One of the blessings of the current economy is that it helps us to be more aware of what we have, and hopefully a little more aware of what things cost.
A friend of mine asked me not too long ago if I was paying attention to how much I spend on the "everyday" bills of which I am not even aware . . . phone, cable, insurance, utilities, etc. Thinking that I had gotten pretty wise with the overhead, I didn't imagine it would affect me, but decided to take a look. I'm not talking about getting rid of, just talking about the basics that we pay for, that we don't KNOW we are paying for, and that we never use. I was pleased that I looked into it.
The first eye opener was the cell phone bill. It's the same every month. I thought nothing of it, just paid it automatically online when it came due. But when I called the representative to see if we were using it to its best advantage, she laughed and said that she had seen few people with as many roll over minutes as I had (almost 80,000!). With as much time as I spend on the phone (NOT my favorite part of my job!), how was that possible?
Seems that AT&T had switched their plan so that ALL phone calls to ALL cell phones, no matter the service provider, were now FREE! Who knew? I was paying for way too many minutes that I was no longer using, and changing just that one thing is saving me almost $100 per month.
Bottom line, after calling just a handful of regular monthly providers, I cut almost $300 per month off of our fixed monthly outgo for things we weren't even using, and I'm not nearly done yet. With a yearly savings of approximately $3,600 SO FAR, it was worth an hour or two of my time. What's in YOUR wallet?
What's it costing you? was written by Mimi Foster
Comments (65)Subscribe to CommentsComment