I'm all for public education, but yesterday's local school operating and capital improvement levy passage means my wife and I will have to come up with another $800 a year, or $66 a month, to cover the increase in taxes. This means it's time to look for fat to trim from our monthly budget. I'm sure the same process is taking place in millions of households across the country this morning, including, perhaps, yours.

Where will we find $800?

The prime candidate is our cable bill. We've bundled Internet, phone and cable TV, and the total is now over $160 a month. For that, I watch very few TV shows. Following the advice of WalletPopper Tracey Coenen, I'll revisit my service. After being inundated by political phone calls on our landline, I'm willing to consider dropping the phone component altogether. We're lucky enough to have a choice between three hard-wired services (Time Warner, WOW, and AT&T) in addition to satellite, so some comparison shopping here could pay off in savings without sacrificing my precious, precious internet access.

Another place that we might trim our expenses is our cell phone. While I use my Blackberry as a backup access avenue to my online work, I don't know that this service is essential. Cutting back to conventional cell phone service could cut our bill $50 a month.

We usually keep our thermostat at 68 degrees in the winter, 76 in the summer. Dropping the winter heat a couple of degrees, raising it a couple in the summer, could trim some bucks from our energy bills.

For years, we've shared dinner out with our friends on Friday night. We could cut out one meal a month, banking $10-15 to help cover our bills.

I might also hustle up some more freelance work, though with the growing unemployment rate work is harder to come by.

Did yesterday's elections raise your local tax obligation? How much? Where will YOU find the money? Please share.

The mail carrier knows: when the envelopes from the local utilities start changing color, it's bad news. Most gas and power companies use yellow for warning, pink for impending shut-off. In an NPR interview, Andrea the mail carrier (who is not yet a figure in John McCain's campaign) talked about what she knew about the economy from her mail route. She knew, for instance, that there were many residents on her Seattle route who were constantly flirting with shut-off notices.

Today's Wall Street Journal has more solid proof, citing reports that localities such as Memphis and Pennsylvania had increased utilities shut-offs between 38% and 78% so far this year, with a New Jersey utility company making the chilling observation that it has been "diligent in our shutoff activities" in 2008.

But you hardly need independent verification; all you have to do is walk around your neighborhood and look for the door knob notices in bright colors, the closer to red, the worse off your neighbors are. Utilities are responding to the situation without remorse, considering reducing the past-due amount that will require shut-off and installing new wireless, digital meters that can be shut off remotely without extra cost for sending out a crew. (Brilliant! Power to the ... oh wait ...)

Have you seen many pink envelopes in your neighborhood? I've seen a few in mine, but it's the same houses all the time, so it hardly feels connected to the economic crisis. But with prices up everywhere, this winter could prove to be full of bright colors.

Playing on the Halloween theme, Best Buy has declared today Vampire Awareness Day to draw attention to "vampire power", the electricity squandered by devices while turned off. While I'm not one to parrot a company's PR pitch, I thought this was a cool way to address the costly problem. According to the company , 40% of the electricity used in a household is wasted powering turned-off electronics such at TVs and computers, costing us around $4 billion a year.

The company makes some simple suggestions about how to reduce the vampire power drain on your precious electron flow:

• Use power strips, and turn them off when the items are not in use.
• Turn off your computer when not in use.
• Unplug chargers when not in use. They continue to draw current even when not hooked up to the cell phone or other device they are intended to recharge.
• Buy Energy Star products that minimize power waste.
• There are also devices on the market that help minimize vampire power drain, although you should do the math on them to make sure the purchase price exceeds the cost of power saved.
  

Relates stories:

Fight electric suckage with your own power meter

Save $$$ on your PC electric bill with Edison

The Bedfan: simple solution to saving energy

If it's true that less is more, Bill and Sharon Kastrinos have got it all. The couple have recently moved from their 1800-square foot home to a house that looks more like a shed. The first floor (that's right, this is a two-story home) holds a small sitting area, tiny kitchen, and bathroom in 98 square feet. The upstairs is their 56-square foot bedroom, and their car functions as their dresser so they don't have to store extra clothes in their limited living space.

The Kastrinos say that downsizing so drastically was a major adjustment and sacrifice, but that it also has a huge upside. The house cost only $15,000, and their utilities are a mere $15 a month. Their wheeled and easily mobile abode is currently parked on their daughter's property, but they can easily tow their home and plug into any RV park in the country if they want to relocate.

Bill Kastrinos is now building homes similar to his and selling them to others who wish to or need to downsize, or folks who just want to own a home but can't afford much more than this. He says that inquiries for the homes, which sell for around $15,000-$20,000, have increased recently.

The idea of shedding (no pun intended) all excess and moving into a home that wouldn't require a mortgage is definitely appealing, but I don't think I could make this my permanent lifestyle -- could you do it?

If you're looking to make some money-saving changes around the house, you know that kicking your thermostat up or down a few degrees is a small change that can save big bucks -- and that's just your personal electric bill. Think about the savings when we adopt the same practices in our larger buildings, like office complexes and schools.

Unfortunately, in many school buildings, it's not as simple as moving the thermostat up or down a tick. These buildings are heated by huge furnace boilers that can't be easily switched on and off -- so once they're on, they stay on. That's why a school board in Nova Scotia voted to push back the "on" date by approximately two weeks this year, to November 1.

With the rising cost of furnace fuel, this region was one of many that found itself way over its heating budget last year. This year, the school board estimates that the change will save approximately $1,000 per school in its system, adding up to approximately $24,000 in savings. Additionally, the board has asked that all cabinets and bookshelves blocking radiators in the schools to be moved so that the heating system can perform at maximum efficiency.

Sounds like a smart idea to us -- just don't forget to dress your kids in layers this year!

I use a lot of software, some of which costs a lot of money, yet doesn't work they way I wish. (Yes, I'm dissing you, Microsoft). I'm delighted when I find a program that does just what I need, and for free. One that I use constantly is the excellent WordWeb.

Wordweb is a dictionary/thesaurus that you can download to your PC so that, even when offline, you can pull up definitions and synonyms with a single ctl-right-click. I've found Wordweb's lexicon broader and better defined than what is included with Microsoft Word, and quicker to access.

Best of all, Wordweb is a free download for most of us, thanks to the largess of its designer, Antony Lewis. An expanded version, Wordweb Pro, for $29 offers more words, pronunciations, and a more polished wild-card utilizing search function. Both versions are free of spyware and other annoying crap.

A caveat- One unusual feature of Wordweb is that Lewis requires anyone that takes more than two commercial air flights per year to upgrade to Wordweb Pro. This is his way of raising awareness of the environmental costs of such travel, and asking for money from those who can presumably afford it ,while keeping it free for those who can't.