Many Americans find themselves living from paycheck to paycheck. If your family has a tight budget, finding ways to reduce the amount of money spent on utilities and home maintenance can be beneficial.

Here are three simple upgrades you can make to your hot water system that will help you save money in the future.

1. Install a hot water recirculating system in your home.

If you have had to let your faucet or shower run in order to gain access to hot water, you might as well be watching your hard-earned dollars go down the drain. Wasting water can be costly, but you can eliminate the excess water your family uses while waiting for the temperature to warm up by installing a hot water recirculating system in your home.

Rather than allowing cool water to sit in your home's hot water pipes until you turn on a faucet, a demand recirculating system will periodically send cooled water back to your hot water tank. Once the water being sent from the water heater through your pipes reaches the desired temperature, the pump turns off until the water cools again.

Having heated water in your pipes at all times means that you will have instant access to the hot water you desire. You can eliminate water waste, and the utility costs that go along with it.

2. Install an insulating blanket to the exterior of your hot water heater's tank.

Older hot water heaters can lose their effectiveness over time. An inefficient hot water heater will use more electricity, so installing an insulation blanket to help reduce standby heat losses could help you lower the cost of heating your home's water by 4% to 9%.

Hot water heaters with insulation that has an R-value of less than 24 will benefit most from the installation of an insulating blanket, but added insulation can make any water heater more efficient in the future.

3. Consider upgrading to a tankless water heater.

If your family uses less than 41 gallons of hot water on a daily basis, upgrading to a tankless water heating system could be beneficial. For those households with a reduced demand for hot water, a tankless unit could be 24% to 34% more energy efficient than a traditional hot water tank.

A more energy efficient water heater will translate to energy savings when you receive your utility bill each month.

Finding ways to upgrade your home's hot water heating system could help your family spend less on household costs and utility expenses in the future. Contact a service like Anderson Water Systems to learn more.