Before the re-election of President Obama this week, my wife and I started doing a little financial belt tightening.

We have usual been pretty good at saving a little here so we could spend a little more over there, so to speak.

But as I was watching the non-stop campaigning the last few years and watching prices rise on everything from my favorite beverage at a coffee shop to that other liquid go-juice – gasoline, I started becoming more concerned than ever about staying on top of our income vs outgo.

Last month we started doing something about it.

I have started writing a series that will start in a couple of weeks called Money Mondays which will begin with specific steps I took to save over $2500 in the next 12 months.

Today, a preview of something that I did this morning to save $50 a year with Google.

The ScLoHo.net domain and email addresses I have used for years were powered by Google Apps. This kind of Apps is different that the Apps that we are accustomed to hearing about for our smartphones. Google Apps was in play before all of that.

Google Apps is a cloud based suite of Google products that includes email and a host of other cool features.  For years I have recommended Google Apps to friends and clients.  If you are a very small business needing 10 or less email accounts, it was free.

There are upgrades available that you can pay for such as adding more than 10 email accounts, or more email storage than the current 10 GB that Gmail offers.

Which is why a couple of years ago I decided to fork over an extra $50 a year.  When I left a group of radio stations that I spent over 8 years with, I wanted to take copies of my email with me.  I bought the upgrade and have spent $100 just so I could have 25 GB of email storage.

Recently however I decided my hoarding of old gmails was stupid and I deleted 10 GB of the 19 GB I was using.  Now I qualify for the free version of Google Apps again.  Here’s where you can go to downgrade to the free version if you qualify like I do: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60229&topic=1220889&ctx=topic

More email purging is coming over the next couple of days and that extra $50, will probably go in the gas tank.

Here’s to hoping that our Federal Government does what it needs to do to keep the U.S.A. from falling off the Fiscal Cliff in about 50 days.