Ways to Lower Your Electric Bill

With the slumping economic, we have to reduce our PUB bills. Here are several ways to cut back and save money without affecting our lifestyle.

Keep blinds and curtains closed. Curtains and blinds serve as a great insulator, thus reduce the heat in the room for day. Which equal to reduce use of air-conditioning.

Change the filters in air conditioners and furnaces. Not only does it keep systems running at optimum efficiency, it keeps the air in your home cleaner too.

Place window air conditioners on the shadiest side of the house. It won't have to work as hard and will use less power.

Ensure air conditioners and furnaces are the right size. Too small, it has to work too hard. Too large and they lose their efficiency, therefore using even more electricity. Nowadays energy saving air-cons are available to aid reducing your electric bill. But remember to off it when not in use.

Off appliances and electronic device. Keeping these items on tend to little electric, so remember to turn off when not in use.

Use energy saving bulbs. Although they cost a little more than regular bulbs, they last up to 10 times longer and use a lot less electricity.

Water heater. This is a high electric consuming item, keeping it on always is equal to having to power another fridge in your house. So do keep the water heater off to save some bucks monthly.

Always keep the fridge door closed. If you keep the fridge door open for too long, then cold air will escaped, thus causing more electric to use to generate cool air inside it again. Keep opening and closing also caused more electric use. So do pack your fridge neatly in order to take what you need.

Set timer for air-cons. Everyone are so used to having air-condition on throughout the night, but you can set timer to off the air con in the middle of the night or towards morning, since the room is already cool.

Choose fan as an alternative. Fan uses less electricity, if the weather is cooling, opt for fan as an alternative to air-cons.

Global crisis and recession

Year 2008 wasnt end at a high note, US economic depreciation impact the global economy cycle. During this grave economic crisis, Government introduce Singapore Budget 2009 to aid companies as to reduce financial burdens. Growth in the global economy as well as in Singapore last year fell well below what was expected. We are now in the midst of a simultaneous recession in all major regions of the world. Prospects for 2009 remain highly uncertain.

Asia has not been decoupled from the decline in the advanced economies. Across the region, industrial production and exports have fallen dramatically in recent months. China industrial production towards the end of 2008 is estimated to have been below half the levels seen at the start of the year. Taiwan’s exports contracted by 42% in December and Singapore’s by 21% . Korea’s latest export data shows a drop of over 30%.

The result is that recession is everywhere. Job losses in the US in Dec 2008 were the worst in 60 years, and unemployment has risen to 7.2%, mounting to 2 million people jobless, and numbers expected to rise. In the Euro area, it has risen to 7.8% and in Japan to 3.9%, and is expected to rise further. Even in China, despite positive economic growth overall, job losses have risen sharply in the coastal provinces. All major regions of the world are experiencing economic decline at the same time, which makes this the first truly global recession in the post-war period. No economy is able to rely on exports to pull it out of recession.

Domestic spending in advance countries, is unlikely to recover for some time. US consumers are over stretched, due to housing loan and bad debts from credit. The slump of US property prices causing many US consumers to be in debts. Thus they will have to gradually repay their loan and therefore spending will be more cautious. Whereas consumers from China and Europe are also facing depreciation values of their homes and assets.

Singapore Government economic forecasts for 2009 wasnt optimistic, projecting GDP to contract by between 2% and 5%. Despite Singapore having the lowest percentage of unemployment, however given the severe economic recession, many more jobs to be at risk this year.

With the length of recession uncertain, do manage your personal income and tide over this year, or years if to come.

To find out for Budget 2009 how much you will receive, please visit Household Budget calculator.

Personal Saving

How many times you have ask yourself where have all money gone? What have you spend on? When did you spend them? Never notice your spending habits, now is you to take control of your money sense.

Do work out your daily budget, meaning if you need only $20 a day, just have enough for that. Any excess will be addition spending, because you will have the concept of not buying enough. Unless you are good enough to control & track your spending even having excess cash.

Credit cards are useful, as you get to pay later. But using credit cards increase the risk of overspending. If you ended up not clearing your bills, it will eventually snow-balled to a larger bill.

Do you have any bad debts? If you do, please hold out your credit cards and cut them half. Then do repay your debts slowly but make it a point to pay up. This period will be quite stressful, but if you tide over, everything will be fine. If you want to buy something, wait till you save enough for it and you pay for it, not through partial payments or installments.

Now use your handphone or create an excel spreadsheet to take note of whatever you have spend on, thus review them weekly and you will know what you have been spending on. (It might sound crazy, you might have thought about it, but have you actually do it? Try it out and you will know the different.)

Remember, take control of your money, not your money control you.