Save Money: My Husband Will Not Give Up Cable
To keep cable or not to keep cable has been a battle in my household for maybe the past 6 months. I am all about saving money; therefore, it would not be hard to me to get rid of cable. And the majority of the shows I watch are on the local channels. The only show on cable that I was addicted to was Jon and Kate plus 8, but now that they are getting a divorce, I doubt I will be watching that show anymore. BTW, I am very saddened and disappointed about the divorce and a little upset with TLC, but I will not get into that. My husband is a sports buff and would probably have to be committed if he could not get his daily dose of ESPN. My children would probably think they were on some sort of punishment if they were restricted to watching cartoons on Saturday mornings ONLY, like the good ol’ days.
Since my husband will not let go of cable until I guess we have completely exhausted our emergency fund, wiped out our retirement funds and our house is in foreclosure, I, as usual, have to look for other ways to save money on our monthly bills. I will say that I have never paid more than $140 for my bundled cable package (phone, cable, and internet), but now that seems like too much money.
Every personal finance blog has talked about ways to reduce your cable bill, so I won’t really go into too much detail about that, but I do have my 2 cents to add.
1. Pay your bills on-time. They absolutely look at your payment history to determine if you are worthy of a discount.
2. Be nice. You always get more bees with honey.
3. Talk to the cancellation department when you are looking for a rate reduction. They have all the tricks up their sleeves and their job is to keep you as a customer.
4. Rinse and repeat. If you don’t get the price you want, hang up and call back later. The next time you call, you are likely to speak with a rep who will hook you up!!
Last week I got the hook up!
I called Comcast, ready to cancel just about everything, except the internet, but instead was only calling to cancel the phone. The lady a spoke with was very nice and asked why I wanted to cancel. I told her we were looking to save some money. So of course, she reached into her bag of tricks and pulled out the best package I have ever heard of in five years. Get this, I am now only paying $114 for extended digital cable, phone, internet, HBO and 2 DVR boxes…SCORE!! There is a catch, but not that horrible, I have to sign a contract stating that I will not reduce or cancel my package and that locks in that rate for ONE YEAR! At first, I was leery about the contract, but I figured we have a contract with our cell phone provider also and that is for two years. I have not signed the contract yet, but I will. If you don’t sign the contract, that price is only good for 6 months.
For now everybody is happy and I have avoided World War III in my house.
Invest More and Save Money with Term Life Insurance
There are so many different types of life insurance plans available, term life, whole life, universal life and variable life insurance, how do you choose which is best for your family and which one will help you save money? Initially, universal life insurance, a cash value insurance plan that combines insurance and savings together, was the best choose for my family. We picked this policy because it claims to help families retire rich. Guess what, not true.
I have been doing some research and discovered that term life insurance is the best and most affordable life insurance policy. Term life insurance is only good for a certain number of years then it expires. For people who like to save money, the fact that it expires sounds rather deflating considering you have paid into this policy for years just to get nothing in return, but the same can be said for car insurance or any other type of insurance so why should life insurance be any different. I also just learned that with universal life insurance, upon my death, my family would only receive the face value of the policy, not the cash value. Meaning, if I took out a policy for $100K, but the cash value was $300K my family would only receive the $100K. If nothing else, that was enough to make me switch to term life insurance. When time permits, I will go to www.selectquote.com to look for the most affordable policy. I am hoping that our premium is reduced to $40 instead of $120. With the reduced premium price, we can use the money we saved towards student loan debt or invest the money in the stock market.
Suze Orman said “life insurance wasn’t meant to be permanent; it’s there to protect your family before you’ve had a chance to accumulate enough funds (through investments and savings) to do so. Dave Ramsey said “cash value life insurance is one of the worst financial products available”
If they said it, I believe it. Knowledge is power!! Save your money and switch to term life insurance.