Finance Review

About once a year I like to take a look at our bills and review ways in which I can save money as well as ensure that billing is being done correctly. It is time consuming but almost always pays off. Here are a few things I have found from calls I made today:

• Call your credit card companies and ask them to lower your credit card rate - they almost ALWAYS do saving TONS of money.
• Double checking billing. For instance I found I was being charged $1/month for international call service on my phone bill - I have NEVER made an international call. So I had this removed.
• Cable/Dish - I looked at the channels we were using and was able to reduce the channels we subscribed to and saved $12/month.
• Insurance - Switching companies although tedious can often significantly reduce cost. Also, telling your current company that you are looking at other companies can often get them to look at new discounts offered that they didn't bother to tell you about. This is what happened to me. So far it has saved me $147/year on homeowners and I'm waiting on my agent to get back to me regarding the auto portion. UPDATE: My auto went down $55/month!!!!
• Prescriptions - I've mentioned this before in this post - but getting prescriptions done every 3 months as opposed to monthly has saved us a significant amount of money as well as being much more convenient.

So in about 1 1/2 hours today I have saved at least $80/month!!

I'd love to hear tips that you have for saving money on your monthly bills!