Remember the times when you used to be able to take your tax refund and splurge on something special and fancy? Well those days are long gone. Today most people are worrying whether or not they will be able to make their bills, far off from the times of over spending just for the sake of it. Nowadays, penny pinching is prospering.

Hopefully you will be getting a tax refund this year, most people who work and pay taxes do. You may be wondering just how to spend your tax refund in just the right ways. Here are some of my top suggestions.

Buy energy efficient products such as appliances, shower heads, and light bulbs. Saving money on your utility costs can really save your butt in the long run. Imagine you can go blow your tax refund on a vacation at the beach and go broke in six months which results in you not being able to pay your utility bills.

The better scenario would be you investing in energy saving products and have lower utility bills in the next few months. You take the money that you have been saving on your utility bills and deposit it in your saving account, safely tucked away in case you really need it.

The next way I suggest to spend your tax money is to pay off some debt. Paying off debt can help to lower or eliminate monthly payments so that you can re-allocate or save the new gap in your budget. If you have several accounts it is wise to pay more to the accounts with higher balances and less to the accounts with lower balances, unless it is possible to completely eliminate one debt altogether which would be the best choice.

You would then pay enough to every other account to at least lower your minimum payment. Although making the minimum payment does not really lower your ending balance, having a lower monthly payment makes it easier to make payments larger than the required minimum payment. This is how you slowly lower your account balance.

The last way I suggest to spend your tax refund is very extreme. This tip is intended for those of us who are sinking down the hole more and more every month, barely making our bills. My suggestion is to move.

I know this sounds crazy but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Move to a place that has lower rent and lower utility costs than where you are currently living. Lowering your cost of living is a very effective way to be able to catch up on your bills and become financially stable once more.

In times like these it sometimes takes drastic measure to keep ourselves floating in the financial ocean. Most of us where raised in times of prosperity, even if we where below poverty level. It is hard to watch the opportunities that we grew up with slowly disintegrate. But we are Americans and we can do what it takes to make it through.