Negotiate, Negotiate, Negotiate!

Negotiate is the word of the day! No not with your children, lest you desire conflict and constant loophole hunting by your adorable faced bunchkins. Kids, man, they are super smart, and super manipulative. No not in the malicious kind of way, but the hmmm... I really really want my way and there was some wiggle room last time, so there will be again sort of way.

So if I am not talking about negotiating with children who am I talking about, after all this is a parenting blog right? Well it is also about family life, and with family life comes finances. I am talking about negotiating with service providers to save cold hard cash!

Yesterday I got a "wild hair" up my you no what, and decided that I needed to see where my bail out is! Now I know we don't qualify as a billion dollar financial institution or an auto maker so our chances of receiving millions to fetter away were about nil. But what I also knew is that all these service providers do NOT want to lose our business in times like these either!

First I called our Alarm company. When the economy goes down, inherently crime goes up, so there was absolutely no way that I was going to shut it off, but hey they don't need to know that. So I called and asked for their best rate. They lowered my rate by $7. Now keep in mind that $7 may not seem like a lot but over the course of the year that $7 equals $84 dollars and a 25% savings on our monthly bill! Man was I jazzed and empowered!!! So I decided why stop there?

Next I called our phone/internet company. I happened upon a promo for the internet of $30 a month. I was blindly paying $50 because I didn't keep up on when our contract ended. When these companies have you on contract you should be writing down these dates, because at the end of the contract, you are eligible for their new client promos! If they refuse, change companies! You now have the right under federal law to keep your phone number and port it to any company you choose! You are not a slave to these companies and for a little bit of work you can save hundreds! So now I am saving $20 a month, which adds up to $240 a year! So I figured I was going to now press for phone savings!

Honestly, we are a cell phone nation. Cell phone plans are cheap, they include national long distance, so if you have one, you really do not need a home phone unless you have an alarm system, as we do. So I asked about the cheapest phone plan they have. And what do I find out? This is alarming! (LOL excuse the pun!) They now have digital phone services out there! I was paying $34 a month for our phone which included all the taxes and surcharges! They gave me a new rate of $12.99 a month for 300 home minutes (more than ample since we use the cell phones) on top of that, when you sign up for digital phones (which on your end changes nothing, you use your own phones like usual and the only thing that changes is on their end) you no longer are subject to state and local usage taxes only federal! So that lowers your bill even more. So now with my $12.99 and my federal usage, I will be paying $14 a month! A savings of $20 dollars! My 15 minute phone call to our phone/internet company saves me a total of $480 a year!!! or $40 a month!!!

So 30 minutes on the phone with two service providers has now saved me $47 a month, or $564 a year! So of course I couldn't stop there! I next called our pest control company! They decided to play hard ball and only come down $2 which is completely unacceptable! So I decided to call around. I found a smaller company, who provides the same services for $10 less a month, or $120 a year!

Literally my hour of phone calls saved us $57 a month and $684 a year! How awesome is that? I got very little friction save for the pest company who apparently feels they are above discounting even in this economy! Ridiculous! So take the time, call your providers, and stay on top of your contract dates! There is no reason to throw that money away and all it took me was 60 minutes to save $57 dollars, that is almost a dollar a minute, which is more than my employer pays me!