As you know from reading my blog, I have become quite conscious of our family spending and for that matter, our family savings. I am proud to say that we have not only been writing down all of our spending, which has indeed led to less spending, but we also evaluated our monthly expenses (bills, etc). In doing so, I realized that we do not have too much wiggle room. We already cut off our home phone, which is now saving us $20/month :) I have to give a shout out to my cousin Lisa, who after reading my blog, decided to do the same - WAHOO! So, other than my gym membership (aka: my sanity!) and satellite TV our expenses are not ours to change. With that in mind, I decided to get to work and see what I could do to lower our monthly satellite bill. I researched the competition and called our current provider. I told them that I was quite happy with my service and had no complaints; however I could sign up with their competitor and reduce my monthly bill from $70 to only $30. Much to my surprise, the customer service rep did not hesitate at all. Within seconds, he was taking charges off my monthly bill, such as a service charge and protection plan charge. In less than 5 minutes, he had lowered my monthly payment to $50. Even with these reduced charges, he explained to me that I would still receive the SAME service and SAME protection plan. At first, I was excited about my new savings. But then it hit me…WHAT?!?! You’ve been charging me these fees EVERY month for 2 years and all it took was a simple phone call and a threat of discontinuing my service, for you to reduce my charges! Are you kidding!?!?! What kind of robbery is this? I thanked the customer service rep and told him I would call back once I decided whether to take this offer or switch to the other company. So, now I ponder…do I stay with this company which has ROBBED me and will continue to charge me more per month than the competition, or switch to their competitor, who will most likely end up robbing me too…but in the meantime, I’ll be paying $15 less every month?
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Wake up and smell the savings
Oprah’s done it again! I just watched my TiVo’d (is that really even a verb?!?!) episode of Oprah from Wednesday 10/8 and I’m on a mission! In response to the country’s economic crisis, the episode featured “One of the thriftiest families in America” and one of my personal favorites, “The Coupon Mom” amongst other guests. After watching this show, I have decided to WAKE UP and become more conscious of our family’s spending. I have definitely said this before and tried to “budget”, but I’ve never really done it. I think mainly, because I’ve never really had a plan. Well, I’ve made a plan! Here are the first steps I’m going to take…starting TODAY!
1 – Find out where our money is going – I’m going to start keeping a journal of every penny we spend (Derek – start saving your receipts!) and I’m going to separate our spending into 2 columns; wants and needs
2 – Evaluate our spending end of the month
3 – Create a budget (for real!!!) based on this information
I’ve already realized a few things that we can change in order to save more money. Here are a few…
1 – Be more organized about clipping/using coupons (and plan meals according to those coupons)
2 – Curb my spending on things I can do myself - I actually started this morning…I’ve been wanting to get an eyebrow wax for a while now, and immediately after watching this show, realized I should just tweeze them myself and save about $20…baby steps, right! I plan on doing my toes later, which I also think will help me appreciate the occasional pedicure I’ll treat myself to (when we’ve saved for it, of course)!
3 – Make more things instead of buying them (ex…birthday cards)
4 – Cut off our home phone line – we don’t even use it and it costs $30/month!
5 - Dine out at restaurants that offer free kid's meals
I’m sure there are many more things I can add to this list, and I will…but hey, at least it’s a start! Plus, now that I’ve told this to all of you out there, I REALLY have to stick to it! I’ll keep you posted!
