Speaker 1: Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel and I'm Matt,
Speaker 1: and today we're talking about ways to cut your monthly bills.
Speaker 1: That's right. Coming up on the show today, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about why trimming your monthly bills is important,
Speaker 1: which ones you need to attack, and tactics to use
Speaker 1: in order to save the most. Yeah, Joel, I think
Speaker 1: that's gonna be a good topic, particularly because I kind
Speaker 1: of see you as like the monthly bill cutting expert. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think on this podcast we think of ourselves more
Speaker 1: of like jack of all trades when it comes to
Speaker 1: financial topics. Like we're not experts when it comes to
Speaker 1: real estate or investing, but we're pretty solid on those
Speaker 1: things and are things we care a lot about and
Speaker 1: we spend a lot of time thinking about and developing ourselves.
Speaker 1: And you know, we are real estate investors and so
Speaker 1: it's something we talk about. But but I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know that much about it, Like, yeah, stop asking
Speaker 1: me questions, right, But we're not experts. So but just
Speaker 1: getting on this, I mean, I think if I were
Speaker 1: to call myself an expert on anything, I think cutting
Speaker 1: monthly bills would be pretty dang near the top. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: that's totally in your wheelhouse. You're just really good at
Speaker 1: like knowing you know all the deals. You feel like
Speaker 1: you know a lot of the different providers. What. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you know this, but you kind of
Speaker 1: know like all the current deals that are out there.
Speaker 1: Even just when it comes down to like local gas.
Speaker 1: Sometimes too, you're like, oh uh, someone says offering a
Speaker 1: thirty nine point nine sense the firm, Like, how do
Speaker 1: you know that? Dude? Like, well, Matt, the Public Service
Speaker 1: Commission releases something every month in the state of Georgia
Speaker 1: and they tell you who's got the best deal on
Speaker 1: natural gas? Do they really? Yeah, I can show you
Speaker 1: the apples to apples comparison. Okay, so that's literally something
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. So you just get this report evidently.
Speaker 1: All right, So first we need to tell the listeners that, uh,
Speaker 1: we're having our first giveaway. Man. Yeah, I'm super stoked
Speaker 1: about this, and it's a really good one. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be super cool. Like it's not an empty bottle of
Speaker 1: booze that we finished up. It's a really good giveaway.
Speaker 1: So if you will go to our Instagram page at
Speaker 1: Poor not Poor, we are giving away three months of
Speaker 1: service to Republic Wireless and a three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: dollar credit towards a new Republic Wireless phone, which makes
Speaker 1: a lot of their phones completely free and if you
Speaker 1: want to get a really high end phone, it's a
Speaker 1: good discount. So three three months of service for free,
Speaker 1: a sweet phone, a swag bag, and a six pack
Speaker 1: of beer. Yeah, because we're poor not poor, we're gonna
Speaker 1: throw in a six pack as well. We're very thankful
Speaker 1: to Republic Wireless for for hooking us up with this,
Speaker 1: uh for this giveaway. Yep, so sweet giveaway. Uh. For
Speaker 1: more details on this giveaway and how to enter, go
Speaker 1: to our Instagram page follow us at Poor not Poor
Speaker 1: p O you r n O T p O O R.
Speaker 1: And that's a timely giveaway too, man, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's really fitting with with this episode because we're
Speaker 1: talking about ways to cut your monthly bills and Republic
Speaker 1: Wireless is one of like the cheapest possible cell phone
Speaker 1: providers to be with. So awesome giveaway, perfect episode to
Speaker 1: do it on, and we're pumped. Yeah, speaking of so
Speaker 1: like a monthly billgual? How much how much TV do
Speaker 1: you think you guys watch? Like you and Emily. I mean,
Speaker 1: don't you guys watch TV together most of the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we're watching TV, we're watching together. I would say, like,
Speaker 1: if we were to boil it down to how many
Speaker 1: hours a week of television do we watch? I would
Speaker 1: say probably an average of two hours is a week. Nice,
Speaker 1: That's that's what's gonna say. I was gonna se like
Speaker 1: two to three. Yeah, probably two to three because three hours,
Speaker 1: you know, you can kind of that's like the length
Speaker 1: of a movie as well, So if you only like
Speaker 1: watch a movie once a week or something like that.
Speaker 1: I think we used to watch a lot more TV.
Speaker 1: I know we used to watch a lot more, but now,
Speaker 1: I mean, between kids and work and just honestly other
Speaker 1: things I just want to do other than just sit there,
Speaker 1: sit there on the couch. There's that article on Bigger
Speaker 1: Pockets titled the Case for not Owning a TV. The
Speaker 1: average person in the United States watches five hours of
Speaker 1: television a day. Yeah. I don't know how the crap
Speaker 1: that's even possible. I mean, these are legitimates, though this
Speaker 1: is a reporter from Nielsen. That's the average five hours
Speaker 1: a day. Mind blowing that that is even humanly possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an average. So there's some people who are obviously
Speaker 1: certainly watching TV a lot more, which is even more
Speaker 1: crazy for me. That sad is like right up there
Speaker 1: with one and three Americans eats fast food every day
Speaker 1: like that. That gets that kind of mind blowing stat
Speaker 1: that you're like, how is that possible? How is that
Speaker 1: a thing? Um? And that that almost everyone does this
Speaker 1: and it's terrible for your health, terrible for your eyes,
Speaker 1: terrible for your general motivation in life. And I will
Speaker 1: say this too, I'm really into like a good show
Speaker 1: or a good movie. I used to be like a
Speaker 1: huge movie buff, and the movies have just gone downhill
Speaker 1: a lot in the past, you know, ten years. And
Speaker 1: maybe that's just like old man speak, but I think
Speaker 1: old man Joel. Yeah, but I have found so many
Speaker 1: other joys in life, so many other good things to
Speaker 1: partake in, uh, and so many other things that I
Speaker 1: just like have to get done that I rarely watched TV,
Speaker 1: and it is it is really fun to get to
Speaker 1: see sit down and watch a good show every once
Speaker 1: in a while, like every time Stranger Things comes out
Speaker 1: on Netflix. But yeah, I just can't. I can't in
Speaker 1: good conscience dedicate much more than three hours a week
Speaker 1: towards watching television. That being said, this episode is not
Speaker 1: all about TV, so let's move on to the beer.
Speaker 1: So Joel, do you want to tell the folks what
Speaker 1: we have today? I have in my hands, Matt weighing
Speaker 1: in at thirteen point seven from Kansas City, Missouri, Boulevard
Speaker 1: Brewing Company, Grand Crew, Barrel aged Ale, and I gotta say,
Speaker 1: Boulevard is one of those national craft brewers that's been
Speaker 1: around for a long time that is still making some
Speaker 1: amazing stuff. And thank you to Boulevard because they donated
Speaker 1: this beer to the podcast, and they donated next week's
Speaker 1: beer to the podcast, so we're gonna be drinking Boulevard
Speaker 1: two weeks in a row. I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: more excited about this one or the one next week,
Speaker 1: because next week's is one of my favorites. Next week's
Speaker 1: is one of my favorite beers of all time. And
Speaker 1: uh and this it's a new iteration, so you and
Speaker 1: I've never tasted it, but we've had previous very similar
Speaker 1: but this I hadn't even heard of, man, So I
Speaker 1: am beyond stoked to to try something new, which is
Speaker 1: kind of my favorite beer is a new beer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Grand Crew usually it's like a Belgian thing and
Speaker 1: it usually means like the best, right, So they're putting
Speaker 1: out like their finest beer. It's this, it's this epic creation,
Speaker 1: kind of the cream of the crop exactly. And so
Speaker 1: Boulevard describes their as it's literally a blend of two
Speaker 1: of their beers and the finest barrels of those beers.
Speaker 1: So it's selected lots of their bourbon barrel aged Quad
Speaker 1: and their whiskey barrel aged Imperial Stout. I'm already a
Speaker 1: huge fan of their bourbon barrel Quad and any Stout
Speaker 1: aged and whiskey barrels I like. So it's a really
Speaker 1: good quad. Yeah, dude, this is gonna be epic. Let's
Speaker 1: pop the top. This is pouring a dark brown Joel. Actually,
Speaker 1: as you're pouring it, I thought I looked a little
Speaker 1: bit lighter, But then I look I see it in
Speaker 1: the glass and it's like pitch black. I can't see
Speaker 1: through it at all. But looked a little bit lighter
Speaker 1: as you're pouring it as it was coming out and
Speaker 1: almost had like a reddish quality to it. And I
Speaker 1: don't know what the temperature is like for you listeners
Speaker 1: right now. But as we're recording this, this is when
Speaker 1: that's that last sort of cold snap is hitting the
Speaker 1: East coast. So having a dark, huge beer like this,
Speaker 1: it just feels so appropriate to me. Yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: a northeastern New York right now, So if I was
Speaker 1: in New York, this is what I'd also be drinking.
Speaker 1: For me, Man, having the weather sort of reflect what
Speaker 1: you're drinking something about that just seems right, agreed. So
Speaker 1: smells wonderful. It's got a nice head, it's got that
Speaker 1: sweet barrel aged quality to it. Let's take a sip, Matt.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep sitting here with my eyes closed
Speaker 1: as I hold my glass. Does it help you, like
Speaker 1: imagine in your mind all the flavors rushing through your
Speaker 1: mouth there were? I mean, yeah, it kind of it does. Man.
Speaker 1: I'm not distracted by your your mug in front of me.
Speaker 1: This is a fantastic beer. I feel like I'm getting
Speaker 1: the quad coming through the most with kind of those
Speaker 1: notes of like raisin and fig a little bit of
Speaker 1: that whiskey barrel, and that the combo is of those
Speaker 1: two beers blended together is is just beautiful. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: tasting that that barrel. Definitely that quad, and the sweetness
Speaker 1: is kind of actually reminds me of like a little
Speaker 1: bit of banana. I feel like there's like almost like
Speaker 1: this sort of sweet fruit mixed in there with those
Speaker 1: darker flavors. It kind of lifts it a little bit.
Speaker 1: So it's not that this isn't a really heavy, dark,
Speaker 1: like sticky beer. Yeah. For thirteen point seven and just
Speaker 1: kind of being this like beastly kind of concoction, you
Speaker 1: kind of assume that it's going to be a little heavy,
Speaker 1: like yeah, thick monsters, but this it drinks like real
Speaker 1: lively if it feels good. Yeah, it really does have
Speaker 1: like a really fun character to it for something that
Speaker 1: is kind of a darker beer. It's got these like
Speaker 1: and I think that's really like the Quad and this
Speaker 1: combo coming through. It's got this kind of livelier a
Speaker 1: little bit fruity, but not not certainly not over overly fruity.
Speaker 1: It's just delicious, it really is. It's this is a
Speaker 1: great beer, so Grand Crew from from Boulevard to a
Speaker 1: limited release and it's dang tasty. I could picture myself
Speaker 1: drinking this like in a cabin next to a fire,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like snow falling outside, like if you're
Speaker 1: on like a ski trip or something. Yeah, thanks again
Speaker 1: to Boulevard Brewing Company for for sending us those bottles.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it very much, and this is a delicious,
Speaker 1: delicious beer. All right, let's get into the topic at hand,
Speaker 1: ways to cut your monthly bills. Monthly bills add up,
Speaker 1: and we think that you could legitimately stand to save
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars a month, possibly even enough to fully
Speaker 1: fund a wrath i RA And that contribution limit is
Speaker 1: a year, so you might be able to save that
Speaker 1: much on monthly bills alone. And we're not talking car,
Speaker 1: we're not talking mortgage. Yeah, like the different utilities or
Speaker 1: the different monthly subscription services that you have. That's for
Speaker 1: the most part we're gonna be talking about today. So
Speaker 1: first off, we want to talk general stratgy g's and
Speaker 1: we've got a few general strategies to lay out for you,
Speaker 1: and then we'll get into kind of some of the
Speaker 1: specific bills and how to tackle those in particular. General strategies, though,
Speaker 1: the first and easiest thing if you feel like you're
Speaker 1: overpaying on a monthly bill is to shop it with
Speaker 1: another provider and get multiple quotes. And we'll talk later
Speaker 1: about how that's not possible for some of these bills,
Speaker 1: but any bill that is possible to shop with other
Speaker 1: providers and get lots of quotes, that's gonna be the
Speaker 1: best way to to save money. Right, is essentially using
Speaker 1: capitalism for what it is people competing for your business. Yeah, Joel,
Speaker 1: this is something that's relatively easy to do, but it's
Speaker 1: just something that kind of takes some mental work. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's almost emotional because you kind of
Speaker 1: get locked into your ways. You're kind of used to
Speaker 1: paying a certain bill, and it's not that it's hard
Speaker 1: work to go find say a new gas provider or
Speaker 1: something like that, but it's just something kind of extra
Speaker 1: that you're just like, I don't really want to do that,
Speaker 1: but you could be saving a good bit of money
Speaker 1: every single month. That's true. That's the first step in
Speaker 1: general strategies is to shop with other providers. The second
Speaker 1: actually read your credit card statements. That's really key, and
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of people in this day
Speaker 1: and age don't go through line item of their credit
Speaker 1: card statements, and they're likely overpaying on a lot of things.
Speaker 1: And there's likely service subscriptions, Matt that they have like
Speaker 1: a monthly recurring charge that they don't even know about,
Speaker 1: and they're not gonna know about it because they're not
Speaker 1: looking at their credit card statement, Yuel. That's one way
Speaker 1: that having a budget every month, where you're actually reconciling
Speaker 1: it and keeping track of your expenses, you're gonna know
Speaker 1: what those numbers are. And we've talked about why you
Speaker 1: need a budget in a previous episode and we still
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. I mean, if you don't know where
Speaker 1: your money is going, then you're not gonna know what
Speaker 1: steps to take in order to reduce your monthly expenses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: technology can help us as we're tracking our bills. And
Speaker 1: there's this really cool service called ask trim dot com
Speaker 1: a s K t R I M dot com. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of that. Yeah, it's really cool and it's
Speaker 1: free and it's actually they will you log in you
Speaker 1: with your credit card information, kind of like you would
Speaker 1: into mint dot com, which we use I used for
Speaker 1: budgeting and I recommend it, uh and and terms kind
Speaker 1: of similar in which they log in and they kind
Speaker 1: of pour through your statement for you and they pop
Speaker 1: up this list. Hey, here are all your recurring monthly charges.
Speaker 1: Do you want us to cancel any of these for you?
Speaker 1: They actually ask you that, and they can, on on
Speaker 1: many of them cancel it for you, so you don't
Speaker 1: even have to take the time out of your day.
Speaker 1: There's a couple like, for instance, let's say you signed
Speaker 1: up back in the day or something with yesterday, even
Speaker 1: with one of the credit bureau monthly services to get
Speaker 1: your credit reporter score or something. And on a recent episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about how you can get your credit score
Speaker 1: and credit report for free, for free, completely free. So
Speaker 1: if that pops up on your ask Trim run through,
Speaker 1: you don't need that cancel it, right, And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things like that. Maybe you didn't realize you're
Speaker 1: paying for Hulu and you only watch Netflix, and ask
Speaker 1: Trim says, you know what, what do you want to
Speaker 1: cancel this? And so it's a really cool service that
Speaker 1: will essentially just pop up all your recurring monthly, uh
Speaker 1: monthly obligations and then give you the option to nip
Speaker 1: him in the bud. Nice I had no idea that
Speaker 1: that even existed. Man, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: check that out. Trim it up, dog, That should be
Speaker 1: their phrase, their catch phrase. I think trim it up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh so Matt the next one on the list. So
Speaker 1: number one, shop it with another provider. Number two, check
Speaker 1: your credit card statements or use a service like ask trim,
Speaker 1: which kind of does that for you. The third one
Speaker 1: you kind of disagreed with me on this. As we
Speaker 1: were putting the outline together, I said, don't use auto
Speaker 1: pay for some of those bills that are subject to change. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: auto pay for me is like a godsend, like dude,
Speaker 1: for me to not have to log in every month
Speaker 1: and pay all my bills. I can't think of the
Speaker 1: number of hours that I would waste every month doing that.
Speaker 1: So there's some bills that I do manually pay or
Speaker 1: push money to. So yeah, do you not do auto
Speaker 1: pay on the majority of your bills? Yeah, So here's
Speaker 1: my philosophy. So anything that is sub to change month
Speaker 1: to month basis, I want to kind of feel the
Speaker 1: pain and and see, like if I said it on
Speaker 1: auto pay, I might forget to shop it or or
Speaker 1: forget that it's gone up. And so I want to
Speaker 1: personally pay the bill every month because it reminds me
Speaker 1: what I'm paying for that thing and makes me think
Speaker 1: about whether I actually want to have that bill or
Speaker 1: not or I need to reshop it. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: I like to physically pay my water bill every month,
Speaker 1: not have it on a recurring payment, because I like
Speaker 1: to like go into city hall in person and write
Speaker 1: out a check my hand as well. Excuse me, who
Speaker 1: do I make this checkout? Too? Uh? Usually you like
Speaker 1: to go that old school totally. Let let me write
Speaker 1: my carbon copy check as well. I put on my
Speaker 1: like Dick Tracy suit, you know, my Fedora hat, and
Speaker 1: I you know, and and roll up in your eighties
Speaker 1: seven niecean exactly. Well, no, you gotta do something even
Speaker 1: older than that. So, yeah, my month water bill strategy.
Speaker 1: I like to see it every month and acknowledge that
Speaker 1: I'm paying it. I usually fluctuate either between a sixty
Speaker 1: three dollar bill or a seventy five dollar bill. It's
Speaker 1: only twelve dollars a month, but I'm, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of weird about it, and so every time I see it,
Speaker 1: if it's the seventy five amount, it kind of gives
Speaker 1: me that extra kick in the butt to shower less
Speaker 1: flush my toilet list and generally use less water. Yes.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like your own asked trim, where you're
Speaker 1: just kind of presenting the facts to yourself and kind
Speaker 1: of making yourself answer the question like was it worth it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so like, for instance, I changed internet service providers
Speaker 1: and we'll get into this a little bit later in
Speaker 1: the show, but I decigned to sign up for gig
Speaker 1: service to kind of see how it was. Like it
Speaker 1: was it's like the new hit thing, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be so fast. You're not the biggest fan
Speaker 1: from what I collect. Well, it's it's fine, It's it's good,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't feel like it's better than my thirty
Speaker 1: dollar a month internet service that I had before. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't feel like it's that much better. It's not
Speaker 1: worth fifty dollars a month, and so it angers me
Speaker 1: every month that I pay that I think about six
Speaker 1: dollars a year that I could put back in my
Speaker 1: pocket to do things with awesome things. The value that
Speaker 1: I'm getting for faster internet just isn't worth it to me.
Speaker 1: And so I think for me, not having auto pay
Speaker 1: on these bills that can fluctuate really helps me to
Speaker 1: make the decision every month, Hey do I want this
Speaker 1: Because I'm actually physically paying this bill. I'm actually signing
Speaker 1: in to the website and clicking through to make this
Speaker 1: payment and doing that instead of just letting it be
Speaker 1: on autopilot. It has this like psychological and we talked
Speaker 1: about recently that you know, the psychological power of money.
Speaker 1: It has a psychological effect. It gives me the kick
Speaker 1: in the pants to make a change in my personal
Speaker 1: life and how I'm using that resource, or change providers
Speaker 1: or you know, call in just to see if I
Speaker 1: can get a reduced bill amount. Nice man, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: see the advantage of doing that. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of folks too would say, oh, fifty bucks, that's
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal. But sort of a
Speaker 1: quick math rule that's out there, I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of people refer to it. But basically, if you take
Speaker 1: an amount that you're spending per month and multiply that
Speaker 1: by a hundred and seventy three, you know where you
Speaker 1: to take that same amount that you're not spending and
Speaker 1: invest it. That amount compounded over the next ten years
Speaker 1: would equal you know that answer. So yeah, so you
Speaker 1: take that fifty bucks and you multiply it by hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy three, and we're that fifty dollars a month
Speaker 1: to be invested for the next ten years. Compounded, you'd
Speaker 1: end up with, you know, here on the calculator, eight thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred fifty dollars. Whoa slow down, rain man. So
Speaker 1: I'm the calculator. That is a lot of money, man.
Speaker 1: And so it's I think it's easy for we're so shortsighted,
Speaker 1: I guess, is what I'm trying to say a lot
Speaker 1: of times, and I know I'm this way and I think, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a little you know, twenty bucks here, twenty
Speaker 1: bucks there, or whatever. But all this money adds up,
Speaker 1: and you're talking about making a change to go from
Speaker 1: a D to thirty, and we're talking about a larger
Speaker 1: amount of money than I think we even realize in
Speaker 1: the end. Yeah, I think it's easy to kind of
Speaker 1: rationalize away the small amounts that we spend a month
Speaker 1: on a certain service or uh you know something that
Speaker 1: maybe we're not even using, like a gym membership or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever it may be, that uh, well, it's twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty bucks, it's forty bucks here, it's fifty bucks here,
Speaker 1: and for me that that that fifty bucks a month.
Speaker 1: I mean that's meaningful because, like like you said, you
Speaker 1: know the way it impacts you over time. Fifty bucks
Speaker 1: for one month, right, is not very much, but fifty
Speaker 1: bucks compounded over ten year, but yeah, and then it
Speaker 1: invested and compounded, Yeah, it makes a huge difference. And
Speaker 1: so you need to kind of change your mindset to
Speaker 1: thinking about it as opposed to just that twenty or
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for that one month. Well, that adds up
Speaker 1: to multiple months, and then over those months you could
Speaker 1: have done something else with that money, and it adds
Speaker 1: up to this like outrageous amount at the end. And
Speaker 1: so we'll put a link on the show notes to
Speaker 1: the rule of one seventy three because that's really helpful
Speaker 1: when extrapolighting some of these bills that you're overpaying on. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: but just to recap that, that rule of one seventy three,
Speaker 1: you take whatever your monthly payment is for a certain bill,
Speaker 1: multiply that by one seventy three. That gives you were
Speaker 1: you to take that amount and invest it for the
Speaker 1: next ten years as opposed to continuing to pay the bill,
Speaker 1: and then you don't have any money. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: have that. You know that at the end of ten years.
Speaker 1: The next general strategy to cut down on your monthly
Speaker 1: bills is to make use of customer service and particularly
Speaker 1: the customer retention department. Uh And so I think people
Speaker 1: in general don't know this. They're talking to maybe a
Speaker 1: general customer service person on the phone. And there's really
Speaker 1: a couple of ways to get through if you want
Speaker 1: to negotiate what you're paying every month and uh, and
Speaker 1: there's ways to do it and talking to someone in
Speaker 1: the actual customer retention department or lots of times the
Speaker 1: customer service people through Twitter. Twitter is like an amazing
Speaker 1: place for customer service and negotiating your bill. I've gotten
Speaker 1: bills lowered, monthly bills lowered, credits added to my account
Speaker 1: just by reaching out the companies on Twitter and sliding
Speaker 1: into their d m s and it works. Some wonders
Speaker 1: that sliding into the d MS man get to that
Speaker 1: discount exactly. So check out the customer retention department or
Speaker 1: a company's customer service department on Twitter on social media.
Speaker 1: That goes a long way. That's actually so much better
Speaker 1: than just calling their one number and The main thing
Speaker 1: that you need to know going into that conversation is
Speaker 1: what their competitors offering, Because if you really want to
Speaker 1: stay with the company you're with, let's say for internet service,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you know what their competitors
Speaker 1: offering and say, I've been a faithful customer for this
Speaker 1: many years and if you will give me a deal
Speaker 1: that matches what they're offering to their new customers, I'll
Speaker 1: stay stay. But if not, I'm walking. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's the biggest thing, Like you need
Speaker 1: to be able to because sometimes they're gonna call your bluff.
Speaker 1: If they don't have a deal going on, or if
Speaker 1: they're not authorized to to kind of match the current
Speaker 1: deals that are out there, they're not going to give
Speaker 1: you a deal. And so you need to be able
Speaker 1: to literally say, all right, well, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and go with the other company. You have the
Speaker 1: power to walk away, and you need to be willing
Speaker 1: to walk away if you're if you're wanting to get
Speaker 1: that that actual deal. Yeah. Almost every time I have
Speaker 1: used this tactic, it has worked. And there are a
Speaker 1: couple of times that they have called my bluff and
Speaker 1: I've had to walk away because I'm just not willing
Speaker 1: to pay the price. But you have to be willing
Speaker 1: to make the switch. And I will say, it's kind
Speaker 1: of pain in the butt, but I was gonna say
Speaker 1: in those instances, I'm kind of like, oh, man, I
Speaker 1: was really hoping they would just lower it. But maybe
Speaker 1: you'll get something. And in most cases you do like
Speaker 1: you will get a deal. But it's just kind of like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, I gotta call those guys that get
Speaker 1: you know, set up my account. But yeah, because most
Speaker 1: of the time, I'll be honest, that's what I want.
Speaker 1: I just want them to lower the price so I
Speaker 1: don't have to set up a new account with some
Speaker 1: other company. But you know what, in the end, if
Speaker 1: if I'm not willing to pay, you know what the
Speaker 1: new rate is, you need to be willing to walk.
Speaker 1: So those are strategies that, yeah, you can use for
Speaker 1: most any monthly bill that's out there, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them. You can use. The strategies
Speaker 1: we're gonna now talk about, uh some approaches that you
Speaker 1: can take for specific bills um and a lot of
Speaker 1: these actual categories we got from our our listeners and
Speaker 1: members on our Facebook group. Yeah, so if you're interested,
Speaker 1: please join. It's a really fun community. People asking really
Speaker 1: good questions and a lot of good interaction. You get
Speaker 1: a lot of good info. To you, man, I'm glad
Speaker 1: that we have a lot of informed listeners that are
Speaker 1: helping each other out. That's the best. Just go to
Speaker 1: Facebook and type in how to money and you'll find
Speaker 1: our group. Join in. It's a lot of fun, alright.
Speaker 1: So my favorite bill to talk about that that people
Speaker 1: a lot of people struggle with overpaying on is their
Speaker 1: cell phone bill. And the easiest way to save on
Speaker 1: yourself phone bill is to use less data. Using less
Speaker 1: data every month means a smaller bill, It means you
Speaker 1: can shop with a bunch of different providers if you
Speaker 1: don't need the unlimited And by the way, most people
Speaker 1: use two and a half gigs of data or less
Speaker 1: every month, so you don't really need that unlimited data.
Speaker 1: Even though it feels like this like cocoon that you
Speaker 1: enter into that it feels nice and warm and soft,
Speaker 1: you don't need unlimited data, the warm, soft cocoon of
Speaker 1: data of data data. Most people ninety percent of the
Speaker 1: time have access to WiFi because of the time you
Speaker 1: are at home or you are at work, and if
Speaker 1: you can be on a WiFi signal wherever you are,
Speaker 1: you can drastically cut down on the amount of data
Speaker 1: you're using. And uh that helps a lot. That cuts
Speaker 1: down on your your usage. And you can sign up
Speaker 1: for a plan like something from Republic Wireless that is
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars a month for unlimited talking text and then
Speaker 1: five dollars additional per gig of data that you need.
Speaker 1: Another approach I was gonna mention too, is consider going
Speaker 1: on a family plan. Now they're calling the family and
Speaker 1: friends plan, but all of the major cellphone carriers out
Speaker 1: there offer them now, and they're a great way to
Speaker 1: be able to basically group together, going with a group
Speaker 1: of folks and get your costs down. That's right, and
Speaker 1: that's what we do. Yes, we have nine people on
Speaker 1: one plan. Oh what happened? I thought we had ten?
Speaker 1: We did poor Cebo. He left us, he got married
Speaker 1: and he flew the coop. Got it? So yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, there's some great family plans out there.
Speaker 1: I'll name just a few that you should strongly can
Speaker 1: sitter if you're looking for you know, four or five
Speaker 1: plus people to be a part of your cell phone plan.
Speaker 1: It's a good way to do it. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: we said, Matt and I were on the same plan
Speaker 1: and we cash you every month via the cash app
Speaker 1: and for us per individual, it's like fifty or something
Speaker 1: like that a person. Yeah, a month and before which
Speaker 1: you cannot beat. Right in a while ago, like we
Speaker 1: even had a better deal. Uh, it was like even,
Speaker 1: So yeah, we just hop on the deal and at
Speaker 1: this point it would were still got a pretty good deal.
Speaker 1: So we stick around. So if you're looking for a
Speaker 1: family plan and you've got you know, four or five
Speaker 1: people that could be on one, metro PCs has an
Speaker 1: awesome plan for four people at a hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 1: Sprint has a great plan for people five people to
Speaker 1: be on a plan for a hundred dollars a month.
Speaker 1: And the best deal out there right now also comes
Speaker 1: from Sprint, And if you're switching from another provider, most
Speaker 1: people are eligible for a whole free year of service
Speaker 1: from Sprint if you're switched from another provider, So they're
Speaker 1: specifically aiming for Verizon customers with their promotion, but even
Speaker 1: if with your with somebody else, you can likely get
Speaker 1: the deal, and uh that could be up to like
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred dollars in free cell phone service for a year.
Speaker 1: So uh so check that out. We'll put a link
Speaker 1: to that on our site as well. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: kind of goes back to some of the general strategies
Speaker 1: as well. But a lot of you might be thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: Sprint sucks. The reason I went to Verizon is because
Speaker 1: Sprint was so terrible. Shop around, man, look at the
Speaker 1: coverage maps, because that's something that is constantly expanding. The
Speaker 1: different providers out there are are always improving their coverage.
Speaker 1: And there may have been as part of town where
Speaker 1: you never got coverage and that's maybe where you worked
Speaker 1: or something like that, and you know that wasn't it
Speaker 1: was kind of a non negotiable for you. Check it out.
Speaker 1: That's something that definitely, uh may have improved since the
Speaker 1: last time you you've you checked. Yeah, and someone specifically
Speaker 1: on the Facebook group mentioned that they had Verizon service,
Speaker 1: and Verizon is definitely the most expensive. So if you
Speaker 1: need to have Verizon service, if you feel like if
Speaker 1: you live in a more rural area or you feel
Speaker 1: like you travel a lot, and Rizon just has the
Speaker 1: best coverage for you. And and it's true they do
Speaker 1: have the best coverage, but most of the time it's
Speaker 1: pretty unnoticeable. If you are traveling often or going to
Speaker 1: rural areas, you might find yourself needing Verizon service. And
Speaker 1: there are a couple options for you. I would say
Speaker 1: to check out if you have Comcast Home Internet, check
Speaker 1: out Exfinity Mobile. You can get unlimited talking text and
Speaker 1: a gig of data for twelve dollars a month. So
Speaker 1: the bummer with that is you have to buy a
Speaker 1: phone from them, whereas like with Republic Wireless, who we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, you can bring your own phone or get
Speaker 1: a really cheap phone. Exfinity doesn't have a great selection,
Speaker 1: but you drastically cut what you're paying every month, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the best deals out there right now.
Speaker 1: Another option is Total Wireless. They also run on Verizon's
Speaker 1: network and they've got some really great deals over there too,
Speaker 1: so you can check out their offerings at total Wireless
Speaker 1: dot com. If you're a Verizon person and you don't
Speaker 1: want to let them go, that's the really the only
Speaker 1: way to save a bunch of money and stay on
Speaker 1: their network edel And you mentioned, I mean, all these
Speaker 1: are companies. But I mean, we'll go ahead and say
Speaker 1: too that we would never recommend a company or a
Speaker 1: product that we wouldn't use ourselves. So we're currently with
Speaker 1: Sprint because they've got that sweet ten person family plan, right,
Speaker 1: But these other plans that are that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: like Republic and Total Wireless, these are also great plans
Speaker 1: that we would absolutely recommend and use ourselves were we
Speaker 1: not with another carrier already. Yeah, it just depends on
Speaker 1: your needs. And if you're like a single individual and
Speaker 1: you have Comcast Home Internet, I think Exfinity Mobile is
Speaker 1: a great choice. If you're a single individual and you don't,
Speaker 1: I think Republic Wireless is probably the best choice. If
Speaker 1: you are a family and you're okay having Sprint service,
Speaker 1: I think Sprint is probably the best choice. And like
Speaker 1: we said, you know, verizing customers, like, I think that
Speaker 1: there's just it's really down to the individual and what
Speaker 1: you need. But there are so many good options that
Speaker 1: save you money over a lot of the traditional carriers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I just I wanted to miss that to
Speaker 1: you because I didn't want people to think that we're
Speaker 1: just pushing stuff that we wouldn't use ourselves. Or like
Speaker 1: we're getting paid for it or something like that. We're
Speaker 1: not getting paid. We're just trying to get you guys
Speaker 1: thinking outside of the Verizon box, which tends to be
Speaker 1: I feel like the default for a lot of folks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no doubt, and the most expensive for a lot of folks.
Speaker 1: All Right, So the next specific bill we need to
Speaker 1: talk about is internet. Internet. Uh So the first thing,
Speaker 1: skip the money saving triple play packages. Don't bundle home calling,
Speaker 1: internet and cable. By the way, who still has a
Speaker 1: homeland line? So the really the internet thing is a
Speaker 1: harder one to shop. Like in the cell phone sphere
Speaker 1: that we were just talking about, there are dozens of
Speaker 1: players in the internet sphere. You likely have two choices. Really.
Speaker 1: The way to do this is to watch for offers
Speaker 1: and then try to get price matching, and if they
Speaker 1: won't price match you kind of essentially ping pong back
Speaker 1: and forth every year to the turn it company that
Speaker 1: provides service where you live. And Matt, did you at
Speaker 1: one point tries cheering internet service with a neighbor to
Speaker 1: save money? Yeah? Man, I figured this is something worth
Speaker 1: mentioning because it seemed like a great idea at the time,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't such a grid. Uh, this is at
Speaker 1: our old house, but a neighbor. Get this, they weren't
Speaker 1: even our next door neighbors, but they lived two houses over,
Speaker 1: and so we were trying to figure out a way
Speaker 1: to sort of boost kind of do an extender across
Speaker 1: our our neighbor's backyard. And we're like, I think it'll work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it did not really work out. So well. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: tried it out for like a week maybe for just
Speaker 1: like a like a one week trial run. And in
Speaker 1: that one week period, we found that it constantly went
Speaker 1: down and it wasn't really strong enough. And you know,
Speaker 1: in the evenings when we were both watching streaming TV,
Speaker 1: we saw that the speed drops significantly. So I don't
Speaker 1: even try. I guess our heart was in the right
Speaker 1: place where the like, we're gonna stick it to the man.
Speaker 1: But in the end, it just did not work. I
Speaker 1: love I love that you tried, though, that yeah we
Speaker 1: had to try. That's very poor, not poorish of you
Speaker 1: to at least give it the old college try. So.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing too, on saving money on
Speaker 1: your internet service is knowing about the customer retention department
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier, and then also knowing about
Speaker 1: the customer service on Twitter being the best, especially for
Speaker 1: some of those bigger cable and uh telephone company operations.
Speaker 1: So use those things to your advantage when you're shopping
Speaker 1: your internet, although it's kind of a difficult one because
Speaker 1: you've got fewer competitors in the arena. Yeah. Man, on
Speaker 1: that note, our internet service has definitely creeped up over
Speaker 1: the past few months. That's because you're on auto pay, fool.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I'm on auto pay, and but I
Speaker 1: still want to have Internet. I just haven't gotten around to,
Speaker 1: uh the shopping it. I haven't seen what the other
Speaker 1: big internet provider his offering at the moment, and we're
Speaker 1: just busy right now. So I met me none like
Speaker 1: you said. Yeah, that might be one on side to it,
Speaker 1: because if I was forced to manually go in there
Speaker 1: and do it myself, I may have taken that time
Speaker 1: instead to go ahead and shop it instead. Is just
Speaker 1: getting paid every month, and I know that they're kind
Speaker 1: of sticking it to me because I got a great
Speaker 1: deal the first twenty four months. Actually I was. I
Speaker 1: was able to get them to extend the first twelve
Speaker 1: months expired, and I called them up and did the
Speaker 1: whole tough guy, I'm gonna walk approach and I was
Speaker 1: going to and they, you know, they extend it for
Speaker 1: another twelve months. But now they're they're they're kind of
Speaker 1: exacting their revenge on me. A few months have been
Speaker 1: like sky high and I'm I'm just too too busy
Speaker 1: at the moment to take the time and shop it around,
Speaker 1: which I need to do. All right, your homework for
Speaker 1: the next week, customer retention and Twitter use them, all right,
Speaker 1: so that the next major specific bill you need to
Speaker 1: tackle is your cable bill. And by tackle you mean
Speaker 1: just get rid of it completely, right, axit, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: obliterate it, please. I think a lot of folks have
Speaker 1: cable still because they let's go back to what you
Speaker 1: talked about before, like the triple play, the landline, the
Speaker 1: cell phone, and the internet service. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people still have cable because it's just kind of bundled.
Speaker 1: They feel like they're getting a good deal, and really
Speaker 1: folks are getting roped into watching more TV because they
Speaker 1: have that that bundle where where cables included, and in reality, man,
Speaker 1: you do not need cable with a different sort of
Speaker 1: services that are out there. Let's just cut cable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in having cable feels like having
Speaker 1: a typewriter. There are so many good services if you want,
Speaker 1: like fifty channels in your life. I personally think that
Speaker 1: you should really strive to cut down and have a
Speaker 1: streaming service like Netflix or Hulu or something like that alone,
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime, whatever it may be. But essentially there are
Speaker 1: services like YouTube TV, like direct TV now, Hulu, Live TV,
Speaker 1: and Sling. They're all these players now that offer you
Speaker 1: from anywhere from twenty to forty a month, a lot
Speaker 1: of what cable offers you. So you can slasher bill
Speaker 1: from a hundred and twenty five dollars to thirty five
Speaker 1: dollars just by switching to a different provider and getting
Speaker 1: your cable service over the internet as a is too
Speaker 1: through a cable that that runs into your house. An
Speaker 1: argument I hear man is a lot of times folks
Speaker 1: are talking about a certain game or like certain sport
Speaker 1: that they're not not able to get except through cable,
Speaker 1: and man in those cases, I think what we would
Speaker 1: recommend to is to go over to a friend's house
Speaker 1: that has cable, which sounds kind of mouci but like
Speaker 1: make it a thing like show up with a six
Speaker 1: pack and you guys can you can hang out. You
Speaker 1: can actually make it a social experience instead of just
Speaker 1: sitting there on your couch watching it, watching a game,
Speaker 1: or even like going to a bar. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things we love you and I let love about
Speaker 1: soccer is that there's such a sort of social aspect
Speaker 1: around it. And the most fun you have is obviously
Speaker 1: going to an actual match, but man, going to a
Speaker 1: bar that's playing the game, where there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: bunch of friends there who are also into it. How
Speaker 1: much more fun is that than watching a game on
Speaker 1: cable at home by yourself, maybe with one other person.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I completely because it sounds very fun to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'd rather, you know, drop fifteen bucks on b
Speaker 1: years and hang out with some people and watch it
Speaker 1: with a crowd. And I don't think you have to
Speaker 1: be an extrovert to think this way. I think there's
Speaker 1: something really about the solitude of having cable and watching
Speaker 1: it alone on your couch that just seems a little depressing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you are a die hard sports nut and
Speaker 1: you're like, no way not cutting it out of my life,
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. There there are a few options and
Speaker 1: uh sling, Like I mentioned, YouTube TV, direct TV. Now,
Speaker 1: some of these guys offer different packages starting at the
Speaker 1: in the twenty dollar a month range, and you get
Speaker 1: some of those sports included with that. So consider alternate
Speaker 1: ways of getting your sports in the home. And let's
Speaker 1: say you're paying twenty dollars a month for one of
Speaker 1: those sling packages so that you can watch college football
Speaker 1: on ESPN, whatever it is that you're into. You're getting
Speaker 1: that channel that you want, but you're paying a lot
Speaker 1: less for it, and then there's just fewer channels in
Speaker 1: general for you to peruse, and and you're just probably
Speaker 1: gonna watch a lot less TV where you're just wasting
Speaker 1: your time, right, Yeah, exactly. And so now we got
Speaker 1: to talk about Matt the monthly stream mean subscriptions, because
Speaker 1: let's be honest, at this point, it's kind of gotten
Speaker 1: to a point where people have four or five there's
Speaker 1: a lot of them, right, like sign ups for monthly streaming,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's just too many streaming options at
Speaker 1: that point too. Originally just Netflix than Hulu than Amazon,
Speaker 1: and then you start throwing sling some sports packages in
Speaker 1: there and HBO go, youve got a cobple together this
Speaker 1: content because you want a little bit of everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of one of our listeners was talking about how
Speaker 1: she felt that by the end of it, she was
Speaker 1: just like, you know what, maybe just makes sense just
Speaker 1: to go with the actual the bundle package, because like
Speaker 1: it seems like I might be paying more with for
Speaker 1: for all these different packages altogether. And that might be true,
Speaker 1: because if you're paying for every single small Alex Hart
Speaker 1: option that's out there, well, yeah, that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money, a lot of subscriptions that
Speaker 1: you're signed up for. Yeah. The tough thing is like
Speaker 1: each streaming service kind of has their signature shows at
Speaker 1: this point, and so so you know, on Netflix they're
Speaker 1: Stranger Things and how's the Call arts. Then on Hulu
Speaker 1: you want to watch The Path or The Handmaid's Tale.
Speaker 1: So I think you can rationalize, you know, I I
Speaker 1: gotta keep this because I love that show. I gotta
Speaker 1: keep this service because I love that show. And there's
Speaker 1: a couple of ways you can tackle it. First off,
Speaker 1: you can share streaming service passwords with your friends. What
Speaker 1: do you mean by that? Joel is like, a moral
Speaker 1: issue there. So yeah, I will say this, there's a
Speaker 1: article that the Washington Post wrote that will put in
Speaker 1: our show notes that was really helpful and thinking through this.
Speaker 1: The terms of service for most of these companies, they're
Speaker 1: totally cool with you sharing passwords, and they they specifically
Speaker 1: set it up to where there are a maximum amount
Speaker 1: of devices allowed to stream like at once at once,
Speaker 1: and so you know, if you shared it with fifty
Speaker 1: two friends, like they shut you down. But Matt, you
Speaker 1: and I we share Netflix, we share Amazon Prime, And
Speaker 1: if you read the Washington Post article, look at the
Speaker 1: terms of service from Amazon and from Netflix, we're not
Speaker 1: breaking any rules and it's actually perfectly okay. You know,
Speaker 1: underneath those terms. One easy way to save some money
Speaker 1: is to share it with a friend. Share your Netflix,
Speaker 1: you know by the middle tier Netflix package, share that
Speaker 1: with a friend, split the costs. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a big reason why they started, I mean the past
Speaker 1: couple of years they started rolling out multiple profiles, and
Speaker 1: so I think Netflix may have been the first, the
Speaker 1: first provider to do that, but then shortly after that,
Speaker 1: Hulu did the same thing because essentially what they realized
Speaker 1: were that like, oh okay, well, folks want kind of
Speaker 1: their own little profile to be able to watch the
Speaker 1: shows that that they watch without kind of screwing up
Speaker 1: the recommended shows or whatever else that they kind of
Speaker 1: have going on or or marking it as as as watched.
Speaker 1: But yeah, all that is is going in the direction
Speaker 1: of the fact that they know that folks are are sharing,
Speaker 1: whether it be within a family or close friends, and
Speaker 1: and that's a huge way to save as well. And
Speaker 1: one of the way you can save is by when
Speaker 1: your favorite show comes out, join the streaming service for
Speaker 1: a month, binge your show, and then ditch the streaming service.
Speaker 1: I think we just kind of start paying it every month,
Speaker 1: and then you know, maybe we're sticking around Netflix or
Speaker 1: Hulu for one show that we love, and so, you
Speaker 1: know what, sign up for a month and then ditch
Speaker 1: it and be done. And then next time you know,
Speaker 1: your favorite show comes around, sign up for the streaming
Speaker 1: service again. There's like a lot of outside the box
Speaker 1: ways to tackle this streaming service issue. But there is
Speaker 1: a good chance that you have at this point accrued
Speaker 1: too many streaming services and you're overpaying and you're really
Speaker 1: not getting enough usage out of all of them. And
Speaker 1: so you really need to consider kicking a couple to
Speaker 1: the curb. I feel like that the as trim, Like
Speaker 1: I haven't even used it yet, but I feel like
Speaker 1: that's this is where a site like that would come
Speaker 1: in handy, where it's just like reminding you that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of prodding you, saying, hey, are
Speaker 1: you sure you want to kind of keep this around,
Speaker 1: because even just thinking about it right now, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of like, is there something like have I watched shows
Speaker 1: on Hulu recently? Like we pay for Hulu Plus and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, man, we haven't even freaking crack
Speaker 1: that app open in the past couple of weeks and
Speaker 1: only and I we're just talking about that because that's
Speaker 1: really biel do we share? And we were like, man,
Speaker 1: we never maybe we should go cut that um. But
Speaker 1: hopefully by the end of this episode two. That's what
Speaker 1: we're kind of wanting you guys to think. We want
Speaker 1: you to think through that, like, what are some things
Speaker 1: that we're just used to paying we're not really taking
Speaker 1: advantage of it. It's maybe a bill that's kind of
Speaker 1: gone up in recent months and maybe we're just too
Speaker 1: busy or too you know, I'll be honest, Like, I'll
Speaker 1: say that I've been too lazy to to shop around
Speaker 1: and that's just kind of where we are with it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm paying an extra twenty bucks because
Speaker 1: of that, because I just haven't really gotten around to it.
Speaker 1: And hopefully this will be a good kick in the
Speaker 1: pants for me as well to to be able to
Speaker 1: pull some of my bills down because I know I
Speaker 1: need to. So when it comes to cable, cut the cord,
Speaker 1: moved to streaming. When it comes to streaming, you know,
Speaker 1: cut a couple of those you just keep cutting. You
Speaker 1: ultimately just need less television in your life in general,
Speaker 1: and consider sharing that streaming service with a friend because
Speaker 1: if you're having your costs as well as cutting in
Speaker 1: half how many streaming services you subscribe to, you're gonna
Speaker 1: drastically reduce your bills. Cool man, So you want to
Speaker 1: talk now about just like some of the household utilities,
Speaker 1: you know, like so power, water and like gas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it all right, So, and it will acknowledge
Speaker 1: right now that they're in that these are can be
Speaker 1: different in different parts of the country. For instance, where
Speaker 1: we live in Georgia, we have deregulated natural gas and
Speaker 1: so we have providers that can market to us and
Speaker 1: provide different rates, and that's not the case in every state.
Speaker 1: So where we live, that's something that we shop. Electricity
Speaker 1: is something that we can't shop that that we essentially
Speaker 1: just have a flat rate that we pay per killer
Speaker 1: watt hour used, and so the only thing we can
Speaker 1: do is drop our usage. And in the same with water,
Speaker 1: the same thing with the water we don't really have.
Speaker 1: We can't like shop our water with the next water
Speaker 1: provider because guess what, there's only one city of Atlanta water, right,
Speaker 1: So most of these things in most states, that's typically
Speaker 1: your option. Yeah, that's the case. It's literally just talking
Speaker 1: about usage and how much water, how much gas, how
Speaker 1: much electricity you are actual using. Yeah, so specifically with water.
Speaker 1: I know, Joel, you like to uh if it's yellow,
Speaker 1: let it mellow. Oh dude, heck yeah. I'm all about
Speaker 1: the yellow let it mellow rule, and I think it's underutilized.
Speaker 1: I think the hardest part about the yellow let it
Speaker 1: mellow is training my kids to do it, because I
Speaker 1: feel bad because like when they go to the school,
Speaker 1: they're probably not flushing the toilet after the U said
Speaker 1: their teachers are like one of these gross kids learning
Speaker 1: at home. Man, they're just like leaving everything everywhere. But
Speaker 1: I think it's becoming a little more societally acceptable. We're
Speaker 1: not cheap, we're just hippies. I think considering that rule,
Speaker 1: considering not flushing after up is worthwhile. Also consider you know,
Speaker 1: there's water saving like shower heads that you can use.
Speaker 1: There's this really cool one that will link to that
Speaker 1: you can buy on Amazon. It's like and you can
Speaker 1: click a button that pauses the will flow of water,
Speaker 1: like let's say, while you're lathering up, you know what,
Speaker 1: be cold for a minute while you're lathering up, and
Speaker 1: then click it back on, and you're just kind of
Speaker 1: saving a little bit of water, a little bit of
Speaker 1: money here and there when you do that. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of options for saving money when it comes
Speaker 1: to water low flow toilets. Consider like maybe not watering
Speaker 1: your lawn because it costs a lot of money to
Speaker 1: keep your grass green. Maybe consider some alternate landscaping options.
Speaker 1: These are more sort of behavioral things, like there's not
Speaker 1: like techniques necessarily that where you can talk to a
Speaker 1: customer retention department and get them to you know, lower
Speaker 1: your costs. This is gonna come down more to you
Speaker 1: and maybe just challenge yourself to to try some things
Speaker 1: that you're not used to doing, maybe like skipping a shower,
Speaker 1: you know, every other day in the winter, you know,
Speaker 1: when you're not getting hot and sweaty, your skin is
Speaker 1: already dry anyway. Like that's one of my big pet peeves. Man.
Speaker 1: People shower like every day and they like use other
Speaker 1: soaps and they dry out their skin and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: my skins so dry, and then they get lotion which
Speaker 1: they pay for and then they just pump all the
Speaker 1: so lotion on their skin. If you just showered less,
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't need the lotion, you know. Think about
Speaker 1: it food for thought, dude, it's totally free for thought.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's what you're watching off. Like when you
Speaker 1: get in the shower, you're washing off like the natural
Speaker 1: oils and your skin. That's true. No, that's totally true.
Speaker 1: All my college friends are gonna be like, yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I remember when you didn't wash your hair for like
Speaker 1: a month in college, And to that, I'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that probably wouldn't right. I shouldn't have done that. Sorry
Speaker 1: about that, friends, But literally I mean, I think people
Speaker 1: do we live We live in such a sort of
Speaker 1: sterile like hand sanitizer world where everything has to be
Speaker 1: perfectly clean. I'm not a hippie, but you know what,
Speaker 1: like literally in the winter else I'll skip a shower
Speaker 1: every couple of days or so. And in the end
Speaker 1: that you know that affects our water bills some Yeah,
Speaker 1: and quickly I want to mention a couple of other
Speaker 1: monthly bills and I'm not going to go into the
Speaker 1: specifics on them, but just that you should be aware of.
Speaker 1: And one of them is your home alarm. If you
Speaker 1: have home alarm monitoring, try a service like simply Safe
Speaker 1: or do what we do. We bought something on Amazon
Speaker 1: that's essentially just a noisemaker that you turn. We turn
Speaker 1: on at night before we go to bed, and if
Speaker 1: someone were to mess with the door, the alarm would
Speaker 1: go off. And it was like of teen twelve dollar
Speaker 1: or something like that. Uh, No, monthly service, zero monitoring costs,
Speaker 1: zero monitoring costs. And don't get me started on why
Speaker 1: monthly home alarm monitoring is. It's it's like diamonds being
Speaker 1: sold to you essentially keep your family safe. Hey, don't
Speaker 1: get me started on that. It pisces me off. So
Speaker 1: another thing is your quarterly pest control treatments and those
Speaker 1: are incredibly expensive and it mostly is due to the
Speaker 1: labor of someone coming out to spray your home for
Speaker 1: for pests. And so we have an article on our
Speaker 1: website Poor not poor dot com. You can check it
Speaker 1: out and I walk you through kind of how to
Speaker 1: treat your home on a on your own quarterly basis
Speaker 1: and save hundreds of dollars a year. Edel And I'll
Speaker 1: say that that same chemical, uh, I mean, you can
Speaker 1: use that for like aunt control cockroaches. But that's the
Speaker 1: same stuff that some of the local guys in our
Speaker 1: neighborhood used to spray for mosquitoes. Yeah, we had a
Speaker 1: listener that mentioned in the Facebook group to talking about
Speaker 1: how they hated sprain from is because we have MS
Speaker 1: gets really pretty pretty badly down here in the South
Speaker 1: and to pay a huge feet on a monthly basis
Speaker 1: in the summer here for that, but that it's the
Speaker 1: same stuff, because I like, I literally asked him, I
Speaker 1: was just like, hey, what you know, like what do
Speaker 1: you use And he was totally friendly and was just yeah,
Speaker 1: we just like use this stuff, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I've got that. I've got that same
Speaker 1: bottle in my basement that I used to spray around
Speaker 1: my house. Yeah, that's what's called. They have the equipment
Speaker 1: to be able to kind of missed it, you know,
Speaker 1: they got they have it hooked up to their blower
Speaker 1: or whatever. But you start looking around and kind of
Speaker 1: asking around and doing a little bit of research, and
Speaker 1: you'd be surprised at how much of the stuff that
Speaker 1: you can do yourself for much much cheaper. Yea, So
Speaker 1: we're literally using the chemical that the pros use when
Speaker 1: they come to your house to spray, and they're charging
Speaker 1: you four dollars a year, and you cut out that
Speaker 1: person and you buy the product yourself, and you're saving
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we boiled it down in in
Speaker 1: the post, but yeah, what was the math a year? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like literally, you're spending I think under ten bucks a
Speaker 1: year time, so I won seventy three. How much are
Speaker 1: you saving over ten years? It's incredible, it really is.
Speaker 1: And so a couple of other things I just have
Speaker 1: to mention really quickly. If you're paying a fee for
Speaker 1: having a banking account, you really need to change banks,
Speaker 1: because you should be having a free checking and savings account,
Speaker 1: your insurance. We have a post on poor not poor
Speaker 1: about that. Gym memberships, audio memberships, dollar shape club newspapers.
Speaker 1: There's all these memberships that you might be paying for
Speaker 1: in a service like ask trim dot com can help
Speaker 1: you out, or you looking at your own credit card
Speaker 1: bill by yourself can easily do these things as well.
Speaker 1: Make sure that you are not paying too much on
Speaker 1: a monthly basis or subscribing to something that you really
Speaker 1: don't use or really don't need. Yes, Joel Man, So,
Speaker 1: I feel like that's like our final, our final sort
Speaker 1: of strategy approach, which is like consider whether or not
Speaker 1: this is something you even need in your life at all.
Speaker 1: We live in a world where there's so many options
Speaker 1: that are presented to us, and like we want to
Speaker 1: be able to have access to everything all the time.
Speaker 1: In reality, is it really necessary? Are you actually going
Speaker 1: to do those things? Are you actually going to go
Speaker 1: to the gym instead? And maybe you should just go
Speaker 1: for a walk or go for a run or or
Speaker 1: there's just different things that we think we need and
Speaker 1: we might do them for a little bit. We get
Speaker 1: used to paying the bill and that we don't continue
Speaker 1: to do whatever it is that they're offering. And those
Speaker 1: are the things that we want to cut. If there's
Speaker 1: something that you do that you love doing every month, man,
Speaker 1: keep it up. Like there's there's certain things that we
Speaker 1: pay for every month that's worth every single penny, and
Speaker 1: we would never cut those things. My eleven dollar Netflix
Speaker 1: bill that we split is completely worth it. They're worth it.
Speaker 1: Are so many good shows on there that from time
Speaker 1: to time I get around to watching, and my water
Speaker 1: bill is completely worth it. I'm not going to cut that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's certain things that we don't have control over whether
Speaker 1: or not we have, but we do have control over
Speaker 1: how we use those utilities. So we just want you
Speaker 1: guys to consider some of these things and hopefully you'll
Speaker 1: be able to sort of reduce your monthly bills. All right,
Speaker 1: mat So back to the beer. What's your take on
Speaker 1: Boulevard Brewing Company Grand Crew Barrel aged Ale. Dude, this
Speaker 1: is a solid beer. I feel like it's got like
Speaker 1: a nice sort of chewy flavor to it, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. It's got like that sort of brown chewy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: brown chewies tastes like Brown's Brown Chewies Brown Chews with
Speaker 1: us being a bigger beer, I can feel it a
Speaker 1: little bit. And again, if you want to hear what
Speaker 1: we sound like drunk, listen to us in half beed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: grab your phone right now, switch it from times one
Speaker 1: two uh half speed and it'll sound awesome. No, man,
Speaker 1: I think this is a really fantastic beer. I don't
Speaker 1: drink a lot of quads anymore. I feel like it's
Speaker 1: been I mean literally, it's probably been close to a
Speaker 1: year at least since I've had a quad. And it's
Speaker 1: just a fantastic style on. I need more quads in
Speaker 1: my life. Yeah, and I think a quad is like
Speaker 1: a perfect winter beer. Uh. A quad, by the way,
Speaker 1: traditionally a Belgian beer, and it's usually higher a BV, thicker,
Speaker 1: darker beer. Uh. And it usually has like kind of
Speaker 1: raisin fig fruit notes in it at the same time.
Speaker 1: And this is a blend of quad and with key
Speaker 1: barrel aged Imperial stout, it's truly delicious. Thanks to Bulevard
Speaker 1: again for sending this over. We really dig it all.
Speaker 1: R Joe. Let's do a quick recap. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the quickly ways to cut your monthly bills.
Speaker 1: So first, you need to remember that your monthly bills
Speaker 1: add up. And if you if you're not thinking about
Speaker 1: the rule of one seventy three that Matt mentioned, you're
Speaker 1: not thinking about how these bills actually, over time decrease
Speaker 1: your net worth and you're wasting money every month, then
Speaker 1: that's really the impetus behind cutting your monthly bills. You
Speaker 1: might think they're small bills, but over time they're meaningful
Speaker 1: to your bottom line. So first, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the general strategies, and this should apply to most
Speaker 1: all bills that are out there. So the first thing
Speaker 1: shop it. You don't want to be a loyal customer
Speaker 1: to like your insurance company or to utility. You might
Speaker 1: want to be a loyal customer to like a local
Speaker 1: store or like restaurant that you visit, but loyalty does
Speaker 1: not pay off when it comes to utilities. You'll see
Speaker 1: your rates continue to climb. And actually read your credit
Speaker 1: card statements. Most people they get the email or they
Speaker 1: get it in the mail and they don't open it.
Speaker 1: Read your credit card statements go through a line by line.
Speaker 1: You'll know where your money is going every month and
Speaker 1: whether you're spending too much on a service that you
Speaker 1: don't value, or money on a service that you don't
Speaker 1: care for at all. And on that note, use a
Speaker 1: service like ask trim dot com. Uh, it's really cool
Speaker 1: and it's free and can just kind of notify you
Speaker 1: of some things that you need to cancel, and you
Speaker 1: know what, they'll actually help you cancel it so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to do that hard work yourself. And
Speaker 1: also another strategy is to get to know the customer
Speaker 1: retention department. Ultimately, you need to be willing to walk
Speaker 1: out the door, know what the competitors are offering and
Speaker 1: get them to price match. And if they're not willing
Speaker 1: to meet you there and match that, you need to
Speaker 1: be willing to hop over to the other provider. And
Speaker 1: the final thing, consider just getting rid of it. Drop
Speaker 1: that bill, whether it's cable or some of your monthly
Speaker 1: streaming services. You've got too many. You kind of gotten
Speaker 1: into that trend where you've got five six monthly streaming
Speaker 1: pervioces is that you're paying for. Consider cutting it out
Speaker 1: altogether or at minimum splitting it with a friend. Because really,
Speaker 1: going back to the beginning of the show, we want
Speaker 1: you and we want ourselves to watch less TV in general,
Speaker 1: it's just a waste of your time and man, and
Speaker 1: also there's not just an easy sort of answer. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of these things. You can, yeah, you can
Speaker 1: make a phone call, you can kind of ask around,
Speaker 1: shop around. But ultimately, if you're looking to reduce your
Speaker 1: monthly bills, a lot of it is is based on
Speaker 1: your behavior and sort of having the discipline to say
Speaker 1: no to certain things and to cut certain things out
Speaker 1: of your life, and ultimately you're going to see the
Speaker 1: most difference in making those kind of changes in your life.
Speaker 1: So thanks for listening. If you like this show, please
Speaker 1: review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Speaker 1: It really means a lot. Thank you for subscribing and
Speaker 1: listening and being a part of this awesome community. We're
Speaker 1: having a lot of fun. Until next time, Best Friends Out,
Speaker 1: Best Friends Out. No