What you can actually do about rising prices

A few months ago Jenna and I had one of those money conversations that starts tense and ends productive. The kids were at her parents'. We made coffee, pulled up the bank account, and went line by line through every recurring bill we had.

What struck me afterward is how much of the popular "beat inflation" advice is either useless (cancel your streaming) or fantasy (call your congressman). So this post is the thing I wish I'd had that Sunday: a ranking of what a normal household can actually do, by typical dollars saved per year, with sources.

You won't agree with every number — every household is different, and ours definitely is. The point is to be honest about which moves matter and which just feel productive.

Tier 1: The big ones ($500–$3,000+ a year per move)

1. Re-shop your home and auto insurance every 18 months

Typical annual impact: $400–1,800

This was our single biggest find, and it embarrassed me a little. Insurance is the most under-shopped bill in the average house. Insurers count on inertia — they nudge rates up on existing customers because they know most people won't compare. Get three quotes (an afternoon online), and if your current insurer isn't competitive, switch, or use the quotes as leverage. Brokers' data suggests a typical switcher saves 12–25%. On a household paying $3,500 across home and auto, that's $400–900 a year. Ours landed near the top of that range.

2. Lower your effective electricity bill through plan or usage shifts

Typical annual impact: $200–1,200

Two paths. If you're in a deregulated electricity market — Texas, parts of the Northeast, Ohio (that's us) — check whether your default plan rate has quietly crept up. A lot of people are paying 30–40% more than the cheapest fixed-rate option in their zip code. And in markets with time-of-use pricing, running the dishwasher, laundry, and any EV charging at off-peak hours cuts bills 10–20% with zero lifestyle change. This isn't "turn off the AC and suffer." It's paying less for the exact same kilowatt-hours.

3. Carpool or switch to transit for 2+ commute days a week

Typical annual impact: $900–1,500 (see the carpool math article)

The biggest recurring cost you can attack purely by changing behavior is driving miles. Two carpool days a week saves a typical commuter around $900–1,200 a year between fuel and wear-and-tear. I wrote a whole piece on this because the number genuinely surprised me.

4. Refinance if mortgage rates fall enough — but only enough

Typical annual impact: $1,000–4,000 (when it applies)

Rule of thumb: rates need to be at least a full point below your current rate to make refinancing worth the closing costs for most people. If you locked something near 3% back in 2020–2021, you almost certainly should not touch it. If you bought at 7%+, keep an eye on rates and be ready to move.

Tier 2: Solid moves ($100–$500 a year)

5. Cancel one streaming service nobody actually watches

Typical annual impact: $100–200

Yes, it's the cliché. But the median household pays for around 3.6 streaming services and actually watches about 2. We had a service we'd kept for one show that ended two seasons ago. Ten minutes, gone.

6. Switch your phone plan if it's been the same for 3+ years

Typical annual impact: $200–600

Carriers roll out new, often cheaper plans every year and just... don't move existing customers to them. MVNOs like Mint, Visible, or US Mobile ride the same big networks for $15–30 a month instead of $60–90. Switching took me about an hour and a lot of mild irritation that I hadn't done it sooner.

7. Buy generic for the 10 grocery items you buy every single week

Typical annual impact: $300–700

Not "all groceries" — people overestimate generic savings on stuff they buy once in a while. But for the weekly items (milk, bread, cheese, pasta, cereal, coffee, paper goods), name-brand versus store-brand is a real 20–30% gap. Across 52 weeks, with two growing kids eating us out of house and home, that's a number you feel.

8. Move your thermostat baseline by 2–3 degrees

Typical annual impact: $100–350

Every degree closer to the outside temperature saves roughly 3% on heating and cooling. Going 72°F to 74°F in summer and 70°F to 68°F in winter is barely noticeable — Sam has not once mentioned it — and it adds up in high-bill states.

Tier 3: Worth doing, won't change your life ($25–$100 a year each)

Stop using out-of-network ATMs ($50–100 a year if you're a repeat offender). Cancel the gym you don't go to ($300–800 if you're honest with yourself). Use a cashback card on routine spending and pay it off every month (1–2%, so $300–700 a year for a typical household). Drink filtered tap water instead of bottled ($150–300).

What I'd skip

A few popular "tips" I'd push back on:

"Skip your daily latte." Real savings, but tiny next to insurance or a carpool. Don't nickel-and-dime yourself on the small joys while the big stuff sits untouched. We kept the coffee.

"Buy in bulk." True for shelf-stable staples. Not true for produce, dairy, or anything you'll end up tossing — bulk-buying food you waste loses money.

"Coupon everything." The return on your time is usually terrible. Stick to the digital coupons in the apps of the one or two stores you actually use.

"Drive a smaller car to save on gas." True over a decade, mostly false in the short run. Buying a different car to save on fuel almost always loses, because depreciation eats the savings several times over. Keep the car you have. We're keeping the CR-V.

The honest ranking

If you've got one weekend to go after your bills, in order: quote your insurance (highest payoff per hour), check your electricity plan (free money in a deregulated state), find one carpool partner (lower odds, high payoff if it lands), audit your subscriptions (quick and a little satisfying).

Everything else stacks on top of those four.

That Sunday with Jenna wasn't fun to start. By the end we'd found something like $2,000 a year we'd been handing over out of pure inertia. Not from depriving ourselves — from paying attention once. If something here saves you actual money, or doesn't, I genuinely want to hear about it.

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Numbers in this article reference J.D. Power 2024 Auto Insurance studies, EIA residential electricity data, AAA's "Your Driving Costs" 2024 report, and the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2023.