If you feel as though your home is too big, it probably is. Selling it and buying a smaller one may help beef up your bank account.
"The best way to save big money is to cut big expenses -- and housing is the biggest of them all," Jay says.
Jay says trading down to a smaller house or apartment also lowers the mortgage or rent, as well as the utility bills.
"A smaller space will slash your spending, because you can't buy things when you have no place to put them," Jay says.
Yeager also is an advocate of living smaller.
"People don't really stop to think about it, but for every square foot that they add to a house -- square feet they often don't need -- first they have to buy it, then they have to maintain it, they have to pay property taxes on it, they have to insure it, they have to decorate it, they have to heat it and so on," he says.
"One of the upsides of the recession has been that the average home built now is about 300 square feet smaller than those built prerecession," says Yeager.