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So, I know this, I’ve done it numerous times over the years, yet I was listening to a financial book this past week and it hit me in the face like walking into a wall. DUH, KD!  How could I forget these quick, easy and small ideas that can actually save me some money starting TODAY and every month moving forward?!?!  

Silly KD!!

Well, I guess you’re wondering what I am referring to, huh?  OK, OK, I won’t leave you in suspense any longer… call your phone company, internet company, tv company, etc!  You didn’t expect it to be so basic, did you?  It’s always the simple things that we forget, isn’t it?  So here’s what I did to save a few bucks–plus learned something that is going to save me lots more money in the near future!

I was listening to Financially Fearless, from the LearnVest author/owner, and that’s when it occurred to me that I haven’t made my phone calls recently.  I’m not sure how I forgot this important thing, but then again, life has been insane (have I mentioned we bought a house in the last couple of months, along with my company acquiring five additional dealerships? Life has been nuts!).  

First, I called Cox, my internet provider.  After asking if there were any new promotions for my account, I am now on a faster speed plan for the same price as the next package down–an approximate $12/month savings.  I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but $12/month is $144/year–also equal to a quarter to a half tank of gas, a lunch out or that much more to my student loans or savings accounts.  It adds up!  What’s great is I can call this company back in a few months and see what new promotions they have available (one reason I have chosen Cox over some other companies, less contractual fees/limits).

Second, I called Verizon, my wireless provider.  We have four lines with them–mine, my husband’s, my moms and my mother-in-law’s phones (her phone is a simple flip phone, nothing special usually happens with hers, LoL).  First off, I found out that we are on an older plan (More Everything) that isn’t even offered now.  It would be nice if that was flashing on the website when I logged in or on my phone app, they could even send a text!  Just because of that, the super nice associate was able to lower my bill by $10/month without decreasing any of our features.  Even better, he was able to backdate it, so we will get a credit for the previous month, plus going forward-YAY!  An even cooler new feature is that Verizon is now allowing a month carryover on data.  For example, I only use 3gb of my 5gb in August, 2gb will carryover to September, giving me a total of 7gb! Double yay!!  I know for a lot of people who have unlimited data plans, this isn’t that exciting, but we are on Verizon because it has been the only service to consistently have service where we often need to go (although I have been thinking about borrowing friend’s phones to compare in case they’ve improved enough to work–anyone want to loan me your phone? LoL!).  By the way, we already get 1gb of free data every month as it is, so we only pay for a 4gb plan with a bonus gb.  

Now, for the exciting news from Verizon–at least to me.  I’ve always known that when you take advantage of upgrading your phone, your locking yourself into another two year contract.  Nothing new there.  What I didn’t know was that if your contract ends and you don’t upgrade, the price of our plan goes down some with Verizon.  So, we currently pay $40 per smart phone on our plan (plus whatever data service we pick), so that is $120/month for us with three smart phones.  Well, when your contract ends on a phone (after approximately two years),  our $40/month/phone will drop to $20/month/phone.  This is a fairly significant savings!  We have two phones going off contract by the end of the year if we don’t upgrade, which will be a $40/month savings!  That’s almost $500/year just for those two phones, and it will be $60/month, or $720/year, savings when the third phone drops the contract.  That is a big savings!  And I learned all of this by calling and asking for assistance to make my monthly bill lower.  

It’s that simple!  It was a 10 minute conversation with each place and now I will be saving hundreds of dollars a  year!  You can do this with TV services too, but we cut that out many years ago and only use an antenna, Netflix  or occasionally a Redbox movie.  I’m currently checking out our insurance policy to see if we qualify for any new savings there, too.  I highly recommend you take an hour and go over all of the companies you use for different services, then call them to see if you can get a discount.  Might not be quite the Geico result of thousands in fifteen minutes instantly, but it all adds up and not far from it!