Your Author Plugs into Savings, Rings up Lower Bills, and Cackles Maniacally While Visiting Revenge upon His Cable Company
Now that I had hit my $100 weekly savings goal for the first time, I was tantalizingly close to breaking even in Week 3. My goal was to not only come up with another hundred bucks, but also to find a few more to cut so I could make up the rest of the Week 1 shortfall.
Fortunately, the prospects for savings looked good because the category for Week 3 was utilities, including water, cable TV, phone, and more. If it came out of a wall at my house, it was fair game for a cut. And thanks to new technology, online scams, and my own previously established sloth, it looked like I’d more than achieve my goal.
I took particular glee at wielding the budget ax in this case because, like every good American, it’s my twenty-first-century right to absolutely hate my cable company. Between the $100-plus bill every month and the service with a scowl, I found despising the cable guys nearly as easy as hating professional soccer and light beer.
The other night, for example, Mrs. Funny Money was working. I was tired and just wanted a little mindless entertainment before bed, so I scrolled through our two-hundred-channel lineup of cable offerings. Jeez, I said “mindless,” not “mind-numbing”! The first dozen shows were reality fare so dim-witted that I could feel the idiocy seeping into my DNA, to the point where I was putting my great-grandchildren at the risk of being born stupid. The next twenty channels were pay-per-view events, such as the New Guinea Little League Junior Putt-Putt semifinals ($24.95). That was followed by a bunch of shopping channels, at which point I gave up and read a book because it turns out that Tips for the Perfect-Fitting Bra was nothing like what I’d imagined.
This shoddy menu of entertainment had me more steamed than a bowl of clams when I considered our cable bill. My first call was to an alternate cable provider that operates in our county. Unfortunately, they didn’t serve our neighborhood. A few more calls to compare service got me a package from my phone and Internet provider, AT&T. Thanks to the widespread use of fiber-optic cable I found a combined package that kept all of my current lineup while also dumping a movie channel I never watched, but which the old cable company required me to take to get the movie channel I do watch. That cut a combined bill of $225.84 for cable, phone, and Internet access to $145, for a savings of $80.84. The U-verse package included unlimited long distance, too, so I could cancel our long-distance carrier, which averaged $3.60 a month.
I briefly considered inviting our cable provider to make a counteroffer, but the lousy customer service, frequent lineup changes and service outages, and craptastic tech support gave me no reason to want to continue doing business with that bunch of dunces. Plus, any savings they could offer would be nowhere as valuable as the glee I experienced in calling to cancel. I felt like Rhett Butler storming out of Tara in Gone with the Wind, but instead of growling, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” I was cackling like the Joker in The Dark Knight. Also, the mansion is in flames.
But wait—as they say on late-night TV ads—there was more! My old, slow Internet service had been with AT&T, at a cost of $44.95 a month when I’d signed up four years ago, but that price had dropped. All I had to do at any point was call to get the lower rate, the service rep told me, but I had never asked. The rep refunded two months of the overpayments. In addition, my new TV-phone-Internet services came with introductory prices that saved a combined $324 during the first six months. I also got a $200 AT&T gift card.
To cap it off, a bogus “third-party” voice mail service had somehow become added to my phone account. Buried in the list of charges was $14.95 every month for something called Orbit Telecom voice mail, some kind of Web-based voice messaging service. Someone in the house—likely my son, Li’l Money—clicked on a pop-up ad while browsing the Web and unwittingly signed us up. That was easily canceled with a call to Orbit, while the AT&T service rep refunded the charges.
Phone, cable, and Internet
These three services are increasingly interconnected, and saving on one often depends on increasing your use of another. The easiest option is to look at bundles of services, which can include cell phone service, too. For maximum savings, you should consider unbundling, but that’s going to take more time and research. The trade-off of convenience versus money is a common one, and you don’t know if it’s going to be worth the extra trouble until after you’ve identified your potential savings. Still, it’s worth a try if you can spare a little time.
Freeing up cash
Each regular monthly bill in the house—especially utilities—should get a thorough going-over every year or two if you want to keep a lid on costs. Plans for cable TV packages or cell phone service are ever-changing, introductory deals expire, and service charges mysteriously appear, while new competitors show up to offer more attractive deals. A thorough audit of each charge on a bill and an hour or two of comparison shopping can be more than worth your while.
Even if you don’t move any part of your service, start with the easy stuff, which, I have to add once again, carries the risk of making you feel really, really dumb. Comb your statement for the kinds of add-on charges like the Web messaging service I discovered. Not only did I not order the service, but since I didn’t know it was there, I had never even used it. I simply overlooked it on my bill, month after month. Over the course of six months, that was nearly $90 down the drain.
It doesn’t have to be some borderline scam, either, but might be charges for services that you once thought sounded good but you no longer use. A second phone number, a long-distance plan, a bunch of features like three-way calling or call forwarding: any of these may have outlived their usefulness and can be trimmed from your bill with no inconvenience at all.
Even if you don’t feel like comparison shopping, simply call your phone company (if you’re a fossil like me who insists on maintaining a landline), cable provider, or whatever and ask for a cheaper plan or any new discounts. That’s what happened with my Internet access—the price just dropped over time. Or your cable company may have introduced a new package that allows you to get your favorite channels at a lower price. The phrase “Money for the asking” directly applies here. So does “Dialing for dollars.” So does “Are you nuts? Pick up the phone and stop wasting your money!”
Making ends meet
You should definitely be bargain hunting on all this stuff: cable, Internet, phone, and long-distance plans. But you also should be looking at eliminating these services where you can. Let’s start with your phone line.
If you have Internet access at home, you can skip your local phone company and use a service that routes your calls over the Internet using the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). You can keep your number (usually for a fee), and you’ll have to buy some kind of box to attach to your net connection. Monthly fees are anywhere from $5 to $30, and setup fees are about $30. You may also have to pay some local taxes and access fees, but you already pay those with your regular landline. There also may be cancellation fees, so make sure you get thirty days or more to try the service before you’re locked in. Skype, magicJack, Net2Phone, Vonage, and Ooma are just a few of the providers. One feature to look for with these virtual phone services is Enhanced 911, where the provider assigns an address to your number so that fire, police, and other emergency responders can locate you if you make an emergency 911 call.
This assumes you have home Internet access—but do you need it? If you use a smartphone or tablet with wireless connectivity and don’t do a lot of heavy online work, your cellular connection may give you all the Web access you need to simply check e-mail, post Facebook updates, and handle other online tasks with apps or a mobile browser. (I don’t even consider perusing Craigslist and eBay because that’s why we go to work, right?) You also can try using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot and connecting your computers to the Internet that way, especially if you have one of those increasingly hard-to-find unlimited data plans. Then you can cancel your home Internet. But that means you either need to keep a conventional landline if you want a home phone, or cut the cord completely and depend solely on your cell phone.
The point is to avoid paying for the same thing twice. When money is tight, having two ways of making phone calls or two ways of accessing the Internet means you’ve got at least one way to save. So weigh the options and add up the costs. The deciding factor is what’s going to keep your total utility costs lowest. If accessing the Web through your smartphone means you’ll be piling up big mobile data charges, then keeping home Internet access makes sense, and stick with a simple, dumb-style cell phone. You’re going to have to check the options, get prices, then get out a sheet of paper and add it all up to find the least expensive way of meeting your needs.
The cheapest calling option might be to keep a basic landline and ditch your cell phone altogether. If you’re the kind of person who actually enjoys having periods of time when you can’t be reached by your boss, relatives, or automated calls with credit card offers from “Rachel,” you may find this option not only frugal but downright appealing. But I do realize that today, asking people to go without a cell phone is like asking them to live without eyebrows.
When it comes to cable service, I think we pretty much need to establish that this is a luxury, although it’s one that varies according to your lifestyle and location. I’ve lived in New York City for two different stretches without a TV and I was happy not to have one. The first time, after college, I was just too flat broke to buy one. Then, by the time I did have the scratch to buy a TV, I’d found so many fascinating people and places in the city that I didn’t have time to watch it. The second time I was a graduate fellow and realized that even reruns of Gilligan’s Island would be more interesting than grinding through macroeconomics, so, in one of the few wise decisions I can say I’ve ever made, I focused on my studies and once again went TV-less.
It’s not that I’m one of those anti-TV snobs, and even if I were, having a youngster will pretty much beat that right out of you when you witness the calming powers Bear in the Big Blue House has over a distressed toddler. Still, we need to agree that any family could live just fine without expensive cable service. Consider canceling all but basic cable and augmenting your viewing with a Netflix subscription and videos from your local library. If you’ve got a high-definition (HD) television (or add a set-top converter for an older TV set) you can get high-definition broadcast signals with just the addition of an appropriate HD antenna. The Consumer Electronics Association has even created a Web site designed to help you figure out which type of antenna you need.1 TiVo, the folks behind the digital video recording service, makes a TiVo box that accesses and records HD programming, too. Just combining HD broadcast and rentals from Netflix, the Redbox at your supermarket, or borrowing from the library gives you a good range of entertainment choices right there. You’ve got Modern Family and The Hunger Games, but you’ll have to learn to live without Game of Thrones until you can pick up the DVD of the last season at your library.
When it comes to accessing cable channels without cable service, there are more and more online options every day, and they all leave me more and more confused. Using one of these will require you to keep Internet access, possibly at a higher speed than you’re paying for now. There are streaming options over the Web, such as Hulu, and there all manner of little black boxes that will connect the Web to your television and give you access to most—but not all—programming for a monthly subscription charge. TiVo Premiere service offers most cable channels, and there are gizmos available from Apple TV, Roku, Vizio, Simple.TV, and probably two new ones that went into business as I typed that last sentence. You also have options through Amazon and iTunes and even through game systems such as Xbox and Wii.
Since I am one of the olds, I asked a smart young whippersnapper at work about all of it. Kevin uses some combination of three of these things, and, from what I could gather, saves money and is very happy with all of it. That was all I could gather, though, because after he said, “Yeah, it works pretty good . . . ,” I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. Still, I gleaned enough information to figure this out: be careful.
If you start signing up for new streaming TV subscriptions or buy a set-top box, HDMI cables, or even a new HDTV set, you are going to defeat the whole budget-cutting goal. You also may not want to invest the time or undergo what is guaranteed to be some level of tech frustration to get everything working together. But, if you have the time and the inclination (or access to the kind of handy twelve-year-old geek who amuses himself by wiring toaster ovens to activate the Death Star), you can try it. But let’s make this ground rule: any outlay of cash that you “invest” in an effort to reduce your cable bill must pay for itself within six months or less. Yes, I am giving you a temporary dispensation from one of The $1,000 Challenge commandments (“Thou shalt not spend to save”), so don’t abuse it.
Try this approach: First, create a list of programs and channels you regularly watch. Next, figure out if any of your existing technology can give you access to all, most, or some of it. Now research the simplest, least expensive options to fill in the gaps (not the coolest, latest, all-in-one gizmo that will impress your friends and allow you to remotely monitor the tire pressure on your backyard gas grill). Add it all up, and if it results in a lower ongoing monthly cost than cable and the savings covers any “capital outlay” (I love to sling that biz-school lingo!) of cash in six months or less, go ahead and try it. If not, cut down to basic cable or survive on broadcast TV and hit the DVD shelves at the library.
Pinching pennies so hard that Lincoln gets a headache
If you use a cell phone, kill the landline or vice versa (we’ll talk about saving on cell phone plans in a bit). You’re going to have to live with one phone. You’ll also need to cancel cable and Internet. Yes, it’s harsh, but we’re desperate here. You can get movies and DVDs of TV shows at the library or learn to live with broadcast TV using the HDTV tactics described earlier. Hit pawnshops and consignment stores for videos for yourself and the kids. (A warning: You may be thrilled to find Old Yeller for 99 cents, but you’re going to use up twice that much in tissues when Travis gets out his rifle toward the end. And you’ll definitely need to keep the family dog out of the room, unless you need to send a message about what happens to mutts that chew on the dining room furniture.)
Young ones are especially unlikely to miss cable if you substitute a selection of videos to play over and over and over and over. And over. Even when we had all kinds of costly premium cable at the house, Li’l Money insisted on watching the same Disney Sing Along Songs video so many times that as long as I live—and no matter how hard I try—I will never, ever forget every note of Billy Joel singing “Why Should I Worry” from Oliver & Company. (He’s got “street savoir faire,” which—I think we all can agree—in a just world would be a painfully debilitating venereal disease.) My only defense was to get the kid hooked on The Jungle Book because you never do get tired of Louis Prima swinging away on “I Wan’na Be Like You.” (Added benefit: you get the housework done a lot faster.)
I think the only time you should consider keeping home Internet access when times are tough is if you are freelancing or working from home and need access to keep that money coming in. I know the Web is essential to any job search, but you don’t need 24/7 access, so use the library. (In fact, it’s probably healthier for you and better for your job hunt if you don’t sit there in your underwear, nursing a Piels Light while endlessly hitting “refresh” on SimplyHired.com at 2 in the morning.) If you’ve got a trusting neighbor and you both are stringent with your browser security, considering splitting the cost of access with someone else nearby and sharing a Wi-Fi connection. Avoid coffee shops with free Wi-Fi if you’re going to feel guilty and end up paying $12 for a cappuccino to “rent” your table at Meanie Beanie’s House of Likeable Lattes. Remember: cheap is good, but free is better.
I know that giving up the little things feels like a big thing when you’re strapped. I know you’re used to coming home and flipping on The Real Housewives of Ishpeming and checking in on Facebook or Foursquare. You feel like, “How can I be so broke that I can’t afford this?” But those little things add up to big expenses, and you need to strip things down to the bare bones.
All I can suggest is to be proud of what you accomplish in shaving your expenses down to keep yourself afloat until things improve. Knowing that, whatever happens, you can get by for now can be very empowering, and, when your financial crisis passes, it will be a great source of strength. If you did get that 99-cent Old Yeller DVD, you’ll recall that at one point, the father counsels, “Now and then, for no good reason, life will haul off and knock a man flat.”
Yes, it does. Just do what you need to do to get back up.
Cell phones
When it came to cell phone service, I wasn’t all that eager to shop around. In Metro Detroit, Verizon Wireless is consistently rated as having the best coverage, and, since I mostly use my cell phone as a phone, not a music player or gaming device, that’s the most important consideration, especially since I’m a reporter and I drive an eighteen-year-old car. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t find savings here, too.
As soon as I called to ask about lowering my bill, I instantly knocked off $10 a month thanks to a new service plan. I was able to save another $15 because a cheaper data plan had been introduced. Finally, I saved $15 more by canceling a broadband connection option I “temporarily” added before vacation so that I could use my cell phone as a modem for my laptop. Then, of course, I forgot to cancel it, and the charge wound up on every bill for months afterward. All told, it was another $40 of savings in one short phone call.
Freeing up cash
The best bet is to compare service and coverage and comparison shop, if there’s a good alternative provider. This is a lot easier now that consumers have the right to keep the same cell phone number, unlike the olden days, when we put up with unbelievable tons of crap from cell phone carriers because we were desperate to hang on to the phone number that was the only point of contact for friends, family, freelance clients, and old girlfriends who drunk-dial you at 3 a.m.
Once again, look over the bill for add-ons, like my broadband connection option, or some mobile messaging service, ring-tone subscription, or other nonsense you may have accidentally added or that may have been crammed on by a scammer. Finally, ask if you’re eligible for any discounts based on where you work, go to school, or some other affiliation. For example, I get an 8 percent discount on my cell service because I’m a AAA member.
Start with reviewing how many minutes of calls, how many texts, and much data you’re using every month. Typically, when you sign up for a cell phone plan, you’re guessing at how much time you’ll use each month. Then, once you’ve got a plan, you tend to stick with it, even if you’re wildly overpaying for time you don’t use. If you’ve underestimated, you know it right away because you get hit with overage charges and you select a new plan, but if you overestimated your usage, the tendency is to just keep overpaying with a sense of relief that you aren’t racking up extra charges.
Because we didn’t grow up with cell phones, Mrs. Funny Money and I didn’t start out as big texters. Asking someone over forty to send a text message is like asking him to run a marathon on his thumbs. It’s easier—and usually faster—for us to simply drive over and talk to you. Of course, since it’s a cell phone, we dimwitted olds often try to call people or even leave voice messages. Youngsters frown on phones being used for voice transmission, however, and look at someone my age making a call on an iPhone as if we were using it to chisel messages onto a cave wall.
As our friend’s children became old enough to have phones (which is what, twenty-eight months now?), their parents bit the bullet and learned how to text their kids, then turned their newfound thumb savvy on us, their friends who’ve known them since the days when we all bought eight-tracks together. Then our baby-sitters were increasingly only available via text. Then they hired those snotty kids at work who text you from the next desk, asking you to please move your walker off their iPad charging cord. So, Mrs. Funny Money and I were dragged into the texting universe, although, since both of us are writers and editors, our messages employ fully spelled-out words and punctuation. Yes, when I use a semicolon in a text message it is with a conjunctive verb to connect related thoughts, not because I am winking at you.
Because we were infrequent texters, our original cell plans didn’t include any text messaging coverage at all; it was cheaper to pay for each message. But as the messages picked up and coworkers started texting “LOL” to us during meetings, the charges mounted. (And why do you do that? I am in the same meeting. I can see and hear you laughing, so I don’t need to know that it’s “out loud,” do I?) The real culprit behind our ever-rising text message bills was, of course, Li’l Money, who continued to do amazingly cute things that my wife would photograph with her cell phone camera to instantly share so that I could be reminded at any moment that both his childhood and my life were slipping away. That will be another 50 cents, sir. And this time, please don’t pay in Indian-head pennies.
During a recent month, our text messages totaled more than $20, so it was time to shop for another plan for the Funny Money family and another reminder that change is a constant, especially when it comes to finances. Left ignored, those text charges will hurt, and, as the kids text, “IAGTKOM” (I Ain’t Got That Kind of Money). LOL, or, as we grown-ups used to say, “Ha!”
Making ends meet
If you drop your landline and make your cell phone your one and only point of contact, keep an eye on your bill. Your voice usage may go up, resulting in higher charges that shrink—or entirely eat up—any savings. Monitor your usage and adjust your calling plan to keep the costs manageable.
If you’re not locked into a contract, do some aggressive comparison shopping. One good comparison site is BillShrink.com, which can log on to your wireless account, analyze your calling patterns, and recommend alternatives. (I didn’t find it to be entirely accurate in estimating my current monthly costs, however, so double-check the calculations against a few of your recent bills. The recommended plans did, however, save me about $40 a month.) Also check out prepaid cell phone plans, especially ones that will let you roll over any unused minutes from month to month, which can make sense if you aren’t a heavy caller.
If you are locked into a contract, you may face a big early termination fee if you try to switch carriers. Talk to your service provider and get the best deal you can while you wait for your contract to expire, or balance your monthly savings against the termination fee and see if you’ll come out ahead soon enough to make paying the fee worthwhile. Before you give up and stick with a plan, though, do a little homework on the Web to see if you are entitled to quit without a penalty. If, for example, your contract terms changed, that may allow you to exit your contract without penalty. Another option is to see if cutting down to the cheapest possible calling plan for the rest of your contract is cheaper than the termination fee. If so, make that move, cancel the contract when it expires, and sell your old phone to get back some of the dough.
Pinching pennies so hard that Lincoln gets a headache
If ditching a landline for a cell phone is your cheapest option, use all the tactics described above. And one more: if you have family members or a close friend with one of those all-inclusive family plans, ask if you can join the plan and contribute a few bucks a month toward their costs.
Another option is the Lifeline program. Under a program sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, if your income is 135 percent of the poverty level (about $20,000 for a family of two) or less, you qualify for one discount prepaid wireless phone per household. You also qualify if you receive certain types of aid, such as Head Start for your child, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or Medicaid. This service is provided by the federal Universal Service Fund, which you’ve paid for years as part of your phone bill, so don’t be shy about claiming the benefit if you now qualify. You can check your eligibility and find Lifeline providers in your state by going to lifelinesupport.org2, or call the Universal Service Administrative Company (which administrates the program) at 888-641-8722, the FCC at 888-CALL-FCC, or your local telephone company. And hey, those toll-free numbers cost you when you dial from a cell phone, so find a landline to make those “free” calls.
Water, gas, and electricity
Tackling the big utility expenses such as water, gas, and electricity was just too involved for a one-week cost-cutting experiment, so I largely skipped these costs. Usually, saving here involves complicated, long-term options that require shelling out serious cash, such as drilling a well, installing energy-efficient windows and insulation, or buying a solar water heater. These tactics may pay off over several years, but I was looking to save now, and I wasn’t going to pay out big bucks today to save a few dollars a month some day after the Detroit Lions win Super Bowl CCCXCVII (that’s 397 to us non-Romans).
Yes, I know the federal government offers tax credits of up to 30 percent of the cost for making certain energy-efficient improvements to your home. But that means you still pay the other 70 percent. It’s a great investment, but until you’ve got other financial priorities taken care of and can save to pay for those improvements up front, leave them for another day.
In the meantime, you should certainly take all the steps you can to conserve water, electricity, and gas. You can start with a home energy audit from your electric company. While the inspector might recommend some expensive improvements, chances are there’ll be some small ones, too. So change those lightbulbs, turn off your computer at night, and clean your refrigerator coils.
A programmable thermostat can be a good addition that’s not too expensive, but the savings often aren’t as big as you might expect. One study in Florida found home-cooling costs went up when adjustable thermostats were installed because residents set the temperature lower for the times when they were home. It mostly depends on your consistency in programming the thing and the temperatures you select—just the same as with a manual thermostat. Either way, saving on heating and cooling costs means more blankets and sweaters in the winter and more T-shirts, shorts, and fans in the summer.
If you’ve got an air conditioner, see whether your electric utility offers a plan that puts your AC on a separate electrical meter and gives the utility the option to briefly turn it off during periods of peak electricity use. The CoolCurrents plan, which won’t turn off your AC for more than fifteen minutes every half hour, limited to eight hours during a 24-hour period, gives Metro Detroit homeowners discounted rates on electricity for their air-conditioning. DTE Energy estimates that homeowners can save up to 20 percent off their air-conditioning costs this way.
Naturally, you should fix leaky faucets and drop a bottle of water in the toilet tank to reduce the cost of each flush (avoid the old brick technique, since it can dissolve and send sediment into your plumbing). To cut down on watering lawns and gardens, look for free mulch and try your hand at some xeriscaping to keep things from getting brown. Local power companies trim a lot of trees that grow to interfere with power lines. They’ll often run the branches and other wood through a chipper and offer the somewhat rough mulch free for the taking.
Level billing is a utility option that doesn’t really save you money but does make it easier to pay your bills and plan your budget. It takes your annual gas, electric, or water bill and divides it up evenly for the next twelve months so that you have one consistent payment instead of a $60 gas bill in July and a $250 one in January. At the end of your twelve months, the bill adjusts to reflect current prices and your actual usage. Not every utility company offers these plans, but if yours does, it adds a welcome bit of predictability to your monthly cash flow.
Saving on all the major utilities comes down to common sense and conservation: the less you use, the less you pay. Shut the heat registers in empty rooms, use the toaster oven instead of the big oven, defrost the freezer, etc. Use all the resource-reducing tactics you can find. Plus, while you’re saving money, you can help save the planet. This is important because, if the planet gets so polluted that we have to escape to Newt Gingrich’s fifty-first state moon colony, you can just imagine what HBO is gonna charge to get Curb Your Enthusiasm at the Sea of Tranquility.
The Bottom Line
Goal: $1,000
Week 1—Transportation . . . $41.61
Week 2—Miscellaneous . . . $132.89
Week 3—Utilities . . . $139.39
Total monthly savings . . . $313.89
Left to cut . . . $686.11
I made the week’s $100 goal plus covered all the shortfall from Week 1 and a few extra bucks to boot. That left me with $686.11 still to cut. Adding it all up, my immediate savings from a few phone calls came to $139.39 in ongoing monthly savings, plus $653.80 (!) in temporary discounts or refunds, including the $200 gift card.
Besides the savings, I finally got to walk over to the cable box and do something I’ve been itching to do for years—flip off my cable company.