Cutting Costs: The "Luxury" Utility Bills

Over the past few weeks I have been spending time looking through our bills looking for ways to cut our everyday costs after coming across a post on The Happy Housewife entitled The Secret to Lowering Your Monthly Bills.  I must admit, this is an area I hadn't given much thought to, so I read it and felt inspired to give it a try.

Last week I read an article online about Verizon reducing the price of their data plans by $10 per month.  I figured it was the perfect opportunity to contact customer service, so I did.  I was initially told I didn't qualify because I didn't have the right plan, but after asking some questions and probing a bit further, I ended up reducing my bill, which only includes myself, by $20 per month.  A $240 payday!  My plan changed a bit, but suits my needs better.  Why pay for data, minutes, or texts you don't normally use anyway?  Best of all, I didn't even have to pick up the phone.  It was all taken care of through an online chat.

Today I am tackling our home phone, internet, and cable bill.  They are all bundled together through Windstream and their television provider is DISH Network.  I tackled the tv first, as I noticed our bill increased this month.  After getting nowhere in an online chat, I called the company and was able to keep the same package while reducing our monthly bill by $15 per month for six months.  Not quite the deal I was looking for, but I will call when that time period is up to see if we can reduce it yet again.  If not, we will take our services elsewhere.  Ten minutes of my time did yield a $90 savings over the next six months, though.

Next I called Windstream and spoke with an agent regarding our bill.  Unfortunately, our internet wasn't reduced (though I didn't push too much at this point), but we changed our home phone plan to better suit our needs and reduced our bill by $13/month for a total of $156/year.  I'll work on the internet price another day, but am happy with the progress I've made so far.

For less than thirty minutes of my time, I reduced our bills by $486 per year!  I'm hoping a few more phone calls down the road will increase our savings even more.  That's a pretty good hourly wage if you ask me!  Our extra savings will be put to good use paying off our debt and building up our six month emergency fund.  Every dollar counts!

If you're looking to cut some costs, pick up the phone or hop on the customer service online chat for your providers.  With persistence, patience, and a pleasant attitude you might have a nice little payday, too!