You can save money on your electric bill this holiday season by paying close attention to your energy consumption.

• Purchase LED lights which require less energy than regular Christmas lights.
• Don’t run your Christmas lights all night. In fact, you might wait until the week of Christmas to even turn your lights on.
• Only leave your lights on for a few nights each week. You can use a timer to have your lights automatically turn out.
• Turn off the lights in the room with your Christmas tree. Let the lights from the tree light the room.
• Buy Christmas gifts that can use batteries instead of electricity.

You can control your energy-consumption by paying attention to the amount of electricity you use. There’s a tendency to use extra electricity during the holidays, so following these tips will help keep your electric bill lower.

One of the ways to decrease your car insurance premium is to increase your deductible.

Your car insurance deductible is the part you pay when you make a claim. For example, if you have a $500 deductible and your claim costs $1,000. The insurance company will pay $500 and you’ll be responsible for the other $500.

Deductibles are usually something like $100, $250, $500, or $1,000. The lower your deductible, the higher your premium and vise versa.

If you’re a safe driver and rarely make claims, you could raise your deductible to the highest possible and save money on your car insurance premium. No matter what level your deductible, it’s a good idea to have it stashed away in a savings account or emergency fund so you have access to it when you need it. Otherwise, you could be forced to borrow the deductible at a high interest rate, which could negate any savings.

Now, if you’re someone who frequently makes claims, it’s better to keep a lower deductible. If you don’t, you’ll pay a hefty price each time you make a claim. You should still keep the deductible in an easily accessible savings account.

A couple of months ago, I took a look at my spending and managed to cut out $100 worth of things I could live without.

1. Cancel unneeded subscription services.  Lots of subscription services make money from people who pay but don’t actually use the service.  A few months ago that was me.  I cancelled a credit monitoring service – $12 – and movie subscription service – $22 - and saved $34 a month.

2. Reduce your cable options.  I was also paying for HBO and Cinemax – $26.  I love movies, but I’ve been watching tv a lot less during these summer months, so I cut out the premium channels for awhile.

3. Reduce insurance costs.  Make sure you have the right insurance coverage.  I was able to save $16 between renter’s and car insurance by reducing coverage and asking for discounts.  You can also increase your deductible to decrease your monthly rate.  If you end up with a higher deductible, make sure you have that amount tucked away in your emergency fund.

4. Change your rate plan or get rid of the cell phone all together.  Make sure you’re getting the best use of your cell phone rate plan.  If you’re constantly paying for overages, you either need to talk less or increase your minute plan.  Or, if you always have minutes left over, go to a lower plan.  You can also stop buying features like ringtones and wallpapers.  If you have a landline phone and a cell phone, get rid of one of them.

5. Cook more.  By that I mean, cook more frequently (rather than going out) and cook enough to have leftovers.  It’s been proven that cooking your own meals costs a lot less per month than eating out everyday.  You can eat the leftovers the next day for dinner or pack them in your lunch.  One-dish meals like casseroles, soups, spaghetti, and lasagna are easy to make in large quantities.

6. Buy store brand ingredients.  When you’ll be mixing ingredients together to make a dish, you won’t notice a difference between a store brand and premium brand.  For example, the next time you make lasagna – use store brand noodles, ricotta cheese, and eggs.  You can even experiment with store brand sauce if you have seasonings to fix it up.

7. Drive smart.  When the price of regular gas is reaching $4.30/gallon in some places, saving on gas will certainly help.  Drive during the times of day with the least amount of traffic.  This will cut down on the stop and go that burns gas.  When you’re driving longer distances, set your cruise control to 65 or 70 to stop yourself from accelerating and decelerating too much.

Those are my tips.  What are you doing to save money these days?

When it comes to recognizing your budget’s guilty pleasure, the signs may be there, but what you really need are cold hard facts.  If you want to find out what you spend most of your money on, it’s time to do some number crunching.

Depending on how you spend, there are two ways you can figure out your weak spot.

1. If you mostly spend cash, you’ll need to save your receipts for a certain period of time.  Two weeks to a month should be enough time to recognize a pattern.

2. If you use a check card, you can download your transactions into a spreadsheet and look at them.  Some online banking systems only allow you to download into a personal finance software like Quicken or Microsoft Money.  If this is the case, you can copy and paste into Excel.  Or, you can still use the receipt saving method.

Ultimately, you want to get a detailed list of spending in one place.  Categorize your spending, e.g. Food, Utilities, Transportation, Entertainment, Miscellaneous, etc.

Once you’ve grouped your spending, look for high spending in areas like food, entertainment, and miscellaneous.  This will clue you in to what your budget’s guilty pleasure might be.  Are you eating out a lot?  Buying a lot of clothes?  Spending money on DVDs?

When you figure out what you’re spending your money on, the next step is cutting back (or eliminating) your spending in that area.  How do you do that?  Well, it takes some old-fashioned self-discipline.

These are some things you have to consider:

• Can you find a buyer for an SUV right now?
• Will you able to sell or trade your SUV for what it’s worth?

The answer to the first question is maybe, the answer to the second is probably not. 

Let’s say your SUV is worth $20,000.  You’re able to trade it for a car worth $15,000.  You have a $5,000 difference to make up for in gas savings.

Now, let’s say your SUV used $400/month in gas.  Your new car uses $200/month in gas.  It will take 26 months to start seeing savings.

A sell/trade is most economical when you can trade for as close to your car’s value as possible.  Otherwise, it could be years before you start realizing the gas savings.

If you’re thinking about getting a lower gas mileage car, make sure you crunch the numbers first.  In the meantime, look at these five ways to save on gas.

• Shop around.  The gas station you pass on the way to work might not have the lowest price gas in your area.  A site like GasBuddy.com can help you find the cheapest gas near you.
• Buy early or late.  Avoid buying gas during rush hour when gas prices are typically at their highest.

Carpooling, public transportation, and working from home are also options for saving on gas.  If you drive an SUV or other vehicle with low gas mileage, you might consider trading for a more fuel-friendly set of wheels.  Remember, if you’re spending more money on gas, you’ll probably have to cut spending somewhere else in your budget to continue making the most of your money.