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During the Christmas holiday I learned yet another great tip from my home inspector John Christianson-Inspector7.com while on an inspection of a foreclosed home with my client.

What I learned this time really opened my eyes to the amount of energy being sucked by our appliances. You may be surprised at how much you could save on your monthly electric bill.

The device John was talking about for my client's house is a Kill A Watt Electricity Monitor.

What exactly does this meter do and where can I get one?

A Watt Monitor is an electricity usage monitor that measures the electricity consumption and calculates the operating costs of any household appliance that can be plugged into a normal electric outlet. In addition it can calculate projected costs by hour, day, week, month or year without you having to do any messy maths. All you need to do is to input your electric rate, and it does the rest for you. It can't be easier.

How do you use it? Connect your household appliance to the electricity monitor. Then plug the monitor into a wall outlet, input your electric rate and that is it. You can usually find your electric rate on your utility bill or ring your utility's customer service.

John advised my client by upgrading his appliances he could potentially save as much as $50.00 a month! HELLO! $50.00x12 months=$600.00 in potential savings (keep in mind the number of appliances, the age and condition).

And here I am making sure I vacuum the back of my refrigerator, keep the coils clean etc. to help it run more smoothly and in the long run it probably doesn't matter much. Argghhhh. The caveat for most though is the upfront cost of purchasing new appliances. You could easily spend $1,300-$1,600.00 on new kitchen appliances-(I use this amount because I have a client who I referred to one of my preferred appliance vendors and received a great package price which included an electric stove, refrigerator-side by side, microwave, and dishwasher, stainless steel no less). 

So in researching where you might purchase this device I noticed the price range is anywhere from $19.99+. If you are interested in learning about more gadgets for your home check out: http://www.household-gadgets.com.

If you have a helpful homeowners hint you would like to share please feel free to comment. I will be working on offering more money saving tips this year.

Happy Saving!!