We’ve been taking a hard look at our monthly bills and everyday finances and have been able to find ways to save money. From cutting our cable and installing an HD antenna, to switching our cell phone provider and asking our insurance company for a better rate, we’ve been able to save over a couple hundred dollars each month. That’s savings we can apply towards debt repayment and boost our slush funds and retirement savings.
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Looking at the numbers more closely:
- Installing an HD antenna saved us $60/month by ditching cable. That’s a total annual savings of $720.
- Switching our cell phone provider saved us $98/month (this was a big savings). Annual savings $1,176.
- Ditching our second home phone line saved us $50/month. Annual savings $600.
- Adjusting our insurance coverage for both home and auto saved us $11/month. The monthly amount isn’t so impressive, but annually that’s $132.
We do a pretty good job staying within our budget, but these monthly bills just seemed too expensive considering our usage. For instance, we only use about 200 minutes of our combined 800 minutes on our cell phone plan. We couldn’t get our current provider to offer us a smaller package since it didn’t exist. Instead, we found a provider that allows you to pay for what you actually use – this will work much better for us in our situation. Our second home phone line was really just used as an overflow line so that if line one was busy, it’d roll over to our answering machine. Instead, our phone company was able to roll line one over to our cell phone – similar service for much less.
Total monthly savings $219. Total annual savings $2,628.
Now all of this has occurred over the past couple of weeks, so I haven’t really seen the bills reflect the new rates on any of these items….yet. However, I’m looking forward to next month’s bills. That $219 a month savings will allow me to do a couple of things:
- Pay down more debt. Currently, we’re scheduled to have all of our credit cards paid off by December of 2014. Many of our credit cards are 0% interest for many months, so I’m not paying interest on the debt, thank goodness. However, freeing up a couple of hundred bucks will allow me to take most of that amount, $169, and apply it more aggressively towards debt.
- Bump up our automatic monthly mutual fund amount. Our selected mutual fund is kicking butt and I’d like to apply another $50 a month towards this account to really get the most bang for our buck.
As much as I’d like to increase our slush funds, our focus is on getting debt paid off and the little extra I’d like applied towards building wealth will be more beneficial in our mutual fund. Who can turn away a 15% return when savings accounts are returning a pitiful .01%!? Not me.
We’re looking carefully at a couple of other bills that could save us some dough, but I think we’ve done a bang up job so far (thanks to Mr. LH, mostly.)
Have you looked at your monthly bills lately? Is there some wiggle room for savings?
13 Comments
It sounds like you made some good improvements, and got some of the ‘low hanging fruit’. I’ll be interested to see if you return to do ’round two’ and what you might find. It’s usually harder to find the savings, and the savings usually add up to less. It’s still worth it up to a point, but be prepared for the law of diminishing returns to come into effect at some point.
@Money Beagle – That’s true, I think we hit the big savings with these changes. If we can find a few more bills that can be reduced, it probably won’t be as drastic since our other bills aren’t as large to begin with (minus housing, but there’s not much we can do about that).
That’s awesome! We need to start cutting our bills just a little more.
@Michelle – We swapped out some services with other providers and that saved us a ton!
Great job! Our monthly budget is pretty lean these days. Not sure what we could cut at this point.
Don’t cut anything. Just make sure you aren’t overpaying for services you don’t use. All of these savings were accomplished with simple phone calls. I called up my auto insurance company and said “how can I save money on my policy” and within 15 minutes the agent found 2 unneeded items on our policy that we removed. The coverage stayed the exact same, but we were paying for some unneeded coverage.
Those are some impressive steps and savings that you took. Especially impressive is how much you’re saving on your phone plans. Goes to show that it can pay to shop around, even for recurring services/bills that you might have gotten used to over time.
@Tie the Money Knot – I’ll be writing a review in the weeks to come on the cell phone service. I just want to give it a few more weeks before I share the provider’s name. But so far, so good!
Way to go! It’s always nice to slash your expenses without sacrificing the quality of your life. We did this a few months ago, but I think it’s time to look for more expenses to cut.
You don’t have to go without. Just make sure you aren’t overpaying for any services you are billed regularly for. I initially made a list of EVERY SINGLE bill we have and started there. Then it’s easy to just go down the list and ask “Can I possibly save any money on this recurring bill?”. Good luck!
@Zimmy – That’s an awesome savings! I can’t wait until all our new bills reflect our savings next month. Looking forward to using that $200+ towards debt and savings. 🙂
Wow, what a difference a cell phone can make!
@The Potato Head – That’s a great savings! Very similar to what we did. Way to go!