Winter seems to be here and with the colder weather setting in, our want for warmth and comfort increases. Instead of using more electricity and water to warm ourselves up, here are seven tips for saving money this winter.

These ideas might not work for everyone, but if you can do a few of them, you can make a difference to the extra money that you spend over the cold months, and not land up hating winter because you spend all that extra money.

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Seven tips for saving money this winter

1. Use warm blankets and warm clothes at home. Instead of getting home and putting on the heater, add a layer of clothes, or change into some warmer, more comfortable clothes. Another advantage of not heating the room is that you won’t end up getting sick because you are moving from a warm room to a cold room and then back to a warm room
2. Use ceiling fans in winter. Experts say that you need to change the direction of the ceiling fan so that instead of pushing air down, it sucks the air up, and the warm air is then fed down the walls.
3. Close your blinds or curtains except when the sun is shining directly on the windows. This provides an extra layer of insulation which keeps the warm air inside your house. Glass is not a very good insulator and lets a lot of heat out.
4. Use a geyser blanket. These can be bought and they aren’t too difficult to install yourself. What this does is keep the geyser warmer for longer, so the temperature takes longer to drop and it takes that much longer before the geyser switches onto the heating cycle again.
5. Where you can, install LED lights, it saves a lot of energy.
6. Start cooking in batches. Cook food for a number of meals at the same time. Consider foods that you can and can’t freeze and start making batches of food. For example, you can cook stew or soup for 3 or 4 meals and either refrigerate or freeze the other portions. When its supper time, just heat on the stove or in the microwave and you will have a quick meal and save power at the same time.
7. As they say “een man se dood is 'n ander man se brood”. We have just had a health scare in South Africa with Lysteriosis. As a result, many factories closed down. Pork is used to make polony and other processed meat, and as a result of the listeriosis scare, the price of pork has dropped dramatically. This will continue for quite a while, because there is an oversupply of pork at the moment.

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If you are still struggling with your finances, and you can’t keep your head above water, contact RD Debt Counselling for a FREE debt review.

Russell Dickerson from RD Debt Counselling chats about RD Debt Counselling and how they can help you become debt free in the shortest possible time. Catch Russell on East Rand Stereo, every Saturday morning at 8:15.