Saving Idea – Getting Rid of your Home Phone
July 24th, 2009
It seems that everyone has a cell phone now a days and reception is strong and clear in a great many places. This begs the question why do we have home phones? Until recently my wife and I didn’t have a home phone and we only got a land line because my wife was going to be at home with the little one. Since she’s back at work we have gone back to not needing our home phone, yet we haven’t gotten rid of it yet.
If you’re in the same position as us you really don’t need to have both a cell phone and a home phone so why not get rid of the home phone? You can save yourself a bunch of money by doing this. In our case if we were to get rid of the home phone we would save about $40 a month on our monthly expenses if we did. Although this extra $40 per month isn’t a lot it does add up over the course of a year, to a total of $480. If you have a balance of $5,000 on one of your credit cards this is 10% of the total.
Why get rid of the home phone?
The main reason the home phone has become more of a liability than anything else is that you don’t get any benefit from keeping it. A cell phone is equally good and it carries with it the benefit of being portable.
Saving ideas are posted on Fridays as suggestions on how you could save yourself some money. If you have a saving idea send it along to matt@onemillionandbeyond.com
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Saving Idea – Get rid of your Cell Phone
July 17th, 2009
Suggesting that you get rid of your cell phone 10 years ago would have been a good idea! Its scary how quickly change happens sometimes. About 11 years ago I purchased my first cell phone and I was one of the few people I knew that had one. Its not that they were uncommon but they were not as popular as they are today. Last week I posted about cutting back on your cable to save money and cell phones fall into the same category (for the most part). You can drop your cell phone altogether and save yourself a bunch of money.
Personally I would rather have a cell phone than having a home phone so this saving tip is not something I would likely do unless I was really strapped for cash. But that doesn’t mean this is a bad idea; if you don’t use your cell phone very much and you use your home phone all the time why would you continue to pay for both? Cell phone packages can range from the pay as you go variety all the way to the hefty data plans that costs hundredsof dollars a month. Cutting this out can save you loads of money.
If you can’t get rid of your cell phone: cut back!
Cell phone providers give away phones now, expensive phones, just to trap you into one of their long term contracts. I know I have one of those phones that would normally cost a couple hundred dollars if I was to buy it in the store. But you don’t have to get all of the extra packages that they’re offering. Again I hesitate to use a specific example because the costs range so much from place to place but I pay $11 a month for my texting package. This package allows me unlimited texting from my phone. Great idea if I sent a lot of text messages but I don’t! I send maybe 20 messages a month and receive just as many. If I didn’t have the package my text messages would cost me 10 cents. Doing the math without the package I would pay $4 a month for my use instead of the $11 (an instant savings of $7 a month).
If you want to save yourself some money get rid of your cell phone! That $50 or more dollars per month adds up to $600 per year! And if you simply can’t get rid of your phone look at how much you’re paying maybe there are cheaper packages out there (or you can remove those that you don’t use).
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How I turned 20 minutes into $792
July 16th, 2009
A couple days ago I turned a 20 minute phone call into $792 and all I did was ask my cable company to reduce my rates. My cable company like many of the big telecommunication giants handles my home phone, cell phone, cable and interenet so innevitably I pay them a good chunk of change each month to do this. The plan that I was on was coming up and I was happy with the service they had provided me but I didn’t want to pay any extra.
I called and asked for a deal.
The response was sure thing Matt lets see what we can do for you. After going through each of the services that they offer me I was given discounts on everything dropping my monhtly bill by $66. Not bad for a 20 minute phone call. I know that I could have reduced this bill further by removing certain services completely such as cable and my home phone but I use both and I am not trying to scrimp on everything. In the end I am paying $172 per month for all of the services without any decrease in what I recieve.
Good customer service keeps clients happy.
Because I was given good deals I didn’t need to cancel any part of my package which is the ideal solution. The person that I dealt with on the phone was friendly and was able to approve everything without needing to go to a supervisor. It simply seemed like they knew what they were doing and offered me a great deal. The best part of the whole scenario is I just decreased my expenses and cut my cable bill by 28%.
Ask and you might recieve.
One of the tips a lot of personal finance books recommend when dealing with credit card debt is to ask for a decrease in your interest rate. The worst thing that you can be told is no; the very same thing holds true for other services and products that you pay for. When I called my cable company up they could have said no and I would have been no worse off than I was but they didn’t and I saved myself almost $800. If you don’t ask for something you definitely won’t get it.
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Saving Idea – Cut Back Cable
July 10th, 2009
If you live in a major city in North America you can’t go anywhere without seeing a TV showing some news channel or another. In fact seeing TVs for me is such a common sight I almost miss them when they’re not there. Next time you’re waiting in line at the bank or the hair dressers stop for a second are you watching TV while you wait? We’ve become accustomed to having the ‘boob’ tube around us all the time.
To go with all of those TVs are cable channels and specialty packs that cost us money and heaven forbid if you happen to have an HDTV, you need specialty channels for that too. We spend so much time in front of TVs that I think we take it for granted and assume we simply must have cable TV. Having cable costs money and this saving idea is all about that. If you’re reading this and you have cable do you remember how much you pay for cable? I had to think about it for a bit but I came to the conclusion that I’m paying about $70 a month for cable and a bit for the digital cable box.
Times are lean and sometimes the cost of cable can really make or break a budget. But before things get to such dire extremes lets look at the numbers. If you are like me paying about $75 per month for cable ($70 for the cable and $5 for the reciever) or about $900 a year! This amount isn’t a huge sum of money especially if you’re taking advantage of it, but it is a sum of money that you really don’t need to spend. Life exists without cable TV.
What would you do with an extra $900 in your pocket at the end of the year? If you’re looking to save money cut back on your cable! I pay $75 a month for my cable but you might find that you’re paying a lot more than that for something you really don’t use. Put the money to good use: pay some debts, save it or give it to charity. I have been contemplating the idea of cutting cable back recently but my wife and I aren’t there quite yet. I think we will be very soon.
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Spending Less Money this Christmas
December 4th, 2008
The economy is taking front and center as the biggest news story of the year and its particularly telling this Christmas season. A lot of people are cutting back on their expenses this holiday season keeping their costs down. I will be one of those people who are spending less this year but its not as a result of the economy. My finances will be playing catch up for a few months, the good thing is that my new job will help me get caught up. This is the main reason for lowered spending for me; there is simply not as much money available.
One thing the economy is impacting me is the fact that I won’t place any Christmas expense on credit cards. I am trying to keep my costs as low as possible for the next few months and spending on my credit card won’t help me at all. The economy has solidified my belief that credit cards shouldn’t be used if you can’t afford to spend the money. This type of overextending yourself financially is something that has gotten me and a great many people into financial trouble over the years.
Here are a few things that we’ll be doing to keep costs down this Christmas:
- Setting limits on gifts (quantity and price)
- Planning who to actually buy gifts for
- Letting people know we’re spending less (hopefully this can lower gift expectations)
- Finding alternatives to expansive items
Are you cutting costs this holiday season? Do you have any suggestions for spending less this Christmas? (I’m still having issues with the comments on this blog – email me you suggestions at matt@onemillionandbeyond.com and I’ll post them as updates to this post)
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How to spot stupid spending
August 12th, 2008
We’ve all spent money on things that really didn’t make sense before. You know those times where you just weren’t paying attention and overpaid on parking or didn’t pay and ended up with a parking ticket. Those moments where you simply stop and shake your head wondering what were you thinking. For me that’s stupid spending. I’ve always thought of this that way but while reading Larry Winget’s You’re Broke Because You Want to Be
Although personally I’m a lot better at it now than I used to be I still occasionally catch myself and shake my head. For example: I need to pay for street parking where I live and I can get weekly passes from the city for $15 or a 6 month pass for $60. Personally this one is a bit of a no brainer; I should have gotten the 6 month pass. There were some timing issues with getting one and the weekly one was available online so I got that for a few weeks. Now this is a stupid expense for me since all I needed to do was make a bit of effort and I would have saved myself a bunch of money (mostly on the handful of parking tickets I ended up getting). All of this is wasted money, the weekly passes and parking tickets included.
Very often I find that the stupid spending comes about from laziness. If you happen to forget to go to the bank to get cash and decide to use a competitors ATM. Not paying attention and paying a late fee on a bill. All of these are from us being lazy. I know I’ve done it and I’ll probably do it again. Most of the time that I end up with stupid expenses I know about it, which makes them worse and I’ve started tracking a stupid expenses category in my weekly budgets.
Why catch these stupid expenses?
I’m getting ruthless on this type of spending because I’ve decided I’m done with being in debt and broke. I know it will take a long time to get out of the problem it took me years to get into but I need to stop spending my money on truly stupid things. I don’t mean trimming down miscellaneous spending since it will always come up and a lot of these things are actually necessary. I want to remove the unnecessary and pointless wasting of money like my parking problem (which is solved) and my ATM fees in the past.
The reasoning behind this strong push to remove stupid spending is because if I’m able to catch $10 a week which is entirely possible I’ll end up saving $520 a year in wasted money. That’s a whole lot of money to be throwing away for no reason and that money will be put to much better use such as paying down debt.
Another reason that I need to catch these stupid expenses is that I can’t afford to have them at the moment. The reality is that for many people that $10 a week in stupid expenses is really nothing significant and they would rather spend the money for the convenience. At the moment I don’t have that luxury and I’m frustrated with myself for wasting money for so long.
To close off this post I wanted to start a list of stupid expenses that I’ve paid in the past as both an example and get ideas from you, my readers. What have you spent money on that has been a truly stupid way to spend your money?
The List of Stupid Expenses
- ATM Fees
- Parking Tickets
- Late Fees on bills
- Buying duplicates of books
- Buying extended warranty on my car
- Unnecessary spending at the grocery store
- …
Posted in Commentary, Financial Situation, Saving Ideas | 2 Comments
How I Shop Around
June 10th, 2008
Last week I posed about the pros and cons of shopping around. Today I wanted to post about how I shop around. The reality is that over the years I’ve come up with a bit of a process for shopping around and it follows a fairly basic series of steps:
- Do I need to shop around?
- Check online
- Call ahead
- Batch when physically shopping around
- Ask for specials
Do I need to shop around?
The reality is most of the time the answer to this question is no. I’ve decided that my time is valuable to me, so for me to spend hours of my time and effort to get the best price on an item it really needs to be significant. For example I was more than happy to drive around and make an effort when I was looking for a new car. On the flip side there have been times when I have simply ignored the fact that I’m paying a premium on a purchase because it wasn’t worth it to shop around. I’ve needed to replace the ink in my printer a few times and I simply went to the nearest store to buy it because the $5 I’m going to save isn’t worth the time to get it. For me the item needs to be expensive before I start shopping around and the potential savings significant. I know that this might not be the most frugal but I don’t get a thrill from spending 2 hours to save $2.
Check Online
Once I’ve determined that I need to make a purchase that’s significant enough for me to shop around then I’ll start by looking online. Most retail outlets now have their prices online. This really cuts down on the amount of time I spend on shopping around. At the very least this is a great place to find resources for what I’m looking for. Car insurance for example might be hard to shop around for online since prices are quoted (though some places do offer online quotes) but you can get a listing online which makes the next step quicker.
Call Ahead
If you’re looking for a specific item, say a washer and dryer, you want to know that the stores you’re going to actually have the item in stock. It’s great to find yourself an amazing deal but when that deal vanishes because they don’t have any items left it becomes really frustrating (and can be costly).Picking up the phone and making a call can save you a lot of time and effort.
Batching
This item in the process doesn’t always apply but if I’m looking for an item I’ll try to make sure I’m not going too far out of my way for just a single item. The goal here is to make the most of my time. This item also really applies when there’s no rush in making the purchase. When I we were considering a new TV I only went into stores that had TVs when they were in close proximity to where I was. The purchase wasn’t urgent, we had a working TV and even if we didn’t, TV really isn’t that important.
Ask for Specials
The TV is a perfect example when it comes to this part of the process because we found a decent deal on a TV but it became a better deal when we bought a model that came from an opened box. Someone had returned the TV but there was nothing wrong with it. The best part was that it came with the same warranty as a sealed box. A simply question saved me 10% on the purchase and at $500 for the TV the 10 second investment saved me $50. It never hurts to ask if there are any specials on the item you’re buying. If you happen to be calling and shopping around asking this question might be make your decision for you. Some stores don’t advertise that they offer perks and bonuses with purchases (The tire place that gives you a free alignment is a perfect example I’ve found).
Overall personally I’m not big on shopping around though I know there is a very distinct benefit to it. For myself I’ve found the balance of time and effort in return to require a significant benefit. I know that I can save myself some money if I were to shop around more but the reality is I’ve significantly cut back on my purchases and most of the time I spend money on items that are day to day items.
Posted in Commentary, Saving Ideas | 3 Comments
The Pros and Cons of Shopping Around
June 6th, 2008
We all like to save money when we make purchases. It doesn’t matter if you’re buying something for $10 or something for $10,000, if you can save yourself some money then it’s a good thing. To that end it often makes a lot of sense to shop around for the best price. Unfortunately there are pros and cons when it comes to shopping around.
Pros
- Getting a better price
- Perks of the Sale
- Better Quality
Better Price
This point is particularly obvious since stores rarely have the same prices. You can see price differences between two different grocery stores. By taking a bit of time out of your day you can save yourself a great deal of money. The bigger the purchase the more likely that you can save yourself a lot of money by shopping around. For example buying tires for your car at store A vs. store B can save you $20+ per tire (and often a lot more). There is definitely a possibility of saving money if you’re willing to put the time and effort into it.
Perks of the Sale
When you’re buying a big ticket item there are often perks and giveaways that you can get at no charge. When I was shopping around for tires a couple years back one tire shop offered to balance my tires and do an alignment as part of my purchase. If you factor this into the sale you can really save yourself a great deal of money (surprisingly that tire shop also had the best prices).
Better Quality
When you’re not shopping around for a specific brand or model you might be able to find yourself a better quality item by shopping around. If you have a set budget for your purchase you might be able to find a better quality brand within your price range by shopping around.
Cons
- Waste your time and money
- Benefits negligible
- Impact to the environment
Waste your time and Money
By going out of your way to get the best price on something you can spend so much time and money doing so that although you end up getting the best price in the city you spend more effort than its worth. This is particularly true when you’re dealing with items at the lower price point. If you’re spending hours and hours buying a new car you can really save money but the same isn’t true when you’re buying a pair of jeans.
Benefits are Negligible
The perfect example of this is driving 20 miles out of your way to get the best price on gas in the city. The reality is that the $2 you just saved on your gas purchase was spent in getting there. Not to mention that you might have just spent 40 minutes sitting in traffic getting that savings. The benefits that you get as a result of shopping around for the best prices might wash out to pennies and not be worth it.
Impact to the Environment
This point is relatively mute when if you shop around for the best price by driving around the city once every few years. But if you’re driving around all the time just because you know that you can save a few dollars on groceries every week there’s a difference. Also this point is more valid when you start multiplying it by masses of people. If everyone shopped around for every item they purchased then you’d have traffic everywhere and the impact to the environment would start becoming noticeable.
In conclusion shopping around definitely has its place in our society but there is a definite point where it stops being beneficial and actually starts costing us money. Personally I only actively shop around when I’m buying more expensive items. When I need to buy tires for my car I’ll make the effort to shop around because tires for my car are expensive. But getting the best price on $20 headphones I can’t be bothered to do. More often than naught my time is worth more than the money I save by shopping around. Essentially it comes down to how much time and effort are you willing to put into saving a few dollars. Next week I’ll post on how I shop around.
Posted in Saving Ideas | 3 Comments
How to Save on your Gas Costs
May 9th, 2008
Since the price of crude oil and gasoline have been going up drastically the topic of saving on your gas costs has been common on many blogs. We love our cars and the bigger they come the better regardless of how much gas they guzzle. I wanted to jump into this general conversation with my tip to save on gas.
If the price of gas has gone up just don’t buy as much of it. Simply use less of it! I know the tip is very simplistic but I think it would be ideally exemplified with an analogy. We all wear clothes that get dirty which we wash with washing machines (well most of us do) and this activity requires a type of fuel of sorts (detergent). I think it’s is a perfect analogy for my saving tip.
We have grown accustomed to using our washing machines just like our cars and we’ve gotten to essentially need them. We need to have clean clothes. Just like with the car there are other alternatives to get our clothes clean that are far less expensive than owning a washer and dryer that we don’t use for the sake of convenience.
Now assume that all of the detergent makers decided to raise the price of detergent by 3 or 4 times what we pay now. So rather than paying say $7.50 for a pack of detergent the price was suddenly $30. We would instantly notice but we might still pay. For the sake of argument let’s say this went up 40 times (my logic is we drive and use our cars at least 10 times more than our washing machines). The price of that same pack of detergent would now be $300. How many of us would still continue to buy the premium brands? And just to make this analogy completely outrageous let’s just say that the washing machine was costing you $350 per month in financing costs and you were required to have insurance on your dryer of another $150 per month. Doing laundry would all of a sudden cost us $800 per month.
At this point how many of us out there would consider the alternatives? Probably all of us. We have alternatives when it comes to cars as well. We can drive less and not buy fuel or gas guzzling cars. We are in a situation where we are reliant on an incredibly expensive means of transportation when alternatives exist. I know this is a bit more of a challenge for some people and in some circumstances but walking, biking, transit and car pooling would probably be accessible to most people in some way.
The way to save on gas is to not buy it; we need to either improve the mode of transportation or find an alternative means. Cars have been around for about a 100 years and in that time we’ve come to rely on them so much that people are convinced they cannot live without them. I like most bloggers have a car that I drive to work for convenience, thankfully it’s pretty close and I’m saving time by driving which is my logic for continuing this. But if the price of gas were to go up another say 2 times I would start taking transit. I know there are alternatives and I would use them.
The question I’ll leave you with is at what point would you stop buying gas? What would the price need to hit before you couldn’t justify the cost?
Posted in Commentary, Saving Ideas | 1 Comment
The Art of Bulk Buying
April 8th, 2008
If you look at anything and practice it enough it almost becomes an art form. This is very true when it comes to playing the piano or painting but I believe it’s true for most things. A perfect example in the personal finance world is buying in bulk. If you buy a product in bulk you can significantly reduce your cost per item which can save you a lot of money in the long run. Unfortunately if you’re not careful in buying in bulk you can end up loosing more money than you’re saving.
Your lifestyle or at the very least your knowledge of your lifestyle and habits can really make or break your bulk buying. Personally every time I try to take advantage of buying in bulk I end up in the same spot I started or I’ve lost money. The question that comes to mind is what am I doing wrong? The simple answer is nothing. My lifestyle isn’t geared towards bulk buying. I don’t have a regimented diet nor do I use any singular product in mass quantities on a regular basis.
The Art Form
Buying bulk means you need to buy a lot of a product or products at once and take advantage of the price reduction. The concept is very simple and it’s the basis of how retail stores make money by buying at wholesale prices. The goal here is to know that you’ll need a lot of a single product. People who have a large family can very easily take advantage of this since they’ll go through food and the necessities at a much faster pace. For me the only items that I can safely buy in bulk are toilet paper, soap and batteries because none of these items go bad.
I believe that to master buying bulk you need to plan ahead carefully to take advantage of the savings. You have to know what you’re likely to use and adjust your habits to ensure nothing perishable goes bad. When it comes to some foods they can be frozen but I’m not disciplined enough in my eating habits to effectively take advantage of this. Another great way to take advantage of buying bulk is to do so as a group of people. This goes back to my point about planning.
People who are able to save hundreds of dollars a month at stores like Costco amaze me since they have in my opinion great planning abilities (or very regimented lives). Unfortunately if you’re not careful and don’t actually use the products you can end up loosing a lot of money buying bulk and throwing out a lot of stuff. Stores like Costco love customers like me, I clearly understand the value of the purchase but by not using it the per item costs goes up drastically. Part of the art of buying bulk in my opinion is knowing when not to do it.
Buying in bulk can save you lots of money if and only if you can take advantage of the volumes.
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