Save money today

Imagine finding hundreds of extra dollars in your bank account each month. Mistake? Magic? Miracle? Nope. You can do it simply by taking control of your cash and shaving 30, 40 or even 70 per cent off of bills for your utilities, insurance, banking and vehicle. Think it's tough? Think again. Here are 38 big and small ways to make it happen this summer and year-round.

Use energy smarts

Reduce your cooling and heating needs. Deanna Trowsdale-Mutafov uses pricey air conditioning about 10 days a year. The rest of the time, she cools her home in Regina with a kitchen ceiling fan, newly planted shade trees and heat-reflective pvc vertical blinds. That's not all: she has shrunk her family's gas bills by 35 per cent over the past three years by insulating and drywalling the basement laundry room, replacing the 25-year-old gas furnace and swapping the drafty wood-burning fireplace in her living room with a high-efficiency wood-burning stove to better circulate warm air in winter.

Close your fireplace damper to keep cooling costs down in the summer. If you don't use the fireplace for extended periods, Natural Resources Canada suggests plugging it with a cloth-covered board.(Just make sure that you remove it before you light a fire!)

Turn off the pilot light on your gas furnace during the spring and summer months. You'll shave a cool $200 off your heating tab, according to Kristen Marshall-Wallace, a home energy advisor for EnerGuide.

Switch off the air conditioner breaker on your electrical panel when summer's over, advises Lisa Pinkus, a Toronto-based mechanical engineer. Leaving it on all winter means you're needlessly heating oil in the outside cooling unit and throwing away $25.

Get a programmable thermostat(about $70)to automatically lower the heat a few degrees during weekdays when no one's home and at night. You can save about two per cent of your heating and cooling costs for every one degree Celsius lowered or raised.

Steam your veggies in the microwave and use up to 75 per cent less energy than you would on the stove

Plug those leaks

Insulate the attic and save about five to 10 per cent on your heating and cooling costs. Use batt insulation(available at home-improvement stores)or blown cellulose(best installed by a professional).

Wrap a foil insulation blanket around your hot-water tank(available at home-improvement stores for about $25). While you're at it, cover copper and metal hot-water pipes with 1/2-inch-(1-cm-)thick foam tubing(about $2 per six feet/1.8 m)to retain water heat. Total savings: up to $200 a year.

Seal joints of warm-air ducts with long-lasting aluminum-backed tape(don't use duct tape: it dries out)to prevent up to 25 per cent of your heat from escaping through them. Also, use silicone caulking to fix air leaks around baseboards, floors and windows.

Insulate electrical outlets and switches on exterior walls with 25-cent foam gaskets picked up at the hardware store. See Get paid thousands for saving energy(page 70)for even more ways to save big.

Turn down the juice

Use compact fluorescent light bulbs, indoors and out, and save about $30 a year. Conventional light bulbs are cheap, but they suck up a lot of power and money. Compact fluorescent bulbs may cost a bit more, but they use about 75 per cent less electricity than standard bulbs and last up to 10 times longer.