What have you done lately?

[weluvdizne]

O.k., so what have you done to lower your bills lately?

We thought we had shaved down the budget as far as we could and not be sacrificing anything. Well, we were wrong. As of tomorrow, we will have no home phone. First we adjusted our cell phones, which incidentally, lowered that bill as well Also, we are going to cancel our gym membership this week as well. We also converted our electric meter to real time pricing. This is our first month on that program, so we are hoping to see a drop in that bill too.

Your turn:

 

[SOnotLayuh]

We haven't done much other than switching to vonage for a home phone, and lowering to their 17.99 (500 minutes) plan. We need a home phone for DH's work, so we can't just cut it out completely. We're trying to find a friend to "refer service" to, as both of us would get a free month... we keep telling them that there is no contract, but no one seems to believe us

 

[sydneysmom]

honestly, I did not believe that doing this would make this much of a difference, but we switched ALL our lightbulbs to CFL light bulbs.....we are on budget billing and after 2 months, our budget bill amt for electric went from $120 / month (average) to between $85-90. It was remarkable how much of a difference this was. I'm a complete fan of these lights.

Also, we got a front load HE washer and dryer. ( not because we really wanted to at that moment, but our washer died a quick and painful death). We found that our water bill went down about $ 8.00 / month. not significant, but hey, I'll take it.

The biggest thing I did though is sign up for "hip2save" and "deal seaking mom" websites....they give such FANASTIC advice on what is on sale and where....links to coupon sites. I have gone from someone who never clipped coupons to now "shopping the sales" at our grocery store w/ coupons. I think I average anywhere from $ 100 - 120 / month in savings. It takes practice, but it's SO worth it and becomes such a game of "how much can we save this week". WIth everything going up in price, I haven't had to adjust our food budget at all.

 

[mrsklamc]

We tried to call and lower our cable plan, but they are crediting us $25 a month for six months not to. So in six months, we will call them back.

We're both trying to lose weight so we can lower our life insurance premiums (and just save money by being healthier. )

I want to raise our insurance deductible on the cars but DH would like to wait until the emergency fund has more money in it.

 

[minnie1928]

In December I switched our natural gas provider and we've probably saved close to $100 since then. We live in Northern NJ where our provider was PSE&G, now we use Systrum as our gas provider. It doesn't change anything, but the amount on my bill (it's still billed on my PSE&G billing). PSE&G actually shows how much the charge would have been if I would still be with them. They are actually documenting how much they would be over charging me!

 

[aclov]

I canceled the phone land line and enrolled in a high deductible health plan at work. I have always coupon clipped but found myself buying stuff on sale or just because I have a coupon so I have tried to stop doing that.

 

[dzneelvr]

We cancelled our landline. I started brown bagging lunch 4 out of 5 days Jan. 1 and save a solid $30 per week that way. Home brewed coffee and creamer saves another $25 a week. Shopping resale, vintage, and mall clearance sales for work clothes, shoes, home decor, etc--I'm to the point I'd NEVER pay full price again. Boy, it does add up

 

[dislal]

i switched from Geico to AAA for my auto insurance about a year ago. Our insurance dropped 50% for the exact same coverage Now this is me every time I have to pay my car insurance

 

[Serling126]

We cancelled our cable and got rabbit ears. Didn't miss it too much until we were stuck inside more over winter. Called last fall about having it turned back on, and found out they have recently started charging a $40 connection fee! I said no thank you!! So we have been renting movies from the library instead and it's worked out fine. Once in a while I think about calling and seeing if they will waive the connection fee, but I really like saving the $$ every month.

We also really watch our food budget... don't eat out or get take out too much, and go to Aldi's to stock up on pantry items. Or I will go to BJ's when they have good coupons.

We looked into doing a high deductible health insurance plan but decided against it...

 

[mrsbornkuntry]

I don't know how much of a savings this will be yet, but I put my TV, vcr/dvd player, and wii on a surge protector that we now turn off every night.

 

[mackeysmom]

This week, I ...

1) Downgraded my Cablevision package - that will save me $12 per month.

2) Changed my land-line plan - somehow I save $16 per month and get Caller ID (which I never had).

3) Made a list and stuck to it while grocery shopping today

-- Laura

 

[minnie1928]

I forgot to add, tomorrow I'm hoping to file the paperwork to appeal my tax assessment. It'll cost $100 to file the appeal, so I'm hoping to lower my assessment so that it will at least cover the cost of the fee. More would be nice though

 

[MickeyMomOfThree]

We also got rid of our landline about a year ago. We were paying $40 a month for it and discovered that a 5th cell phone could be added for just $2.50 a month. We already have 4 so we put our home phone number onto a cell phone and saves us $37.50 a month. Noce thing is we can take that phone with us places. The plan is for me to start using that as my cell so that next year when our middle DD goes to middle school my current cell can become hers and I can use the house number as my cell number.

It sounds expensice but DH's company pays for his phone, extra lines were $8 so DD15 and I have those as does my grandma (we wanted her to have one for emergencies and since we call her so much it was worth it.) So we pay $26.50 a month for DD, grandma, me and the "house" phone.

 

[sdemore]

Started buying and brewing my own Dunkin' Donuts flavored coffee from BJ's Wholesales, instead of stopping and buying every morning.

Canceled all the Premium cable pay stations (HBO, SHOWTIME, CINEMAX, TMC, AND STARZ) and joined Netflix. Boy, I could just kick myself for not doing this sooner, but had to wait until our contract was up.

 

[akcire]

We cancelled our cable and got rabbit ears. Didn't miss it too much until we were stuck inside more over winter. Called last fall about having it turned back on, and found out they have recently started charging a $40 connection fee! I said no thank you!! So we have been renting movies from the library instead and it's worked out fine. Once in a while I think about calling and seeing if they will waive the connection fee, but I really like saving the $$ every month.

If you have high speed internet at home, you should look into Netflix. The amount of content you can watch instantly is out of this world. We bought a new blu ray player (needed one since our 9 yr old DVD player died) for about $160 and pay $9 a month to Netfix and get tons of content.

It is awesome. This is me now

 

[DawnM]

We got Ooma for phone service, so our bill is now $0

I was able to get my son a ride to and from camp and saved gas there. And I chose the car that wasn't stopping for dinner on the way home (saved another $10)

What I am not sure what to do about:

I still have Directv and pay $95 with tax. I don't know how to lower it really without cutting the services we use. We get only one channel with rabbit ears.

 

[charming23]

We switched from a monthly cell phone plan to a pay-as-you--go one. Saves us so much money because the two of us were just not using 1000 minutes a month. So instead of $89 a month we fill up with $25 dollars worth which is 100 minutes about every 2 months.

We also switched to a water efficient shower head about a month ago so we shall see if it makes a difference when we get the new water bill next month.

 

[tinkermom23]

Last fall I bought a drying rack for our laundry and dry about every-other load on that. We had great coupons and switched all of our lights to the new energy eff. ones. We did whatever we could find to cut our electric usage. In less than 6 months we saved over $80 on our electric bill.

We are really looking forward to all the yummy things to eat on our trip to WDW and DH and I drool over the pictures and menus! ( I think DH loves Disney just for the food!) ANyway, since we will be eating out every meal for 10 days, we decided we would not go out to eat at all for the whole month of March. This has been hardest on DS10 because he doesn't know we are going to WDW and thinks we are just being mean!

Oh, another thing to save $$. I tackled the pile of mending that has been sitting on my sewing machine for months! I thought I'd need to buy DS10 new jeans before summer but now I think we can stretch these until it's time for shorts!

 

[kaytieeldr]

I still have Directv and pay $95 with tax. I don't know how to lower it really without cutting the services we use. We get only one channel with rabbit ears.

disclaimer: I DON'T KNOW HOW TRUE THIS IS. HSN had a 27" tv on air yesterday - no, I'm not trying to get you to buy a new television It weighs thirteen pounds. The host was saying you can watch it in the house now, and as the weather warms up, get a $20 antenna - he didn't go into detail, but I think he was talking about some type of box, not rabbit ears, maybe available at Radio Shack and the like - and take the tv and antenna outside on the lanai and watch outdoors. Sp. the point of my post: you might want to check with Radio Shack and consider watching TV outdoors

 

[howlongtildisney]

We recently switched gas providers. They gave us free connection, a credit on our first month's bill, and a lower rate than our previous provider.

Also, a couple months ago I fixed a leaky toilet. That's saved us almost $20 a month in the water bill every month!