Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Small Town Riches




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Save Money by Reviewing your Bills

This is a post from an old blog I had back in 2013. I’ve taken down the blog, so I though I would share the post here since it still has lots of merit today in terms of how to save money:

A lot of the time, i’m not the most ambitious person in the world, but last week I made a point to do some research on my Bell bill.

I’m a loyal type of person who likes convenience.  I have had my Satellite, Internet and Home Phone with Bell for the last 5 years and my cellphone with Telus for almost 10 years.  Once my contract is up with Telus in 2 years, I may see what Bell can offer in order to get the Bundle discount.  Anyway, I was paying upwards of $180 per month for my 3 Bell services and wanted to see what my options were for lowering it.  Upon checking the Bell site, I immediately noticed that new subscribers could get a Bundle similar to mine, plus a FREE HD PVR, for $10 less per month.

Bell’s Loyalty Department to the Rescue

With that in mind, I phoned Bell and explained (calmly) my issues and my desire to save money.  Without much effort, I was transferred over to the Bell Loyalty Department where a very friendly CANADIAN (no overseas call center) went through my services with me.  We changed each of my services over to Bell’s new offerings (I was under the old system), which was very similar to my current services.

All said and done, I was able to retain everything I had, add 40 Gigabytes of bandwidth to my internet plan, get the free HD PVR receiver, and pay only $125 per month!  I was blown away that a simple phone call to Bell yielded a savings of close to $55 per month.  With newcomers like Eastlink canvasing neighbourhoods with deals designed to take customers away from Bell, Bell has fought back by providing discounts to its loyal customers.  The only thing is that they won’t come to you….you must call them to ask about how you can save money on your services.

An Update for 2016

UPDATE: With my recent move to the country, I had to find another internet provider as Bell does not do rural high speed in our area. The current service with another company is not comparable to in town high speed, but it’s enough for streaming. I also decided to drop my home phone line since I found I was only getting calls from work and telemarketers on it!! With the loss of the Bell bundle savings, dropping my home phone, and switching internet providers, I’ve managed to stay around $125/month for satellite and internet.

Cutting the Cable?

I’ve also been testing how I could drop my satellite altogether. I have a computer hooked up to my living room television, so I decided to give Kodi a try. It’s a streaming service that allows you to watch TV shows and movies over the internet. Sort of like Netflix, but with the most recent episodes of your favourite shows. I’ll have a full post on Kodi coming up soon. Live Sports is also a big one for me, so i’ve been using MLB.tv during the playoffs to test it out. So far, it’s a little choppy on my internet connection, but not too bad. If I added NHL Gamecenter in the Winter, I’d have everything I needed. The two sports streaming services would set me back $400/year, but with Kodi being free, I’d save about $600/year if I dropped my Satellite entirely. The only thing holding me back right now is reliable internet. My provider has an upgraded service coming out soon, so I think I’ll give it a try to see if I can do this.

My Biggest Expense: Insurance!

Next on my list was insurance. I pay a lot of insurance! With my four properties, 3 cars and life insurance, I was north of $700 per month.  I decided that one change that had to be made was to get rid of a car. I had a 2008 BMW, a 1968 Ford F100 truck, and a 2003 Dodge Neon that I drove to work. It pained me greatly (and still to this day), but I decided that I needed to get rid of the BMW and Neon in exchange for a new truck. The beauty was that with the trade in on the BMW I was actually paying less for my new truck than I was for the BMW! Plus insurance was about $10/month cheaper over the BMW. Dropping the Neon and driving the truck to work meant that I saved an additional $50/month in insurance. With the lower car payment and lower insurance premiums, I saved around $80/month total.

Of course there’s also your Hydro bill, but that’s a whole post all on it’s own! Stay tuned for that one!

With this in mind, I urge everyone to evaluate their bills and see if there are ways to save money.  A simple phone call to your providers will get you results!

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About The Author

Kevin is the owner of smalltownriches.com. He's an avid entrepreneur always looking for an opportunity to take advantage of. Kevin is an active real estate investor with four properties he manages. He also holds a full time job as a control room operator at a cement plant. Kevin also has a passion for Dogs and anything with wheels and a motor. Someday he hopes to open his own dog rescue.

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