Cut Your Budget with 4 Phone Calls

Carrie Lowe
Everyone seems to think that saving money is all about going without. However, if you are a smooth talker, know who to call, and even what to ask, you could easily slash $500 or even more off your yearly budget in only a few minutes of your time. These savings can be huge, and when added up with a few other money saving methods that you are looking for could provide you with the savings that you really need to make your budget work for your situation.

Call up your cell phone carrier. Most are looking for as many ways to keep customers as possible. This means you could easily get a deal on your cell phone that you otherwise would not have been able to get. With special pricing, steep discounts and even promotional rates. By utilizing all of these options, you can work to quickly and easily reduce the amounts that you are paying, especially since there are so many discounts around that you can snag.

Call your auto insurance company. Most of the time you are overpaying for your coverage. By calling and talking to your insurance company, you can typically cut your insurance rates too far less than you are currently paying. However, it is important that you specifically ask for discounts, most insurance companies will not volunteer to discount your coverage; instead, it will be up to you to actually ask for those discounts.

Start bundling services, typically you can bundle your internet, cable and call phone services, and often your home phone for a fraction of the cost that you are paying for each of these services separately. By combining them into a single bill, it is possible to save yourself a lot of money as well as streamline the amount of time that it takes to pay bills. By working carefully to combine your services, you could save as much as 50% off of the services easily, without any problems and without cutting your services back.

Your last phone call should be to your credit card company. Typically, they are able to cut your credit card rates by as much as 50% or more if you ask and you have a good payment history. However, in order to really take advantage of these discounts, you typically need to have a really good payment history on file, as well as a history of staying within the credit limit that was set up. By meeting these criteria, you can typically ensure that your credit card company will lower your interest rate by at least a small amount, rather than refusing to decrease your rate.

These simple phone calls can allow you to save hundreds each year. Most people overlook the ability to easily cut their expenses and instead focus on the costly aspects such as entertainment. While enjoying yourself does sometimes need to be cut, reducing the expenses for the necessities always is useful to free up money for those fun expenses.

Published by Carrie Lowe

Freelance writer and graphics artist.  View profile

1 Comments

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  • Kevin Hagen7/3/2009

    Great advice, thanks.

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