How have you lowered your monthly bills?

[Finally_Frugal]

Hi all,

Today, as I paid the last of my monthly bills, I started calculating how much I've saved by making a few calls and either cancelling or decreasing services (like cable!) over the past three months. I was stunned by the results!

Just as an example, I got quotes for auto insurance, and ended up saving $250 a year by switching to another company (same coverage)! There are still things I can do to decrease my bills even more---and now it's become a fun challenge to see how much I can save!

There's an entire list of my savings on my blog, but I would love to hear from others (and maybe get some good ideas for the next few months). How have you lowered your bills lately? Any good tips or success stories?

Have a great day, everyone!

[MSMomsmoney]

Switch to CFL light bulbs.

Called comcast and asked them for a lower rate, since I was being offerred XX deal with satelitte...savings $60 per month, same service.

Called cell phone company, did something similar--optimized plan, saved $40 per month.

Cancel Netflix.

Carpool---additional $40 per week income.

[rstlne]

I switched auto insurance carriers two years ago. That was worth doing because the old carrier increased my rate significantly when I switched cars.


I also dropped my landline phone service. $36/month to zero is good savings.

[anitra]

Downgraded our cable service, and will probably downgrade again when our new "promotional" pricing is over.

Canceled Netflix.

Carpooling.

Started having a weekly "dinner night" with friends - it's helped us curb our eating out by having a special meal that doesn't require a lot of work (our friends usually bring the main dish, and we make the starch & vegetable).

[amandajane]

http://www.energywise.govt.nz/calculator/

has helped me calculate what each applicance etc costs, I was surprised at the results and it offers a free pdf download with your action plan at the end of the calculation.

[lucille]

Gas. My hubby changed jobs and the new one is not far from home. We looked at our driving by both setting trip odometers with a full tank of gas and monitoring driving and gas for a week. We found that I drove way more than he did. I have to take kids to school and back (no bus service) plus I go to the health club across town three days a week. I do consolidate my trips and try to do most of them when I am already out on health club days. One vehicle is a big old SUV that gets maybe 15mpg. The other is a VW Passat that gets 30-35mpg. We switched cars and have cut well over half of our gas costs. Were saving a couple hundred dollars a month doing this.

I started micromanaging our bank account. Our bank has been using some creative methods of posting charges so the old system of glancing at the balance and assuming things from days ago had posted was no longer working. I'm not sure how much this has saved us but at $25 a pop not having an oops on the account quickly saves quite a bit of money.

We went though our cell phone plan and found we were never using anywhere near all of our minutes. We also didn't have a national plan. We were also able to get a 10% employee discount via one of our jobs. So we ended up with national coverage, fewer minutes and another 10% off. We cut about $40 off our bill each month.

Gas & Electricity were just trying to curb usage and use CFL bulbs wherever we can.

Cable will be out next one to tackle. Right now were not finding any good deals anywhere. But our rates go up quite a bit this summer when our discount expires. We will probably get another option figured out and ask them to discount us again or we will cancel.

[gt0163c]

Last summer, I started taking "navy showers". Basically, you let the water heat up, get in and get wet then turn the water off to shampoo and soap up. Turn the water back on to rinse off then turn it off. If you need to condition your hair, do that and then turn the water back on for a final rinse. Even though I take fairly short showers, doing this did make a difference in my water bill.
I haven't been doing this for the past few months, since I keep my house kinda cool in the winter and my morning shower helps to warm me up. But, once the weather warms up again, I'll go back to it.

[jkuo13]

I started teaching a class at the YMCA. That made my membership there free and discounted my fiancee's membership (saving about $60/mo altogether). Plus, I get paid for teaching the class.

Dropping the landline phone in favor of VoIP saves another ~$25/mo.

We also moved to a smaller apartment with free heat and hot water. That really dropped our monthly bills ($300+), though we've had to get used to having less indoor living space.

[1littlething]

Dropped to basic cable, cut the landline phone, and finally paid off our car where the biggest money savers for us. We also made a point of decreasing our water and electric use for both money and environmental savers.

[Michelle Dawn]

My husband and I gave up cable last year to cut out monthly bill by $50. We don't get one channel now so the TV is only used for movies. It's been great actually. I never realized how watching TV warped my brain until I gave it up all together. Watching all those "beautiful people" and big houses and commercials and celebrity gossip, etc. can play on your self-esteem and give you a case of the gimme-gimmes.