This is where your finance takes place

I am looking for ways to generate a positive monthly cash flow of $1,500 so my wife could quit working and take care of our two children. I wrote about 6 ways to increase my cash flow and I will now be trying to make the link between the theory and the reality.

I taught I would start with the easiest way according to me; cutting down on the fix payments.

Negotiating my insurance premiums

We all have many types of insurances. Renegotiating your policies for a lower premium could be an easy way to increase your monthly cash flow. I already have a term life insurance policy and I do not expect to perform any modification in regards to the amount of the policy. Our insurance policy covers our need if anything bad would happen to my wife or myself. Therefore, there is nothing much to save on this part!

However, I do have a car insurance that came up for renewal in September. When the customer representative called me to renew my policy, I asked him how I could decrease my premium. There are many factors that kick in the calculation of your premium. To name a few, we find your age, sex, marital status, driving tickets, if you ever had any car accidents and your beacon score. I am already over the magic bar of 25, I am married with kids, I did not have much driving tickets since last year, no accident and I already have a great beacon score. Hum… it looks like I can’t do much on this side either…

But wait, the insurance deductible is another factor, the guy says. Well, I have been insured for the past 10 years and I never collect anything for my car. I decided to increase my deductible from $500 to $1,000. To my opinion, even if my car repair would go up to 2K, I would still not declare it. From many friends I know, the insurance company increased their premium significantly the year after their accident. Therefore, I decided it was worth it. I was able to save $18/month by increasing my insurance deductible. Unfortunately, I was not able to save on my house insurance premium as no modifications could be made.

Power saving

You already know that, I am not big on frugality. However, I am still able to make smart sacrifices. I moved into my house a year ago, back in November. I had a monthly plan of $199 per month for my electricity bill. I did very small modifications in my house since then. The first thing I did was to install electronic thermostats in every room. I paid about $250 for the whole kit and received a rebate of $50 bucks from our power company (it was link to some kind of promotion). We didn’t heat much during last winter (Mind you, I live in Quebec, Great Country of Cold Winter!). In fact, our thermostats were working a couple of hours in the morning and when we used to come back to work.

Each time a regular light broke, I replaced it by a more energy efficient one. Finally, I decided to turn off our AC system as much as I could. I just received my new monthly plan for the upcoming year; $189 a month. Another $10 bucks saved.

While it is not the end of the world, I still managed to create $28 per month at my first attempt. I have to find another $1,472 and I will be good to go! I’ll be working more on being frugal and find better ways to cut down my expenses on a steady base. However, I still have to wait a few months to see my other tricks works. Stay tuned for more updates!

 

 

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However, I do have a car insurance that came up for renewal in September. When the customer representative called me to renew my policy, I asked him how I could decrease my premium.