So you want to flip cars. Well, you can either be in London, England the next time there’s a big “football” game, or you can attend an auto auction. And I only say England because they have riots.
That choice is completely up to you.
To be honest, you can do both. But when it comes to the latter, you won’t have to worry about being in jail. When you aren’t in jail, you need money. When you need money, you can flip cars.
There’s actually not much to it.
And by it, I mean using auto auctions.
It’s a straightforward process that can make you a quick four figures, what with Craigslist, eBay and all. If you’ve never thought about it, here’s your wake-up call and manual all wrapped into one easy-to-grasp ball.
When it comes to live auto auctions, there are two kinds. The first is the dealer auction. Don’t go there; it’s full of people you are trying to avoid.
The second is a public auction. That’s exactly where you should be. In fact, it’s the only one of the two you can attend. But just between us, prices tend to be less expensive at public auctions.
So they’re easy to use, but what makes a car auction so great?
The first thing is the deals. Forty percent below retail. Enough said.
The second is you don’t have to deal with car salesman (it bears repeating). I once got a call for six mornings straight from the same guy. After I told him I’d already bought a car. Go to an auto auction, and you probably won’t get a call for six mornings straight.
At least not from a car salesman.
The third are the gold mines of cars you will find. It’s not uncommon for auctions to have over 200 cars to bid on, all from a variety of sources.
You could get the shiny, repossessed Toyota of a guy who couldn’t pay for it. Or you could get a Benz from a guy who lost it to back taxes. Heck, you could even have a vibrant-colored Cadillac that belonged to a (former) drug dealer. Used government vehicles frequently make appearances as well.
Really, it doesn’t get much simpler than the world of auto auctions. Flipping cars for profit comes down to three phases.
- The preliminary search
- The auction
- Re-listing
In other words, before, during and after.
Find the auction and cars
Before you go to an auto auction, you need to find an auto auction. One of the knocks on buying cars at auctions is that they are hard to find.
They aren’t.
A simple Google search with the name of your city (e.g. Cleveland) plus “public car auctions” should get you started. Any major cities will have at least a handful. Many lots hold auctions on a weekly basis with entirely new sets of cars.
Imagine the possibilities.
You’ll errantly come across online auctions as well. If they mention “shipping,” move on.
If that online search doesn’t pull anything up, check your spelling (and then move out of Savannah, Georgia). Or you could call your local police station. Their used vehicles likely go to car auctions.
Check out a handy online resource like Gov-Auction.org if you are desperate or would like even more choices.
Next, you want to find the goods. You should be able to find a listing of the cars, among other things. For a quick turnover, look for cars that meet these criteria:
- Priced between $4,000 and $10,000
- Quality reputation (Honda, Toyota)
- Extremely low mileage (less than 8,000 per year)
Find some, and then figure out how much those cars should be going for (aka their trade-in value). I like three sites to figure this out: Kelley’s, Edmunds.com and NADAGuides.
Take the three numbers, give them to your fifth-grade son and tell him you need the average by the end of the day. Check his decimals, and since it’s an auction (the price should be lower), take forty percent off that price.
Come prepared, and that’s exactly how much you’ll pay.
***
What to expect at an auction
You need to have at least $1,000 on you, or be able to pay that with a card. Know your options beforehand.
The money is for the down payment you need to pay immediately upon buying a car. Or you can buy the whole car, depending on how you feel about procrastination.
During the auction, you’ll have to pay attention to four terms that will be given in regards to the car. They’ll provide additional information to help you make your best decision. In order of safest choice to most dangerous:
- Good Operating Condition (Buy)
- No Title (Buy)
- Announced Condition (Walk)
- As is (Walk)
Good Operating Condition means the owner is giving you his word. These are the best people to do business with. If you haven’t already learned that, there you go.
No Title only means that the car you are buying is titleless for now. Auctions can deal with banks in other states who might take their time waiting for you to give them money. Whatever the reason, you usually get your title in days. If you don’t get it for 30 of them, there’s a refund in it for you.
Something is wrong with the car, and the owner wants to tell you. That means there is an Announced Condition. You know the condition. If you know how much it is to fix the condition, good job. If not, walk.
As is means the owner doesn’t want to tell you anything about the car. Unless you are a mechanic, or have one with you, you might as well leave your wallet on the ground.
Even if you know the defects, do a thorough check of the car. That is, sometime before it goes up for auction. Here is a brief rundown of what to check for:
- Start the engine. Remember knocking and rattling aren’t good.
- Try the AC, heat and power options (windows, sunroof).
- Shift into drive and reverse. A good engine won’t lunge when you shift gears.
- Check for dampness under the rugs and seats.
- Look at the oil stick. If the oil has white bubbles, pass. The same if it’s too pasty or dirty.
- There should not be any transmission fluid on the ground. Nor should it be dark brown.
- Look at the paint on the car. Do you see rust or air bubbles? Does the paint match?
- See if there are any welding marks near the trunk or the engine.
- Check all the lights and turn signals.
Budget some money for small repairs. Few cars will come perfect. But most shouldn’t need more than $500 to get to great mechanical condition.
But what if you do buy a clunker?
First of all, the odds of that aren’t great. Most cars are run through an inspection before hitting the auction block. Though, instead of dropping it off in Grandma’s backyard for the next 6 weeks, you can give it back and have the same car auctioned off again immediately.
It might be at the pain of a few hundred dollars, but still a low risk.
* * *
(Re)Selling
Once it’s all said and done, this might seem like the easy part. Provided you get the right car for a short stack of cash (almost never fails).
Using Autotrader or Craigslist, see what the retail prices are for your new car. Once you are “in the know” on what they sell for in your area, there are two ways you can price it.
If you have the time, put the car up for $500 to $1000 more than its going price. That should be two or three thousand more than your buying price. On a car with extremely low miles, that could still be a little low.
Meet some new people, wait it out, and sell at your price.
In case you want to sell it quick, go closer to the retail value. For example, if most 2005 Civics are being swapped for six grand, go a few hundred above that. If you’re really in a hurry, you could even go a hundred below that.
If the car doesn’t go in a week, think about dropping the price. In the best scenarios, you can earn an extra four thousand.
***
One important thing to keep in mind when doing this that there’s a line between selling a car and selling a car for profit.
It’s a government thing.
But just make sure you’re aware of how many cars you can sell before you need a license. The number is different from state to state. In California, for example, if you sell one car “with the intent to make a profit,” you could be breaking state law.
It sounds stingy. The rules are often lax, however.
If every car you sell is in your name, you won’t exactly be on The Man’s radar. Stay somewhere in the area of six a year. Still a nice chunk of change if you can make $2000 on a vehicle, and that’s the low end.
Although, if you want to become a dealer and be allowed to sell unlimited cars, all you have to do is pass a test at the DMV.
But then you also have to deal with zoning laws while getting a location. And then you’ll have to give donations to the DMV. And then…
Forget it. The point is to make money.
And via auto auctions, it’s not hard.
P.S. A GREAT website to access over 4,000 car auctions with prices is gov-auctions.org. They got auctions NOT searchable elsewhere on the Internet and as you will see on their website it’s not dream to get cars at up to 95% off their real price (sometimes making $8K-12K in pure profit!).
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Upgrade #2: The hard drive.
Your hard drive is the whole purpose of your computer life.
On an off note, let me say this: Everything you save, every program you install, every video you download, is on your hard drive, and you can access it at any time. If you don’t back it up consistently and your hard drive dies…
People tend to leave me (really) alone (they actually leave the house) if I think my hard drive has failed. I digress. Back to the upgrade.
If you want to upgrade, it’s probably because you would like more room to do what you want to do.
How does a hard drive work, anyway?
Your hard drive is comprised of disks called platters (they’re like CDs) that store everything. These platters are separated into sectors and tracks.
An arm (a little like the one on a record player) stretches out over the platter and reads and writes data onto a disk.
Let’s say that you’re working on a document. When you go to save it, the arm “writes” the data on a platter.
Because you have to be able to access your saved document later, the arm can only write in one place that will contain your document. Nothing can be in that place except your document. The platters are divided into tracks and sectors for just that reason.
I mentioned the CPU in the RAM section of this article. When you go to access your saved document, the CPU gives that information to the hard drive, which has to find it.
The hard drive’s platters will then spin very fast to find the document. Once the hard drive finds your document, the arm “reads” the document, and sends it back to the CPU, which then sends it back to you and your monitor screen.
I have a great “upgrade” option for you, by the way.
Hard drives aren’t just inside your computer anymore; they sit outside the computer and are called external hard drives. If all you need is more space on your hard drive and are happy with the rest of the computer, then this would be a great way to go.
External hard drives plug into a USB port, which is on the front or back of the computer. If you choose to add an external hard drive, you’re upgrading by adding a lot more space to your computer, all the while being able to keep your existing one.
Now that’s the way to upgrade!
Whichever hard drive you choose, you are going to need to know how much extra space you need.
Hard drives now have huge storage capacities. When I first sat down at a computer, it had a Windows 95 operating system and eighty gigabytes of hard drive space. (Bytes are how computer space is measured.)
The computer I am on right this minute has 320 gigs of storage and I am out of my mind when I am on it because it’s not enough (I do a lot of video creating/editing as a hobby) and I haven’t gotten a larger one.
Hard drives (both internal and external) are now available in terabytes. A terabyte is one trillion bytes, or one thousand gigabytes for a single drive.
Before you buy a hard drive, check and see how much storage you have currently. NOTE: I could have demonstrated with screen shots how to right-click My Computer, etc., but then I would have had to explain why 320 gigabytes only shows as 286 gigabytes and then we’re off in left field.
There is a program called Belarc Advisor that is free and will tell you everything you need to know about your computer, including your hard drive size. The results will pop up in your browser.
See how much possible storage you have and how much you are currently using. How much you want and how much you need is up to you. Use your Belarc results as your guide.
Hard drive pricing:
Internal hard drive prices vary greatly. They can run anywhere from around eighty bucks to twelve hundred bucks. (Those are the hard drives that will make you breakfast in the morning.)
External hard drives can range greatly. I have seen them for as little as fifty bucks, and I have seen them for a whopping $7,500. (I think that you can drive those to work.)
Use your Belarc results to tell you what hard drive you have now and shop comparatively. And don’t worry, whatever you end up choosing will be nowhere near the maximum price of either drive.)
Upgrade #3: The video card.
This one will make you sigh with pleasure if you decide to upgrade.
Video cards (sometimes called graphics cards) are what the computer uses to send images to your monitor. Video cards have evolved so much that now you can have everything – photos, movies, etc. – in projected in high quality 3D on your monitor.
When you access a picture on your hard drive, the computer sends the information to the video card’s graphics processing unit (the GPA), which then converts the info to analog so that the monitor can read it, and sends it to the monitor via a cable.
If you do a lot of video editing in HD, stunningly crisp, clear images are important to you, or your monitor seems a little dark to you, you should upgrade this part.
If you feel like seeing the stuff on the monitor is enough, feel confident to skip this upgrade.
Video card costs:
The average price of a video card is around two hundred bucks. If you shop around, you can find really good ones for less.
Your Belarc results will tell you which kind you have. Yes, I’ll say it again; do some Googling and find out what video card will suit your needs.
Upgrade #4: The CD/DVD drive.
This is the least costly upgraded part that you will have. It’s also really easy to install. It’s also an upgrade you really shouldn’t skip.
Nowadays these drives can burn (record) and play both CDs and DVDs a lot faster than ever before.
A CD/DVD drive is also called an optical drive. This is because of the laser that reads the data. If you look at a CD, you’ll notice that one side is dull (the label side) and the other side is shiny. The shiny side is the one that the laser reads.
A CD/DVD drive (player) has basically three main parts.
When you press play on your player, a motor starts spinning the disk, and does it at varying degrees of speed. Then the laser reads the data, while the tracking mechanism simultaneously guides the laser across the surface of the CD. The info is then sent back to the CPU, which sends it to the computer, which sends it back to you.
A CD or a DVD can hold a lot of data. Most recordable standard-size CDs hold 700 megabytes of data. A DVD can hold a lot more; most recordable DVDs hold 4.7 gigabytes.
Your (older) computer may just have a CD drive, and it may even have a burner. This means that you can play and record CDs with it.
With an upgrade, you would have to get either a much better CD drive, or you need to upgrade to a DVD drive. DVD drives play and burn not only videos, movies, etc., but they play and burn CDs, as well.
Thus, if you think that now – or in the future – you might want to play and/or burn movies or videos, then you should definitely upgrade to a DVD drive.
Speaking of which, the CD/DVD disks differ in type and what they are capable of; some of them can burn data over and over, and some disks can’t be erased. Types of disks that you should familiarize yourself with so that you can get full enjoyment out of your disk drive/player are:
CD-ROM: A CD-Rom disk is Compact Disk, Read-Only-Memory. These are the kind that you buy at, say, the music store. They can’t be modified in any way.
CD-R: A CD Recordable disk that you will use in your CD/DVD player/ burner. You can burn music, documents, photos, videos, etc. onto a CD-R disk. CD-R disks are not erasable, so whatever you burn stays on the disk.
CD-RW: A CD-RW is a recordable disk that can take anything a CD-R does, except parts of it or all of it can be erased.
DVD-R: A Digital Video Disk that works like a CD-R; a one-time only burn is what you get.
DVD-RW: A Digital Video Disk that works like a CD-RW; you can burn what you want, multiple times.
Facts to know:
One: DVD recordable disk drives will record DVDs and CDs.
Two: A CD burner can only burn CDs.
Three: CD-RWs will not play on your car stereo or a home stereo.
Four: A DVD player will play CDs.
Note: There are now Blu-Ray drives on the market. Blu-ray disks have an enormous capacity for storage: For a single layer disk, it’s twenty five gigabytes, and for a dual-layer, it’s fifty gigabytes. The prices have come down for these drives, as well.
The problem with upgrading to a Blu-ray drive is that because of its new technology, its requirements are different for hardware and software. If you have an older computer, it won’t have the necessary hardware to be able to handle the Blu-ray drive and there will be additional parts to be upgraded. If Blu-ray is important to you, then you need a new computer.
CD/DVD Disk Drive pricing:
Like I said, these are cheap. You can pull in a DVD disk drive for around twenty bucks!
It depends on the speed of your new drive; check that and then look for disks that run that speed.
You can buy blank DVDs for around twenty five bucks for a fifty count, and blank CDs for around twenty five bucks for a one-hundred count. Just shop them for the best price.
Bonus quick upgrade: Your sound card.
If you want a big difference in sound, then go ahead and upgrade your sound card. Your audio quality will be superb, and they are super easy to install.
However, keep this in mind:
All computers have a sound card, either built into the motherboard, or separately installed. The quality of sound cards (even older ones) is good enough to play any audio selection quite well.
If you want to listen to symphonies or movies in digital surround sound or you are an intense gamer or you just want better audio, then by all means, get a new sound card.
However, don’t feel like you’re missing something if you don’t.
Sound card pricing:
The average price for a good sound card is thirty five bucks. Find out what kind you need and shop.
Why these are the safe components to install, and why you shouldn’t mess with others.
The components that we have just talked about are the safest to upgrade, and if you are a computer novice, they are the only ones you should do yourself.
Some of the other parts of the computer for a possible upgrade are:
The motherboard.
The CPU.
The power supply.
Motherboard prices can vary greatly, and they are totally horrible to put in if you don’t know how to do it. In my been-there, done-that opinion, instructions are a joke. To replace a motherboard, go to a professional.
CPUs are a little less complicated to replace, but you had better know your tech terms! Just a few phrases:
You need to do a BIOS upgrade on your motherboard before you start.
You need to know your motherboard’s CPU socket and its clock rate – sometimes.
What socket is your CPU based on?
And more.
A CPU’s cost is around a hundred and fifty bucks on average.
If you can do it, then I bow to your wisdom. (Seriously.) If you’re one of the buh-zillion people who can’t, then take it to a professional if you insist on a CPU upgrade.
Putting in a new power supply isn’t terribly awful. You just have to be very careful and know things (again) that you might not know and are hard to do. Power supplies tend to go out quicker than a CPU or a motherboard, so if you blow one or it dies on its own, you probably should get a new one put in by a professional.
A new power supply can cost around a hundred dollars.
Whew. A lot of information to digest! Where are we when it comes to upgrading your computer?
You realize now that you can upgrade your computer and make it run faster, have more room for your photos, your documents, your videos, your everything-you-want-to-have-on-your-computer plus more, play and record CDs and DVDs over and over, and view and listen to video and audio better than you ever had.
After you reviewed the costs of the parts and a new computer, you determined that is worth your time and money to upgrade your computer.
You don’t need a technician to replace the parts listed above. This is another way that you have saved money by not taking it to the computer place to upgrade.
As far as upgrading the other components, I recommend taking a few classes, Googling every component until you can’t see anymore, realizing that you probably won’t have anyone to talk to because of the great mood you’re going to be in while this is going on, and that you will be spewing words that your two-year old really didn’t need to know – over and over.
Plus, by replacing every component, you’re not really upgrading anymore; what you would be doing is rebuilding your computer, which is definitely more expensive than an upgrade.
I am definitely not trying to discourage you. I am simply telling (warning?) you how difficult it is to totally rebuild (upgrade) a personal computer.
If you upgrade just the components that I recommended, then you are saving money and time.
So now you know. You can have a computer that runs as well (if not better) than a lot of the new ones on the market. It’ll be fast, it’ll have lots of room, and it’ll do things it has never done before.
And you can do it yourself.
Happy computing!
]]>Ah, your computer. You’ve cleaned it. You’ve defragmented it. You’ve uninstalled every one of your favorite games (except one). It doesn’t matter; your computer just keeps getting slower and slower.
Should you buy a new one? Should you upgrade?
Now, when I say upgrade, I am talking about upgrading the hardware of the computer here, not the programs (software) and operating system (Windows, Linux, Apple). Upgrading software and/or your operating system is totally different. When you upgrade your hardware, you replace old physical parts of your computer with new ones.)
Before you begin doing anything, though, you have to ask yourself some questions just to make sure that your decision is the right one. Upgrading and then finding out you should have just gotten a new one can really increase your heart rate.
#1: How old is your computer?
Technology changes every day. Computers depreciate every day. If your computer is ten years old, then get a new one. Don’t even contemplate upgrading; it’s too old to run any of the new computer programs, and if you have to upgrade, you’d end up replacing everything, which is a total waste of time and money.
If your computer is in good to great condition and is up to five years old, I would seriously consider upgrading before purchasing a new one. Five to ten years old? I have one that is seven years old and it runs great! (Probably because I upgraded a couple of years ago.) On the other hand, sometimes it is considered obsolete if it’s over four years old.
It’s purely your call.
Notice that I didn’t tell you to throw it out. If your old computer is your old best friend, and you really like it the way it is, then you don’t have to throw it out or even upgrade. The programs you are running on your old computer (almost always) won’t run on a new one, so enjoy the ones that are on there and buy a new one for everything else.
#2: What do you want to do with your computer?
This one’s easy: If you are a “gamer”; that is, you are into all of the new games and need an insanely fast gaming PC, you aren’t going to get that by upgrading. Period.
If, on the other hand, you want to do add whatever else you’ve always wanted to have on your computer, do it faster and do it cheaper, then an upgrade is the way to go.
#3: Which costs more? Upgrading or buying?
If you want bells and whistles and whatever else new computers can come with, you need to get a new one; the cost and hassle of a total upgrade is going to end up being comparative (or more) to the price of a new computer (and it’s hard to do). If you like your computer and it’s just slower, the display’s a little darker, and you can’t store many pictures on it (it takes a lot of space to store pictures and videos), then upgrading is a great idea.
In other words, your priorities are what are going to determine the cost.
The cost is going to determine your decision.
You know what new computers can cost. What parts can you safely install to upgrade your computer yourself and still not spend a lot of money?
Let’s check into it.
Upgrade #1: RAM. (Random Access Memory)
Singularly the most important part of a computer upgrade. When I first started messing around with computers and somebody asked me what I wanted for my birthday or for Christmas, I would say, “More memory.” What that meant was more RAM.
Random Access Memory (RAM) is temporary memory storage for your computer. The “brain” of your computer is called the CPU (or Central Processing Unit). Whenever you do anything on your computer (when you open up a Word document, for example), the CPU takes the data and loads it into RAM, which will hold all of your stuff for you to work with temporarily.
Here’s another way to think about it:
Let’s say you are going on a trip to see your in-laws. (Sorry.) You need to pack. You take everything that you will need on the trip and put it on your bed. The bed is your RAM. Everything on it is your data.
You decide that you don’t want take sweaters and want to take a jacket. You pick up the sweaters (the data) off of the bed (the RAM) and put them back in the closet, and then take the jacket (the data) off of the hanger and put it on the bed (the RAM). You are swapping clothes (the data) easily.
The bed is making packing a lot easier for you. It is large enough for you to move everything around where you can see it, whereas you could have to go back and forth across your room to your dresser, which has drawers and is way across the room.
It’s only temporary because soon all the stuff on the bed will be in your suitcase(s).
If you decide to pack too much, the bed won’t hold it all and stuff will start dropping on the floor, making it harder for you to pick up and the packing process much slower.
You know when you are working on your computer on the most important thing you have ever done and you haven’t saved in over an hour and the power goes out? When it comes back on and you boot (start) up your computer, you have lost everything.
This is because the RAM had your document and its changes stored there temporarily. When the power went out, it cleared the RAM and your entire document and its non-saved changes.
The more RAM you have, the faster you can access it, the faster it will run, and the more things you can do at one time.
RAM sizes and costs:
The first thing you have to do before you buy RAM is to find out what kind of RAM you need. Not all RAM is made the same, and if you put in the wrong kind, you could damage your system.
Here are some ways to tell what kind of RAM you have (for free; there are programs that you can buy that will tell you, too):
If you have your motherboard manual, you can look it up in there.
Google your computer’s name and model number and type RAM after both. One of my computers is a Compaq Presario. I looked at the front of it, and the model number is 5610f. I typed Compaq Presario 5610f RAM into Google and Google returned a page with tons of results on what kind of RAM that I would need if I were upgrading.
The very best way (in my humble opinion) is to go to Crucial.com. It’s perfectly safe, and it has a memory advisor that will tell you exactly what kind of memory you need. Let me walk you through it.
First, (obviously) go to www.crucial.com. You will see three ‘tabs” at the bottom of the blue box. Click on Memory Advisor.
Next, you will be presented with a screen that asks you for your computer’s manufacturer. The computer that I’m on right now is a Compaq Presario, so I would click on Compaq in the drop down menu.
On the next screen, select the name of your computer’s product line. (I would click on Presario 5000 series, since my model number is 5610.)
The next screen will ask you for your computer’s model number. Look on the front or back of the computer to find it if you don’t know it. Mine is a 5610f.
Finally, click on Find It on the next screen.
The very next page will tell you specifically what kind of RAM you need. Below are my results:
The page will also give you a price for the RAM:
This is for one “stick” (that’s how you purchase them – in sticks) of RAM for my computer if I want to get it from Crucial.com. To be sure you’re getting the best deal, Google the information about your RAM and see if you can find a better deal.
]]>I am a Phoenix native; born and raised. If you aren’t familiar with Phoenix weather in the summer, let’s just say that my daughter learned to count to one hundred and twenty when she was still in her play pen. There were thirty three days last year (2011) where the temperature was over a hundred and ten degrees. This does not a low electric bill make.
Remorseless Phoenix heat aside, the electric bills go up for everybody in the summer; in fact, energy costs are on the rise no matter what the season. Since most of us like our money to go places other than the electric company, we need to find ways that really work to keep that money in our pockets.
My guess is that you don’t want to have to spend a lot of money replacing appliances, etc., to lower your electric bill; you would like to just save the most money that you possible can every month and want to know how. If you’re up to breaking some (simple) old habits and acquiring (simple) new ones, I’ll show you how, and you will be very happy with your electric bill next month. And the month after and the month after…
Let’s take it one step at a time.
Before you do anything, have your house inspected.
Have you been in a room in your home that feels drafty and when you check one of the windows, there’s a teensy bit of air coming in the where the window is sealed? You have just found an energy-waster.
An energy inspection doesn’t have to cost a lot. Some electric companies have contractors that can be hired for around a hundred bucks, with some stipulations. Check with your electric company to see if they have a cheap home assessment contractor, or have them recommend someone who can.
The cost for fixing problems that the inspection exposed can vary widely. There are programs that have duct test and repair rebates; do some research online or talk to someone in your community to see what you can find out.
The inspection will also point out other energy savers, like upgrades; for instance, did you know that if you upgraded from single-pane to double-pane windows that you could save $600.00 and up per year?
Okay, now the fun stuff! Since I don’t know what your electric bill runs, let’s use a $300.00 electric bill as our base, and go through all of the tips. How can we control how to slash this nightmare of a bill? At the end of the article, we’ll add everything up and see how much we saved.
Let’s look at the big electricity hogs first.
Hog #1: Your air conditioner.
Air conditioning accounts for at least sixty to seventy percent of your bill, sometimes more.
Tip #1: Set your thermostat at 79 degrees or higher (I try and keep mine at 80 degrees). For each degree that you raise your thermostat, you will save 2 – 3 percent on the cooling part of your electric bill. Here’s some air conditioning math for you:
The electric bill is $300.00. Sixty five percent of that bill is your air conditioning, which comes out to $195.00. You had your thermostat set at 74 degrees. At a savings of three and a half percent ($6.30) per degree and raising it five degrees, you will save $31.50 per month, or $378.00 annually.
Tip #2: Use ceiling fans. Because they keep the air circulating, it’s automatically cooler in whatever room a ceiling fan is in; this can help you raise the thermostat an easy two degrees (at the least) and you’ll stay just as cool. (Don’t forget to have the fan spinning down so that it’s cooling the room and not the ceiling.) According to Supercheapelectricity.com, if you have multi-speed reversible fans, this will save you around $5.00 per month for two occupied rooms.
Tip #3: Close the vents in the rooms that you aren’t in very much or don’t use. I went to get something in my downstairs bathroom the other day, and it was freezing in there! The only time it’s used is when people come over, which makes it a big waste of air conditioning. I closed the vent, thus directing the air into the living room, where it was a bit hot. Nowadays (thanks to re-routing the air), not so much.
(Note: Don’t close more than two vents on your ground floor. Air conditioners release the cold air to every vent. If too many are closed, then the continuance in rushing air will put extra pressure on the ducts, creating leaks. The duct work is hard to access, so you won’t even know if/where you have leaks. Now not only is your bill higher, but you have the added cost of calling someone to check and fix the duct work.)
Tip #4: Change your air conditioning filter at least once a month. According to EnergySavers.gov, this is the single most important air conditioning maintenance task you can do. If you have a dirty filter, it will block the normal air flow and “reduce a system’s efficiency significantly”. Keeping the filters clean can lower your air conditioner’s energy consumption by 5 to 15 percent (depending on how dirty it is) simply because the air conditioner doesn’t have to work so hard. If you can lower your bill by $9.00 per month (five percent) or $108.00 per year by just changing the air conditioner filter, then you should do it.
Hog #2: Your heater
Gee, the heater is a hog? What a surprise. Your heater can account for thirty to forty percent of your bill, if not more.
Tip #1: Heat only the parts of the house you use. Just like the air conditioner, if you have the vents closed in the rooms that you don’t need heated, it will steer the heat to the rooms that you do.
Tip #2: Turn the thermostat down to at least 68 degrees; lower it more at night. Once again, every degree that thermostat is lowered full time, you save 3 – 4 percent on the heating part of your bill. If you lower your heater another ten degrees other different times (like when you go to work or when you go to bed), you can lower the heating portion of your bill by another 14 percent. Thus, if you have kept your heater at 72 degrees and lowered it to 68 degrees, and at night you lowered it another ten degrees, the math would look like this:
Thirty-five percent of your $300.00 bill is $105.00. By lowering it by ten degrees at night, you have saved $42.00 (14 percent of $300.00). By lowering it four degrees full-time, you have saved $14.00 of your bill (three and a half percent of your bill per degree). This is $56.00 per month off your bill, and $672.00 annually.
Tip #3: Keep yourself warm. Ya think? It may sound like a no-brainer, but if you are warm, you won’t need the heater as much. There are all kinds of new gadgets that you can use to keep yourself warm, like a neck warmer that uses a rechargeable lithium battery or battery-charged hand-warming gloves, just to name a couple And put some (more) clothes on! Lots of layers mean that you can raise the thermostat.
Hog #3: Your washer/dryer
Pretty easy to save energy with these…
Tip #1: Wash your clothes in cold water and/or turn the temperature down. Ninety – yes, ninety – percent of the energy used in washing one load of clothes goes to heating the water. If you aren’t heating the water, you are lowering that percentage to – well – nothing.
Tip #2: Line-dry your clothes. I told you that you were going to have to adopt some new habits that you may not like. I hate line-drying clothes! But a dryer can account for up to 18 percent of your electric bill. I know people who swear by line-drying clothes: A friend of mine said that since she gave up using the dryer, her bill has been about a third less than it used to be.
I hate line-drying clothes.
Tip #3: Change the filter in your dryer after every load. Same principal as the air conditioner. When the drier filter is full of lint, it blocks the air flow – something that is pretty important in driers, wouldn’t you think? If the air flow is blocked, then it takes a lot longer to dry your clothes, hence more energy, hence a higher bill.
Hog #4: Your refrigerator
Actually, this appliance can be the second biggest hog next to the air conditioner.
Tip: If you have an older refrigerator, you may really want to think about getting a new one that is EnergyStar compliant. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, refrigerators account for almost 14 percent of your electric bill. If you have a non-EnergyStar compliant refrigerator, you are missing out on saving at least $100.00 a year.
Hog #5: Your water heater
Oink, oink! This is a big one.
Tip #1: Set your water heater to 120 degrees. Your water heater accounts for eighteen percent of your electric bill. For every ten degrees you lower your water heater, you save three to four percent of your water heating costs. Here’s the math:
Tip #2: Take showers instead of baths and keep ‘em short. Baths use almost twice as much water as a shower does. And make your showers shorter so you don’t use as much hot water. (Duh.)
Tip #3: Keep the temperature of both showers and baths down. This is a drag in the winter, but you’ll survive. (Another habit you have to get used to; sorry.)
Water heating accounts for $54.00 of a $300.00 water bill. (Eighteen percent of $300.00). If your hot water heater was at 140 degrees and you lowered it to 120 degrees, at 3.5 percent per ten degrees, you have just saved $3.80 on the water heating portion of your bill, or $45.60 annually.
Now that we have gone through the things that hog your electricity, let’s go through the things that you do to hog your electricity and what you can do to fine-tune your electric bill.
- Get a programmable thermostat. This way, you can schedule when to turn the thermostat up and down and not have to do it manually. By doing this, you can have the thermostat be at whatever temperature you want it at when you want it. If you go on vacation, you really don’t need to heat or cool your empty house while you’re gone.
- Unplug the stuff that isn’t on! You may not know this, but every time you leave your cell phone charger plugged in (and it’s not charging your phone), it’s using energy. Every time you leave a blow dryer plugged in, it’s using energy. If your DVD player is plugged in and you aren’t watching a movie, it’s still using energy. Even in standby mode, gadgets use electricity. And on that note…
- Turn off your surge protectors! Think about it: If it’s not on, it doesn’t need to be protected! So every night before you go to bed, switch off all of your surge protectors. Even better: Put everything in the house on a surge protector, and then switch them off. Yes, it’s another obnoxious habit, but when I did it, I started saving about $25.00 a month! For stuff that wasn’t even being used.
- Quit turning the TV on if you’re not going to watch it. If my daughter walks into a room and there’s a TV in it, she turns it on. And will maybe walk out. Then I started to notice that the TV wasn’t turned off when we left the house sometimes, that it was on all day long, that TVs were being left on in rooms when people were in another room…Turn the TV off when nobody is in the room, and turn it off when nobody’s watching it.
- Change your light-bulbs from just a plain old light bulb to a brand new CFL light bulb.
There are regular light bulbs, and there are CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs; the new, hip, incredibly inexpensive, intelligent way to light up your house. A compact fluorescent light bulb uses about 75 percent less energy than a traditional one, and lasts 10 times longer. One regular light bulb lasts around 1,000 hours, and a CFL light bulb has a life span of 7,000 to 10,000 hours.
(On a side note, you can recycle them, too.)
Okay, this is a biggie – it’s like the sleeper of the energy savers: One single CFL light bulb can save you $28.00 per year. One. Just one. Let’s say you have one light bulb (just one) in the living room, the kitchen, one bathroom, one bedroom, and one porch light. That’s just five light bulbs (and you know you have way more than that). This is a total savings of (drum roll, please): $140.00 per year, or $11.70 per month.
Lighting in your home runs $60.00 per month (twenty percent of your bill). Let’s say that you run ten CFL light bulbs (because you know you have way more than five). You are now saving $23.40 per month, or $280.00 per year. (Except it’s probably more; you know that you have way more than ten.)
One added bonus: One bulb has an average life span of five years.
- Close the blinds. Or not. In the summer, keep ‘em shut to keep out the sun. In the winter, keep them open to let the sun in. Simple enough.
- Don’t use appliances all at the same time. Especially with the air conditioner on. Especially during the day.
- Turn your computer off or put it to sleep. There is a lot of speculation regarding whether you use more power if you leave your computer on all night, turn it off and on every time you use it, etc. The one thing that everybody agrees on, however, is that if it’s on, it should not be at full power. Put it to sleep if you’re going to be away from it for awhile.
- Use your laptop instead of your desktop, if you can. Reason being, laptops take eighty percent less energy than a desktop! Enough said.
- Use your dishwasher; don’t wash the dishes by hand. I am not kidding. Running a full load in an efficient dishwasher will use less hot water than washing up by hand in the sink if you use the “air dry” cycle. You’ll save 2-4 percent of your bill that way, which – at three percent – adds up to $9.00 a month, or $108.00 annually.
Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. Let’s add the up the ones I calculated:
Air conditioning: Save $31.50 per month, or $378.00 annually.
Changing the air filters: Save $9.00, or $108.00 per year.
Heater: Save $56.00 per month, or $672.00 annually.
Ceiling fans: Save $5.00 per month, or $60.00 annually.
Refrigerator, (non-EnergyStar compliant): Save$8.30 per month, or $100.00 annually.
Hot water heater: Save $3.80 per month, or $45.60 annually.
Dishwasher, full load: Save $9.00 per month, or $108.00.
Lighting: Save $23.40 per month, or $280.00 per year.
Turn off surge protectors: $25.00 per month, or $274.00 per month.
Total savings on a $300.00 electric bill per month: $171.00.
That, my friends, is a savings of fifty seven percent. And that doesn’t count the rest of the list.
Think of this: By implementing only the tips that were calculated, you have $171.00 extra this month. To celebrate (this one month only; you don’t want to defeat the whole purpose), take a short trip to the mountains, take a weekend and go stay at a hotel, go out to dinner, see a movie …do something! You deserve it after all of the hard work you put in to saving money on your electric bill this month. So just take some times and do it!
And don’t forget to turn out the lights.
[Editors Note – Who doesn’t like tricks? Especially when they are a bit crazy and ESPECIALLY when they save us money (and quite a lot!). We found this video which we though you and probably anyone you know might find quite useful 
This guy not only found a neat method (anyone can build it) to cut your bill by a further 75% or more…BUT also a “loophole” you can use to get the electric company to pay you cold hard cash. You can watch it by clicking here.