Every Dollar Matters - Conservative Personal Finance

Phone / Cable / Internet bills

Phone

Assuming you have a PhD in reading telephone bills (a most scary thing to do) you can generally save money by changing your long distance carrier. Federal regulations allow you to be able to choose who your long distance carrier is. If you take the time you can generally get a lower rate.

If you are having a hard time controlling the long distance portion of your phone bill you can drop this service all together and buy a monthly phone card. They come in all types of denominations, the higher the price the better per minute rate. With a phone card you can control how much time you spend on the phone and control your costs.

If you have long distance minutes on your cell phone consider dropping long distance coverage on your land line.

If you are not locked into a contract shop around for cell phone service. You can save a lot of money this way. LetsTalk is a good site to find out what type of cell phone plan is for you. It will also help you swim through the bewildering maze of information.

Cable / Internet Bill

Consider bundling your cable, internet, and phone service. You can consolidate to a single bill and save 20%.

Are you getting all the premium channels? Do you actually watch all of them enough to warrant the cost? If you are not watching the channels drop them from your service. You can cut your cable bill in half by doing this.