Most of us have found that our household bills have gone up. The fact that we are all spending more time at home has played a big role in this. If this has happened to you do not worry. As you will see you can soon regain control and get your bills back under control.

Reduce your heating bill

At this time of the year, heating your home is essential, which can add up in costs over time. My first tip is to use this handy guide from iheat.co.uk to help prevent your bills from building up too much. It contains seven relatively simple steps anyone can follow to reduce the cost of heating their home. The best thing about these tips is that most of them are not expensive to implement.

Don’t be afraid to swap suppliers

Once every year you should look at the bills you are paying and check whether you can get the service for less from another supplier. Often, you will be surprised by how much you can save by doing this.

But take your time, read the small print, and make sure you understand exactly what you are buying. Pay particular attention to how long you are entitled to the cheaper price that attracted you to the deal in the first place. It is not uncommon for companies to offer new customers a fantastic deal for the first 6 months of their contract, to then put the price up. This is OK provided you know about it and the price you end up paying across the year as a whole is lower than you were paying. But you need to check the small print to ensure that is how things will work out.

This article, which has been written by The Ombudsmen, outlines some of the most common pitfalls of changing energy or communications suppliers. It also explains how to avoid most of them.

Set a budget for decorating and maintaining your home and stick to it

It is just as important to control your sundry spending as it is to stay on top of the bills you pay every month. When decorating or maintaining your home, it is easy to quickly burn through more money than you intended. The best way to avoid doing this is to set aside funds to take care of these things, each month. That way should something need fixing or replacing you will already have most of the cash you need to get the job done already sitting in your bank account.

Get into DIY

Whenever you can, fix things yourself. It is not hard to find out how to do most things using YouTube. Provided you have the time to do so you can save money and learn some new skills at the same time.

Learn to upcycle

You may also want to try upcycling items rather than automatically throwing or giving them away. Sell what you have created or use that item in your own home.