Many of my monthly bills are set up on direct or auto-pay. I’m a big proponent of these types of conveniences. These recurring bills either come directly out of my checking account or are charged to my favorite rewards card. (This way I get to make one monthly payment to cover them all.) If you’re going to use these types of automatic payment systems, however, you have to make a point of scrutinizing your monthly bills. Every quarter we stop and closely analyze every one of our monthly bills.
Here are some memberships you might want to review on occasion:
Gym Memberships – Many people sign up for gym memberships after the first of the year to help with New Year’s resolutions. Even if you didn’t sign up for a slick gym you might have joined your community’s YMCA. Regardless, you should occasionally stop and evaluate this service and its impact on your family. Are you using it? If you worked out a few times and then fell off the wagon, you might as well cancel the membership. In addition, many of these agreements are available at much more favorable rates now than they were a year ago. The current economical situation has forced gyms to lower their rates to attract customers. With a quick phone call, you may be able to move the service you use to a new, lower rate.
Netflix – Movie subscriptions are another service that you may have signed up for and then forgotten about. If you are using Netflix regularly, it’s a great way to keep the cost of watching movies in check. If you’re not using it, however, you should cancel it and keep your money in your checkbook.
Cell Phone Plans – Cell phones plans can change over the years, if you don’t keep an eye on them. What worked for you a couple of years ago might not be the most cost effective plan now. I switched to a prepaid phone option a few years ago. It’s best to review your plan periodically and analyze the way you use your cell phone to be sure you have a plan that’s best for your situation.
Cable/Satellite TV – Do you ever watch those expensive movie channels that you were sure you had to have? If you are too busy to really watch television, you should drop some of those extras from your television service. For a week, pay attention to the channels you really enjoy watching. Write them down. Then pull up your service’s web site and find the cheapest way to get those channels. You can always upgrade again if you later realize you really miss something.
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Nice article, and great tips for saving. The main thing I would mention to anyone considering switching to pre-paid cell phones, however, is that you should figure out first whether you can reduce your current cell bills down to acceptable levels–thereby saving often significant plan cancellation fees (AKA “early termination fees”), not to mention the convenience of keeping your present cell phone number. In this vein, I thought that I’d elaborate on a method for effectively reducing cellular expenses. Not to blatantly plug, but I work for the consumer advocacy website fixmycellbill.com , powered by a company called Validas, where we slash the average cell bill by 22 percent. It costs five bucks to implement our suggested changes to your plan (the average consumer currently saves around $450 annually through us) but we will analyze your bill for free without any commitment of purchase, just to let you know exactly how many dollars your carrier is ripping you off by. I could go on and on about how shifty these cell companies can be in their attempts to make you overpay. We stop them, and have currently put over $5,000,000 back in the pockets of consumers. You can check out Validas’s fixmycellbill.com in the national news media, most recently on Good Morning America at abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6887412&page=1.
Good luck to everyone reading on making an informed wireless choice.
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