Just a few minutes and a few phone calls
Gather up your utility bills and take a look...
How many years have you lived in your current situation? How long ago did you sign up for your cell phone, cable or satellite tv provider, land line phone or internet service provider? If it's been a while, it might be worth your while to really go over each bill carefully. If you go over them line by line, you may find services on there that you are no longer using that you can cancel and that will reduce your bill. For instance, maybe you have a cellphone that has unlimited minutes with free long distance. Well, there's no need to have long distance service on your phone bill. Cancel that and you may also reduce some of the taxes on that and the miscellaneous charges like line fees and use fees and other fees that seem to litter the phone bill. A lot of those fees you can't do anything about, but some you can.
When we moved in, I had a second phone line installed for my home business. Well, I used it off and on, but not very frequently so I decided to call to cancel the second line. I hadn't realized that when I signed up it was $35 per line, but they gave us a credit of $10.00 for having two lines. Well, when I called, they offered me not only another large discount on that line, but $21.95 off our internet service as well (since it's billed through them.) It comes out that we're essentially getting our second line free with a discount on our internet service too. Now, it would cost us to cancel our second line. How silly is that?
For your cable or satellite television provider, maybe your teens have grown up and left home or you find yourself too busy to watch movies. Give a call to cancel the movie channels. Maybe you'll get an incentive to keep them that might make it worthwhile to you. Or, you'll cancel and save some money. That's not a bad thing.
It's always a good idea to go over your recurring bills once in a while to make sure you aren't being overcharged. Taking a half hour to go over the bills and make the phone calls could put nice chunk of change in your pocket each month. Take any money that you reduced your bills by and stash it in a savings account for a rainy day. You know it will rain sooner or later.
