]
- Used the Checkout51 rebate app—[$2.50 savings]
- Continued to take lunches to work—[$37 savings]
- Used the slow cooker to cook one meal this week—[$0.12 savings**]
- Kept the heat AND the a/c off (crazy temperature fluctuations this spring)
- Used ceiling fans to keep the rooms cool, while we were in them (& turned them off when we weren't in the room).
- Replaced the air filter in our HVAC system (cost $9)
- We received the free LED lightbulbs from our utility company and I replaced the few incandescent bulbs we still have with LEDs.
**Slow cookers generally use a lot less electricity than the stove top or oven, however, the oven will cook items faster. 1 hour on the stove top or in the oven equals about as much energy expended as 8 hours in the slow cooker. If your slow-cooker meal only takes 4 hours, then you'll save about half the cost, which for me is about 12¢.
Again, the amount you save will be dependent on the efficiency of your oven and your slow cooker.
Week 4:
- Baked 1 loaf of bread—[$2.49 savings]
- Bought strawberries on sale and made strawberry jam (not sure how much we actually saved, but man, it was good jam).
- Took lunches to work—[$37 savings]
- Used Amazon gift card to cover the cost of a purchase—[$11 savings]
- Made a batch of broccoli soup (6 servings). Cost per serving: 59¢; a savings of $3.91 over our average meal cost—[$23 savings]
- Spent the last weekend of the month with family, so we didn't pay for groceries or meals. We did, however pay for travel / parking, so it was probably a wash.
Thanks to our tax accountant we got a nice bump in savings this month. Without that bump, we still saved $654 on smaller stuff. And while we didn't do as stellar a job saving on the groceries this month, we managed to keep our budget to about $300, so it was still about a $120 savings over our average monthly grocery bill.
We also didn't do a spectacular job of keeping our dining-out budget to $50. We ended up getting take-out or having brunch with friends once a week, so our spending this month was about $120. STILL, we kept it below our average (which is about $220).
Utility update: We accidentally switched the washer from cold water to warm, and as a result our gas bill went up considerably. As far as we can tell, it was the only change in our routine. So let that be a lesson, one small habit change can affect your bill for better or worse. We ended up paying $29 more than we did for the same month last year (and about $8 more than we paid last month). As for our electric bill, it was down $11 from last month and $10 from the same month last year.
Additional savings of $3 (no thanks to the bump in the gas bill).
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