In a month that is known for excessive spending, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at a few of the things that my wife and I did this month to save money.  Each separate idea is bold so you can easily skip to the next one if the current one is not of interest.

Smartphone Coupons

This is my wife’s notable source of savings for the month.  Brianne is a pretty serious coupon shopper and it almost makes her sick to shop, eat or do anything that we don’t have a discount coupon for.  She has been amazed at the number of people she has met in checkout lines who don’t know that stores will take their coupons from your smartphone.  Some of the stores she did this at in December include: Michael’s, Joann’s, Hobby Lobby, Kohl’s, and World Market, among others.

Before going in the store, she will whip out her iPhone and Google “michael’s coupons” or whatever would be appropriate.  Quite often a website for that store will generate a coupon that can be scanned directly from the phone.  She did this at Market Street while doing Christmas shopping and saved $20 in one trip alone.  She estimates that each month she saves at least the cost of the data plan for her phone.

Target is especially phone friendly.  They have a monthly text message that is sent out to subscribers with a link to coupons.  Combine these special savings with the 5% off from the Red card and you can get some pretty good savings with almost zero effort.  You can join the Target coupon alerts by clicking here.

Appliance Repair

By far our single biggest savings was made by doing some appliance repair ourselves.  At the beginning of the month our refrigerator and our washing machine started acting up.  Our fridge stopped cooling and the washer developed a significant leak.  We built our home in 2007 and filled it with all new appliances, now they’re starting to have issues every now and then.  I diagnosed and repaired both of my appliances via Google, here’s how…

For our Whirlpool fridge I started by doing a Google search of “whirlpool, warm fridge, cool freezer.”  That search yielded tons of great resources with step-by-step troubleshooting to determine the problem.  In our case the fridge had simply frozen up.  Sometimes they can do this if the door accidentally gets left ajar…which with a 5 year-old can happen very easily.  The fix was to pull out the freezer drawers on our bottom freezer unit.  Then pull off the panel at the back of the freezer compartment and de-ice the coils.  My wife came home to find me half inside the freezer using her hair dryer to thaw the coils out.  Lucky for me the repair worked and I didn’t mess up her hair dryer.

Our GE front-loading clothes washer had been leaking some water from the drum, and had water that would collect in the bottom of the drum after a few hours.  Some quick searching on Google pulled up several options.  The first solution was to clean out the lint trap.  A good number of owners of front-loader washers have experienced ‘stinky washer syndrome.’  If you have smelled the funk, search Google for how to clean out the lint trap for your machine and you’ll probably be fixed up.

For me, that wasn’t the solution, although I pulled out lots of ‘goodies’ from the lint trap.  All signs pointed to the fact that we had a faulty water inlet valve.  Many times the valve becomes clogged with mineral deposits.  In our area we have Appliance Parts Depot.  They always seem to have the right part in stock for my projects.  The new valve set me back $45.  Replacement was EASY and educational.  Pulled the unit away from the wall, turned off the water supply at the wall and unhooked the hoses from the back of the machine.  Unplugged the machine, took out 3 screws and slid the top off.  The valve was right there and super easy to replace.  It was interesting to look inside the machine and see the different setup of the front-loading drum.  The new valve fixed the standing water issue which resolved the leak as well.

I am guessing I saved between $250 and $400 in service call fees, labor and part markup for the two separate repairs.  Obviously appliance repair is not for everyone and can sometimes make things worse if you don’t know what you’re doing.  I have had repairs that I have researched and come to the conclusion it would be better to pay a professional to come out and fix the problem.  It is smart to at least Google your problem so you can be an informed customer.  Plus you’ll learn some things about your appliances which might allow you to use them more efficiently.

Recyclebank

My final entry isn’t necessarily a savings as much as an opportunity to make a few bucks doing something you are probably doing already.  In our city, the waste management company works with Recyclebank.com to give points to residents who are recycling.  When we received our new roll-out recycle container I registered our bin with Recyclebank and began getting points every time the truck picked up our bin.  In the course of the last year, I earned enough points for $20 in gift cards to Amazon and iTunes.  This isn’t a huge amount of money, but making some extra cash for a chore I do every week is pretty smart.  They even have quizzes and other activities you can do on their website that will earn you extra points.  It might be worth checking with your city to see if they already participate in this program.  They are basically paying me 50 cents each time I roll my recycle bin to the curb.  Just taking the quizzes would be enough to earn you a small amount of cash over time.

What have you done this month to save some money? or to make a little bit of extra money?   Leave your idea or story in the comment section.

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