First off, a big THANK YOU to PF in general. Browsing this subreddit has helped me think in a more intelligent financial light!
My SO and I are planning on starting a family, and we've been looking at ways to cut costs without losing quality. As such, we looked at everything (and I mean everything) on our budget to see where we could save a little money. Here's some of the bigger one's we've saved on so far:
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Refinanced the house (Rates from Oct. 2016). I saw people on PF kept mentioning how rates were at "an all time low" and decided to look into it. We went from 4.125% on our mortgage loan to 3.375% (Could have been 3.25% if we had been more decisive 3 days sooner). Refinance overall cost us about $5K. It's saving us about $40K over the life of the loan! Our monthly payments are lower too. (We however were always paying more monthly, and have kept paying that amount to get this payed off early)
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Health insurance: When we got married, my SO added me to their policy, and when open enrollment came I said we should check out the options. My SO was paying $120/month for one person on Blue Shield without ever questioning it. We are now both on Kaiser (same coverage) for the same total price. (two for the price of one!)
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Car insurance: Once again, my SO didn't shop around. I added them to my policy and dropped their monthly cost $100/month (note: we also started carpooling so my SO's car is not a "commuter car". Had it remained a commuter, the saving would still have been $40/month). Also, apparently insurance is slightly cheaper if you're married (Mine went down $60/year before SO was even added to the plan, when I called to change my name).
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Phones: We and several trusted friends are on Tmobile's family plan. Unlimited everything with no throttling (unless you meet insane unlikely circumstances), $28/phone/month. We were previously paying $35 and $50 each respectively. Not a huge difference for us, but I can't believe how much some PF'ers are paying when I read other posts (in the $100-200 range is crazy to me!)
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Home Owners Insurance : I literally just did this one today . Saw USAA mentioned as being affordable (in an old reddit thread!), checked the price and it's savings us $461/year to switch! This is for both home and earthquake, and better coverage. I still have some calls to make about flood insurance.
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Pest control: Called and got it down $4 . Ok, this is not a "big savings" per-se, but they did it without a fight! More money in my pocket! And I might still shop around some more. But we're concerned with keeping quality because ANTS.
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Internet : We have options in our area, I know not everyone does (I hope Google fiber comes here some day...). Called them, and told them to give us a better price or we're switching (You'll be directed to customer retention). Our bill is $59/month for 100 Mbps. It is a contract for 2 years, but we can get out of it for $4/remaining month (easily worth it to not pay the $95 we were at) and can be renewed if we call a month before end of contract.
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Cash rewards cards(or travel, whatever floats your boat): We put everything we can on these cards (unless the fee to pay with card exceeds the rewards cash. If there's a fee, this is usually the case, but actually our auto insurance fee is worth using the card!). We're projected to have around $1,200 in cash rewards this year (we use every card to it's full advantage, Costco, Double Cash, Amex preferred, Discover revolving, Amazon card.). It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't (use the Costco one 75% of the time for purchases we actually have to think about).
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Etc: The list really does go on. Google "STORE coupon" whenever you buy something (online or in person). Call any monthly services you have and ask for a better rate. Always ask for a raise (bring good reasons why) when reviews comes up. Keep an eye out for better positions (closer to home, pays better, more benefits, etc.). Our monthly costs are down about $962 from all of this (and I'm not quite done). This shit adds up!
Submitted May 05, 2017 at 10:24PM by Giraffezilla http://ift.tt/2qKw6SX
