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Next Year I Will Save

Written by: James Dicks

Article Overview: James Dicks looks at how the American family is changing their habits to save money in their personal budgets.

Next Year I Will Save

Well it's amazing and here is some background. Shortly after Thanksgiving every year my kids, like all others, get excited about the holiday season. One of the things we like to do is ride around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights but this year was strange because more than half of the homes that had lights last year didn’t have Christmas lights up. I was wondering why, until yesterday - now I know.

It took two weeks after Christmas for me to figure it out; I guess I am a little slow. We have already taken our lights down and then it hit me, or should I say delivered to me. I got my electric bill in the mail today, it was way higher than expected, I actually got a shock -sorry couldn’t resist it. But seriously I couldn’t figure out why it was so high, so my wife called the electric company and complained. We are conscious about wasting electricity in our home and this bill was insulting.

I wanted to know when the reader from the electric company was last at my house. It's no secret that electric companies take an average of your meter each month and they don’t always send someone out to your home to read the meter. Only until you call and insist or complain will they send the meter reader out. Some places the meters are digital and will automatically upload but there’s not that many yet. Plus, just the other day one of our local power companies announced that they plan to raise their utility rates 25 percent! If that doesn’t make you want to save energy (and money) I don’t know what will!

So after going back and forth with the electric company we find out the most likely culprit of our astronomically high electric bill were the Christmas lights. After further discussion the nice lady in customer service from our local power company told us that there were a lot of people who just didn’t put any Christmas lights up in an effort to save money on the electric bills this year. WOW - the economy is affecting all sorts of things even the little things, so next year, I put up lights but if you want to see them you better drive by early because they will only be on from 7:00 pm to 7:20 pm.

If you’re saving money you’re making money!

Happy Investing!

James Dicks

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Article Tags: economy, expenses, goals, investing, james dicks, money, premieretrade, saving money



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