Updated :  05-Mar-2014

Here are 9  10 11 tips¹ to save money from my personal experience. But let’s get something clear first, to avoid unnecessary quibbles about spending money. These tips are NOT meant for you to stop spending. It’s about spending less than you need to; it’s getting the biggest bang for your buck. And these are things that I personally do (or will do soon) so these tips are not some rehash of some other articles from the Internet.

OK, let’s start, in no particular order other than whatever comes to my mind first.

• Throttle down your aircond. My family is one of those who cannot live without aircond and I’m not here to tell you to fix ventilators to replace your aircond. I just want to point out a fact about coolness and comfort. A common definition of “room temperature” is 27 deg. C. Since coolness and comfort are subject to personal preferences, we can generalise that a comfortable cool environment is between 24 deg. – 26 deg. C.
  

  Aircond is for comfort and not to freeze yourself.

  Personally, I think 25 deg. C is cool enough for me without causing undue discomfort. Now quite a number of you will start disputing that (including my son) and claim that you need to set your room aircond much lower than that ( and especially your car aircond ).  But why? If you have been to a temperate country (or locally to Genting or Fraser’s or Cameron ), you’ll recall that when the ambient temperature is 24-26 deg, it’s already cool enough; and at night when the temperature drops lower than that,  you really have to wear warm clothings. Here’s what I think. If your room (or car) aircond needs to be set at a “lower” thermostat setting before you feel cool, then your aircond needs to be serviced. It is simply taking too long to bring the room temperature down to your  required set temperature. The filters may be dirty or the refrigerant needs a refill. The physics is simple. If you feel cool in Genting when the ambient temperature is 24 deg, there’s no reason why you won’t feel the same, if your room aircond has brought the room temperature down to 24 deg. Service your aircond, set your thermostat to 24-26 deg and not any lower. While you are at it, set to Auto so that the blower fan will also be throttled down. Aircond is for comfort and not to freeze yourself.

• Upgrade to 3-phase. If you’re like me with more than 3 airconds, you may benefit from changing to 3-phase power supply.  When we were on the original single-phase power supply, our monthly electricity bill was hovering around RM450-600. After changing to 3-phase, our monthly bill is now less than RM400. My December bill is only RM242.50.

• Shop online where possible.  I have stopped going to Low Yat Plaza for my gadgets and gizmos. No more car jams, tolls, parking aggravation.
  

  No more car jams, tolls, parking aggravation.

  Recently I bought a cassete player with USB output (for converting my tapes to MP3) and a 50-feet HDMI cable (for my home theatre) from online shops and they cost me less than if I were to buy locally. Delivery by parcel post and no import duty. And no sweat. In fact, you should be able buy almost anything, from books to clothings to the latest electronic gadget online today; usually at a lower cost too.

• Try eating slower. If you have been spending too much on food and putting on too much weight in the process, try eating much, much slower. Chew, chew your food. You will find that you need less than what you normally eat. How to beat that? Save money and save your health. It seems to be working for me.

• Look for house brands. Do you know that the larger retailers like Tesco, Carrefour (previously), Watson and even Guardian have house branded products that are much cheaper than the equivalent global brands?
  

  House branded products … are much cheaper than the equivalent global brands.

  I buy my cat food from Tesco (branded Tesco). My wife found Guardian mouthwash at about 50% cheaper than the equivalent Listxxxxx brand. Oh, incidentally, I’m sure you know that salt water would make just as good a mouthwash, right?

• Last minute sales or near-expiry date products are generally much cheaper, if your consumption is immediate or imminent. For example, you know that confectioneries and doughnuts go real cheap just before the store’s closing time each night. And many stores start marking down the prices of goods whose expiry dates are approaching. I’m sure you know this yourself. But you must be agonising over the expiry day and wondering if it’s still fit for consumption right?  Educate yourself on shelf life and expiry date (not the same) at Wikipedia, and then read this Time article. Now make your own decision.

• Be a vegetarian. If you have been contemplating to be a vegetarian, now’s the time to do it, especially when food prices are skyrocketing. No, I don’t mean eating at the fancy vegetarian restaurants that are just as expensive as regular ones.
  

  If you have been contemplating to be a vegetarian, now’s the time to do it.

  I mean, common sense will tell you that an ordinary vegetarian meal will cost less than a meal with fish or meat or fowl. In fact, most vegetables can be grown easily at home too. I plan to do that and will write about that in a future article. But beyond our individual pockets, you might want to re-think your dietary choices if you read Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Eating Animals.

• Use energy saving lamps or LED lamps. I was debating with myself whether to include this or not, since it does introduce the problem of safe disposal of the energy saving lamps. I will investigate this further in the local context and report in another article. But for the purpose of saving money, this is now beginning to be achievable. For a long time, it was frustrating to buy a more-expensive “energy-saving” lamp for long-term savings only to find that the lamp’s short life has made any savings a fantasy. It was in fact more costly. But today, the lamps seem to last longer. We use these energy-saving lamps for our perimeter lighting all night long and that doesn’t seem to hurt our electricity bill much. By the way, night-time perimeter lighting is reputed to deter break-ins a lot.

• Spend more time at home. Have a hobby (photography?), home theatre, music, books or even the Internet. No reason to go out more than you should. Entertain others and yourself at home

¹    Make your own household cleaner with Garbage Enzyme.
I have almost forgotten about this. Looking at the prices of            detergents and cleaning liquids nowadays, it’s time to revisit this great way to be “green” and save money along the way. The method is well-documented in many websites. These clear instructions are from BMS Organics.

11.  Use Gas for Heating

If LNG is cheaper in your location than electricity, use gas for heating purposes such as boiling water, instead of electrical kettle. In addition, when using the electric rice cooker, start with hot water to reduce the time required by the electric cooker to cook the rice.