More Savings Tips From AARP

Last week I gave you some tips from the AARP magazine's article called "99 Great Ways to Save". Many of them don't apply to us, but I found a dozen or so that really made sense. Here are a few more for you to think about.

1. Book airline flights on line to save booking fees. Almost all airlines charge a booking fee if you book by phone or at a ticket counter. Once you get the hang of it, booking on line will also save you time.
2. Just 10 seconds of idling your car's engine uses as much gas as restarting it. Two minutes uses enough fuel to drive a mile. I never knew this. So turn off your engine when waiting more then a few seconds.
3. Are you owed money? You may be and not even know it. The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators is holding almost $33 billion of unclaimed stocks, bank accounts and other assets. Go to missingmoney.com or unclaimed.org to see if there's anything with your name on it.
4. Pay annually, rather than in installments and you could save as much as 8% by avoiding fees. This refers to things like auto insurance and home insurance that is typically paid quarterly. Check with your carrier.

The following tips were sent in by readers. Although some of them seemed silly to me, a few of them are worth mentioning.

1. Wait 24 hours before you buy anything that costs more than $100. If you still want it the next day, buy it. Chances are it was an impulse item and you will no longer want it. I remember when my son David was a teenager, he worked at a retirement home in Los Angeles. This was before he drove, so when I would pick him up we would walk past Bullocks Department Store and he would typically want to spend his earning on something he saw at Bullocks. I would always tell him to wait until the end of the week, and if he still wanted it, he should buy it. He rarely even remembered what it was by the end of the week.
2. Don't buy canned goods from the grocery store until your cupboards are half empty. With full cupboards you can't even see what's in the back, so use up the stuff in front and then you'll have lots of new products you didn't even know were there. A while ago I wrote a blog about not buying any canned goods for a month and using up what you have. If your kitchen is anything like mine, I don't need to buy anything for several months.
3. Turn off call waiting. This will save you $5 per month, or $60 a year. I figure anyone who wants to get in touch with me will leave a message or call back.

I hope these tips will be of value to you. Maybe you have never thought about some of these. I hope so. None of these tips will affect your quality of life at all. They will just put more money in your pocket for you to spend on yourself.