Negotiate One Bill Every Month
Many money experts say you should skip the coffeehouse and make it at home. That’s a lot of effort that you have to do every single day to save a couple bucks.
What if there was a way to save money all year, with a little bit of effort each month?
Every month, I look to negotiate one of our major bills. (and sometimes it means just canceling one bill)
I’m not always successful. In fact, I fail most of the time.
But when I succeed, it’s savings I can bank on all year. I can put that extra cash towards investments or our vacation fund. Either way, I get to keep it and most of them take just fifteen or so minutes to do.
You should give it a try, here are a few bills to tackle:
And if you can’t negotiate a bill every month, negotiate one every quarter. Or once a year! Whatever it is, once you have some success, you won’t want to stop!
Car insurance is one of the best expenses to negotiate because it’s really easy to comparison shop. You can find three competing insurers and get quotes or use this free car insurance shopping tool to quickly shop multiple insurance companies.
Once you get a few competing quotes, go back to your current insurer and ask them if they can do better on the existing policy. Sometimes they may offer you a lower rate than what you found independently because of various discounts like multiple policies, loyalty, or another affinity discount.
If they can’t, bring up the other quotes to see if your insurer will match them. If they will, great, you’re done! If not, you can always switch your insurer.
Free car insurance comparison shopping tool
If you pay an annual fee on your credit, see if you can negotiate a “retention bonus.”
This is when you call up your credit card company before the annual fee hits (30-60 days is best) and ask them if they will waive the fee. Most of the time, they will say no. But sometimes you get lucky and it costs nothing to ask.
If they say no, tell them you are thinking about canceling and if they have any retention offers. If they say no, call their bluff and ask them to cancel. If they actually let you cancel but you want to keep the card, just hang up.
More likely than not they will pretend to check their computer and return with an offer of points, statement credits, or something similar to keep you. Worst case is you hang up.
Cell phone companies fight hard for your business and if your contract is up for renewal, you can get a lot to stick around. This includes free phones if you’re willing to sign a long term contract.
Where you can really save a lot of money is by switching from an expensive legacy carrier to an MVNO, a mobile virtual network operator. These are companies that buy network capacity from major carriers (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T) and sell it to you at a steep discount.
If you’ve seen ads by Mint Mobile or Visible, these are MVNOs (though now many have been acquired by major carriers, but keep the discount pricing).
This post discusses the best discount MVNOs. They are shockingly cheap.
If you’re renting and the renewal is soon, use it as an opportunity to negotiate rent or other incentives. Landlords, especially smaller ones, love a long-term on-time paying renter. They are willing to sacrifice a few dollars to keep a unit rented for a long period of time as long as you keep headaches to a minimum.
To build a case for lower rent, look for comparable properties nearby and how much they are charging. If your landlord won’t budge, consider moving!
You can always sign the lease as is and stay if you prefer.
If you have high interest credit card debt, this may be a good opportunity to consolidate that debt into a personal loan. This only works if you are dedicated to lowering your debt and have a plan that doesn’t have you accumulate more.
By consolidating your credit card debt, you can turn multiple payments into one payment while lowering your interest rate.
Compare your personal loan options
Do an audit of your subscription services and go through each one and try to cancel it.
Many times services will offer you a discount if you stick around. I did this with Apple TV+ recently and they offered to give me 3 months of service for $10. Instead of paying $12.99 a month, I paid $3.33 for three months.
Did I pay $10 more than I would’ve? Technically, yes. But I found more than enough value.
This also works well with newspaper and magazine subscriptions, they are very aggressive in their offers.
If the service lets you cancel, cancel! If you find you miss the service, you can always sign back up. Treat the months you skip as a discount!
If you carry credit card debt, give your issuer a call and see if they will lower your interest rate. If you have a history of on-time payments, make sure they review that before making a decision.
If they won’t budge, you can politely remind them (OK some people call this “threatening”) that you could transfer your balance to another company.
If they still refuse to budge, it may be time to look elsewhere!
The next time you go to the pharmacy, see if the pharmacist will lower the price for cash (vs. insurance co-pay) or see if you can use GoodRx to get a discount.
If you have a Costco nearby, considering calling to see what the non-member price is for whatever you’re buying. Costco Pharmacies will sell to non-members, the price is just slightly higher.
This goes for pet medicines too! I saved $100+ a year on prescription medications for our dog.
If you ever get dinged a fee from your bank, like an overdraft fee, ask to get it waived. Most banks and credit cards will refund you the fee if it’s the first one you’ve gotten in a while.
If you are charged a monthly maintenance fee, look to switch banks that don’t charge that. Many online banks no longer have minimums and so you’re never at risk of a monthly fee. In fact, every bank on our list of high yield savings accounts has no monthly fee.
If you missed the requirements to avoid the fee at your current bank, that’s something you can ask to get waived too if that doesn’t happen often for you. It never hurts to ask.
In many areas, the companies that provide trash services, water filtration services, and even electricity in deregulated states, are competing for business and offer incentives if you switch providers.
Electricity is the most common one as many states offer Electric Choice, which is where you get to pick the supplier of your power. The distributor remains the same, it’s the name on your electric bill, but the supplier can change and you can get promotional offers, lower rates, or other incentives to switch.
If you own a home, then you know about property taxes because every state has property taxes in some form. Property taxes are usually based on the value of your home, which gets assessed on a schedule. In my state of Maryland, they are re-assessed every three years and you get a chance to contest that assessment.
When your state reassess your property, you should always contest it. If you don’t want to do this personally, you can hire a law firm or use a company like Ownwell. With Ownwell, and some law firms, you only pay a success fee – a percentage of what they are able to save you in taxes.
I contested our Maryland property taxes during the last cycle and was able to secure a near 11% discount on our appealed value, which saved us thousands of dollars.
If your health has significantly improved since you signed up for life insurance, you may be able to get a better rate if you shop for insurance again. So if you’ve lost weight, quit smoking, lowered your blood pressure, or done any of a number of things to improve your longevity, comparison shop.
Term life insurance is always our recommended type of life insurance. This is the simplest type of life insurance where you pay a premium to get a set term of coverage. 30 year term life for $3 million means that if you keep paying your premiums and you die within the 30-year term, your estate gets $3 million.
No cash value, no hidden fees, just a simple agreement.
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