I have read so many articles about how to cut out some of your monthly expenses so you can lower your monthly budget and it seemed like there wasn’t anything that applied to me. I had researched the payments that we had every month and made sure I got the best deal. But deals changed, so I am glad I took another look at our monthly bills and found a way to lower our monthly budget.
Over the next few weeks I am going to share with you the ways I am saving more on your monthly expenses. Below are the first few that has helped over the past few months. Let’s make 2019 the year we are keeping more money in our bank accounts!
Cable
I know – this is a huge one! My husband took so long to decide it was ok to get rid of cable. We really didn’t watch anything other than kids shows and sports and other than sports, it was rare we watched anything live.
So after DirecTV promised to lower my bill – but didn’t actually lower the bill, I was done paying for cable. Our contract had expired and they had offered us the same pricing for the next 12 months – but when I received the bill, there were no discounts and they had no record of our conversation. I had wasted too much time trying to get my bill lower with DirecTV that I decided I was done with them. (They did try very hard to get me to come back but still only offered me the same pricing I should have had. A few days later I had an email offer to go back to DirecTV and they would also give me $300 in a Prepaid Visa. It was really tempting…but I had had enough!)
How do we watch TV?
After much research and crowdsourcing of my friends, I settled on YouTube TV. You can watch sports, it has many local stations and the most important stations I like to watch, It lets us DVR shows and it keeps a library of the shows we watch and notifies us when we have a new show to watch. The cost is $40 a month – that’s it! We have a 4K Apple TV to stream our TV shows. You can also stream it on a Chromecast, ROKU or Smart TV. It’s an app you need to access.
We also have NFL Sunday Ticket. My husband is a student so we only pay $100 for the season. They bill us $25 per month for 4 months. You can see if you qualify here.
We also had a free 30 day subscription of Sling TV. It has lower pricing options but I didn’t find it as easy to use as YouTube Tv. Plus it did not have as many live channels nor sports options. You also have to pay an additional $5 for a DVR.
Car Insurance
We had been with Geico for about 3 years. But it felt like the rates kept going up. We have 2 basic cars and we are good drivers. So I hated that we had to pay so much. A friend of mine suggested her agent from State Farm. I sent them an email and they gave me a really good rate when I combined it with my home insurance. What I also loved is that I did everything through email. I really like to do this since it can be hard to talk on the phone when my kids are home. But I really like to do this because I have everything in writing.
My new car insurance payment is about $25 less per month, so far. I have the device in my car that tracks my driving and my monthly payments could decrease. I don’t drive often, and I am hoping that my payment will go down even more.
Home Owners Insurance
When I was looking for a new home insurance policy, I sent the broker what I currently had. I was shocked to find out that I didn’t have the coverage I expected. My repairs would be done but they would pay based on the usage. For example: If my roof was damaged and the repair bill would have been $10,000 but because the roof was a few years old (like 25% of the life of the roof had been used) they would only pay 75% of the cost. That would be $2500 out of my pocket!
I didn’t even know that was an option when we got our policy and I was grateful that the insurance agent pointed that out to me. We have State Farm with our car insurance and we have 100% coverage on our house and our payments are about $25 less per month. (That’s $300 per year less – for better coverage!)
Meal Plan
I shared a ton of information in this blog post about how to meal plan. I even have a printable meal planning sheet with a grocery shopping list to make it easier. If you haven’t tried grocery pick up at Walmart or Kroger – that will save you a lot of money. No impose buys and you can make sure you get everything on your list!
With just a few tweaks in your budget you may be able to save hundreds of dollars each month! Stay tuned to hear about how we are saving around $75 per month on our cell phone bill and how you can save money and still be healthy!
