This morning, I called our local cable company, which we've done business with for many years, in hopes of lowering our monthly payment for internet and cable service. We only have basic cable and internet. We're not into ordering movies nor HBO. We're content with watching local news, the weather channel, and old, clean movies...well, you get the idea. Anyway, she lowered our monthly bill by about $5. So now we will be paying $64.99 plus tax (which to me is still high, although not quite as high as it was).
Next, I proceeded to call our cellphone company with the same intentions. I do not use the cellphone much, just mainly when I'm away from home, and infrequently then. I'd accumulated almost 4,000 unused minutes over the past year on it and well over 300 have been expiring monthly as a person can only carry 12 month's unused at a time. A woman answered and told me I could change to the senior plan (age 65 and over) and save $10 a month on my bill and have the current 450 minutes-plan reduced to 200 minutes per month. She still wanted to do it although I made it clear to her I would not for conscious' sake accept it, as I am not that age. So she connected me with someone else, after telling me I would need to wait a couple minutes while she talked with the person before I would, to tell them I wanted my bill lowered and to give them my information. Another woman came onto the line and said she could lower my bill by $20 a month if I would be willing to accept a 200 week-day-only minutes plan, as well as accept the elimination of the almost 4000 accumulated unused minutes. I asked her what was I to do if I needed to talk over the weekend on the cellphone? She answered that she would give me 200 bonus minutes that I could use any time AND that she would also pay my account current ($154 owed on it...WOW!) and she said I would not have a payment due until May (which would be $19.99 for the 200 minutes plus the usual $30 for unlimited data, a total of $49.99 plus tax monthly)...so I was happy over that and told her so, too. So now the cellphone is paid current and the monthly bill will be lowered by at least $20. :-)
Hubby came home from work and I informed him of the news. I also told him that we've been paying about $350.00 interest (approximately) each month on our home mortgage. He and I have been discussing, here lately, as to whether to, Lord willing, save up the entire balance of our home's payoff and then paying off our home OR pay more along and along, to the principle. Yes, I've learned that doing the latter is the way to go to help eliminate interest payments BUT he and I have been working on building up a liquid savings...We had done it but last year we went through a lot of it...circumstances prevailed and it was not wasted. We felt thankful we had it to go through. So, for now, we're just making the monthly mortgage payments while saving what we can.
I've been going through the closets, etc. off and on over the past few months and selling some things that have not been being used much if any. This is helping a little in building savings.
I guess this may not seem like much to some, but I'm very happy about this reduction in monthly payments to the cable company and the cellphone company (as well as $154 paid to bring our cellphone bill current included). Before I close this update, I want to say that I've been receiving high-interest checks in the mail from local loan companies that I've been destroying and getting rid of. Yes, they are a little tempting but not that tempting. I got involved with them year before last year...one came in the mail in 2011 for over $2000 and I cashed it and put it in savings and felt pretty good about that for a while and another one came for over $1200 not long after, which I did the same with. The payments were pretty high and after paying them for MONTHS, I realized that I'd thrown over $800 (interest on the payments I'd paid so far) to the WIND. I took money from the 'savings' and paid them both off. Lesson learned.
