Paying bills is so easy and convenient for us these days with online billing and automatic withdrawal that sometimes we don't take the time to look at our bills and see what we are actually paying for. We just let the transaction go through and don't think anything of it just to save some time. Don't get me wrong, I am all about saving time, but you might end up keeping a lot more of your money if you take the time to check out your bills once every quarter or even once a year.
This is where J and I really started to keep a lot more of our money in just a few months...
Look at your monthly bills and REALLY find out how much you are paying and WHAT you are paying for. It might be something you don't use, need or even want.
J and I decided that we could cut out our land line because the only people that ever seemed to call us were telemarketers. We ended up keeping much more money than we thought we would. When we went to look at our bill (which is "conveniently" bundled with our internet and cable) we realized that we were also paying for some movie channels that we never even watched. How the heck did this happen? Have you ever signed up for something during a promotion before? That is what we did and when the promotion ended they started charging us for these other channels and because our bills were paid automatically we didn't catch it for a long time.
Because we took the time to check out our bill we are now keeping almost $70 a month more now than we were before!! That is 1-2 weeks of groceries or $840 a year!! The nice thing about this cut back is that it isn't affecting our lifestyle one bit.
So, what are some other bills you can look at to keep more of your money...?
- Gas/Electric Bill: This is more about being more responsible with turning lights and other electronics of in your house and less about canceling something because there isn't, unfortunately, a lot we can do about how much we are charged. We are keeping about $5 a month with this bill.
- Cell Phone Bill: Do you have unlimited minutes/texts? Look at your last year of bills and see how many minutes you are using and how many texts? Do you really need unlimited? Do you have a family plan? Switching to a family plan helped us keep about $20 a month
- Insurance Bills: This can be car, home owners, life, health. You may not be able to do a whole lot here, but maybe sit down with your agent and figure out if there is a way you can cut back at all and keep more of your money. We now keep around $60 more a month.
What bills do you pay on a monthly basis? Have you done anything like this before? If so, how much more money are you keeping every month?
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