Paid Off!

We paid off our house today!  And unlike the other houses we paid off in the past there is no way we will have the mindset we had back then, namely, as soon as we paid off a house we would immediately start looking for our next bigger and better house (which meant bigger house payments).  These days, if we can't pay cash for something, we don't buy it and that includes cars and houses.  So for now, we are happy with our newly paid off house and when we do decide to downsize, or buy a single-level house, it will be a cash-only transaction.  

The nice lady at the mortgage company, as soon as she took our last payment, asked if we would be looking at getting a new mortgage soon but before she could finish her sentence, I said "noooo we're debt freee".  And we intend to stay that way!

On an unrelated note, the full moon tonight (see photo above) is the Beaver Moon, the last super moon of the year, and there will also be a meteor shower this weekend!

20 Ways We Save on Our Bills

Whenever I am scrolling through reddit, there are invariably posts about how people can no longer afford even their most basic bills (housing, utilities, food, etc).  Not that these tips will work for everyone but this is how we can easily afford our basic household bills:

1. For our mortgage, we moved from a HCOL city and bought a nearly new house in a (at the time) LCOL city.  Our mortgage payment is super low and so is the interest we pay on the loan.  Not everyone can do these things (especially finding low-priced homes and low interest rates these days) but not buying a house in a super expensive city will obviously save lots of money (my nephew bought a starter house in LA for $800k+ which is a stupid expensive price).
2. I shop around once a year for a bundle price for our house and car insurance.  Prices vary widely so every few years we switch to any company that gives us a better price on insurance.  We also go with a higher deductible since we have the amount of the deductible in savings to use if needed (we also try not to file claims on anything we can reasonably repair because that also causes insurance costs to skyrocket).
3. Property tax.  We do several things to lower the property tax on our house including getting a veteran's discount (many places offer senior and/or veterans discounts on property tax), living in an area with low property tax rates (New England property tax rates are ridiculously expensive, our area is super cheap), ensuring we get the lower property tax cap rate (the tax cap is 3% for owner-occupied houses and 8% for houses that are used as rentals), and challenging any property tax rate that is higher than it should be (we can submit comps to the assessor to challenge property values that are not in line with actual sales in the neighborhood).
4. Electricity.  At first we would record our electricity usage everyday so we could see what made it increase, now we do all we can to conserve electricity, right down to unplugging everything in the guest rooms unless we have guests to avoid 'phantom electricity usage'.
5. Natual gas.  Ditto.  The next time our gas water heater dies we will switch to an on-demand hot water system to save even more money.
6. Water.  Ditto.  We conserve water as much as possible so our water bill is always very reasonable.
7. Garbage.  While we would like to process our own garbage, in the city, having garbage service is required so we just pay this every quarter (the price is actually very reasonable).
8. Sewer service.  Again, this is a flat-rate fee but we pay the fee once a year in order to get a discount over paying a higher rate if we were to pay monthly instead of annually.
9. Internet.  We go with the lowest/slowest internet plan (the internet is not actually slow since we don't do gaming, video editing/uploading, or use many devices at the same time).  I call anytime they raise the price and they always give me a lower price (and often faster service), and I also buy a router/modem every few years instead of renting one from the internet company.
10. Cable TV.  We don't have cable TV and instead use an over-the-air antenna as well as a Roku device (one time cost of $20) and we end up with more channels than we will ever be able to watch.
11. Car.  We have one car that we share, bought it brand new, paid it off quickly, maintain it as needed, and will probably drive it until the wheels fall off.  The brand of car also matters.  We have a Honda which is a middle-of-the-road car; it's not fancy but will run for a good long time.  I've heard that people with Hyundais can barely get (super expensive) insurance because that brand is stolen so much here and friends with Mercedes' or BMWs pay an arm and a leg for all repairs/tires/insurances simply because of the brand of the car.
12. Repairs to home or car.  Our first step when something needs fixed is Amazon for parts and YouTube for how-to-fix-it videos which has saved us A LOT of money.  We also have several handy friends who will help us if needed and our final option is to call a pro (I generally search the reddit for our city to find recommendations for the services we need).
13. Consumables.  We have bidets on all toilets (this saves A LOT of toilet paper), use towels and rags over paper towels, wash dishes over using paper plates (we know several people who only use disposable plates/bowls/etc just so they don't have to do dishes), and don't use a lot of things other people do (disinfecting wipes, Swiffer wipes, fancy air fresheners, etc).
14. Eating out.  Our eating out is usually limited to free meals in casinos (thanks to hubby's poker comps), and the rare good deal on fast food.  If we do go to a restaurant we will split a meal, order water instead of soda, and usually end up with leftovers to take home (portion sizes are crazy big here so we split a meal and still have enough food leftover to take home for a third meal!).
15. Food.  Mostly we cook at home.  We usually cook everything from scratch, shop loss leaders and sales, shop at a half dozen stores in our area to get the lowest prices, and use store apps for even better discounts.  We also take food and drinks from home if we will be out for the day so we don't end up eating fast food all the time. 
16. Clothing.  ALL of our clothes are bought at the Goodwill.  I can't remember the last time we bought clothes at a regular store but we do buy shoes, socks, and underwear new (again, it needs to be on sale or heavily discounted when I buy it).
17. Cell phones/service.  We use the $15 per month Mint Mobile plan for cell service (we pay annually so with the discount, we each pay $185 per year plus tax for cell service).  I also buy a new unlocked cell phone (usually from Best Buy, Amazon, or from Samsung) every couple years then pass my phone down to hubby.
18. Health insurance.  This is a huge thing for many people but is kind of a non-issue for us as we have free-ish health insurance from the military.  Our total cost for insurance is $30 a month and there are no co pays for appointments/prescriptions/etc.
19. Hobby stuff.  Hubby likes bowling so he pays a reasonable $10 per league to bowl once a week.  I like walking so I buy steeply discounted shoes/socks/backpacks/etc online.  Ditto for tech stuff.
20. Everything else.  We occasionally go to $4 movies on senior day, rodeo events are free to watch, being in a major entertainment city, there are dozens of free things to do everyday here, and our library is amazing and best of all, free.  Friends host house parties all the time, our city is criss-crossed with trails for walking, hiking is a short drive away at state and national parks (hubby has a $10 lifetime national parks pass and we get an annual senior state park pass each year), and there are many one-off events like getting freebies for our birthday, being in the audience of events filmed in Vegas, etc.

And to save even more, we don't carry debt (or pay interest), have a time share (a permanent money sink), have subscriptions (to gyms, Spotify, etc), have expensive hobbies (boats, RVs, horses, golf, etc) or spend money randomly (purchases are well thought out and then we wait for the item to go on sale).

The Bill Review

Every year, usually around January, I take a look at our list of monthly/quarterly/annual bills and see if there are any I can reduce or get rid of all together.  Here's this year's review: 

• Mortgage.  We have debated refinancing our mortgage for a lower interest rate but we are paying it off pretty quickly so we probably won't do this to avoid paying closing costs on a loan we hope to pay off sooner rather than later.  Included in our mortgage payment is home insurance (I call around annually to see if other companies can give us a lower rate and have switched companies a couple times over the years for a better rate).  Also included in the mortgage is property tax which we reduce with hubby's veteran's tax exemption from the county.
• Electricity.  We try to conserve energy as best we can; overall our energy rates are lower here than in our previous home in Seattle.
• Natural gas.  Ditto.
• Sewer.  We pay this bill annually and get a discount of about $20 over paying the bill quarterly.  This is a flat rate and there is no way to reduce this bill.
• Garbage.  We pay this bill quarterly.  I saw a neighbor with a much smaller garbage can than we have so I am going to call the garbage company tomorrow and see if they have a cheaper rate than for their usual huge garbage can.
• HOA.  I hate HOAs but there isn't much we can do about this as most homes in Las Vegas are part of an HOA.  We pay our HOA fees annually just to avoid having to pay them every month.
• Water.  We try to conserve water in order to keep this bill as low as possible.  Again, the cost for water is much cheaper here in the desert than in rainy Seattle which I totally don't understand.
• Internet.  We don't have a cable TV bill as we use an over-the-air antenna for free TV but we need internet so we pay about $50 a month for a middling internet service and any time the cost goes up I call and grovel and get a cheaper rate.
• Car insurance.  The price for car insurance in Las Vegas is ridiculously high so I call around annually to see if we can get a better rate through another company.  We have an OK rate now so are happy with it plus we pay the bill biannually in order to get a small discount over paying monthly.
• Health insurance.  We get this through the military and definitely can't argue about the price (about $25 per month for me, hubby has Medicare so the fee comes out of his Social Security).
• Cell phone.  We have Mint for our cell service and at $180 each ANNUALLY for cell service, we feel we are getting an excellent deal.
• Car registration.  We pay this annually and get a steep discount with hubby's veteran's tax exemption through the county.
• Grandson's school.  We pay for private school for one of the grandsons and thank goodness he is a senior this year so this bill will be ending soon.
• Domain name registration.  I still have a half dozen domain names even though I do very little web development these days.  I buy these domain names annual through Name Cheap and the cost is very reasonable.
• Tithe.  I tithe to Unity on a monthly basis since I don't have a local church and have been doing this for years.
• Netflix.  This is our only streaming service and until there is something equally as good but cheaper we will keep this service which hubby uses on a regular basis.
• Visa.  We put all of our shopping on one credit card and pay it off monthly.  With all shopping--food, clothes, tech, gifts, etc--we try to buy on sale, in bulk, with a discount or coupons, etc in order to keep costs low.
• Savings.  We put a set amount into savings each month which has varied from little when we were paying off bills to about half our income now since we have no more bills to pay off.  We may shift some of this money to pay off the house faster but with the current financial situation, we like to keep a good amount in savings not so much for us but to use if one of the five kids or 13 grandkids needs help.

That's it for all of our bills.  In general we live pretty frugally and try to keep our bills as few and as low as possible!

Car Bills

I really wish we could ditch our cars and just take Uber and public transit but, #1, public transit here is pretty awful, and #2, hubby said "no way!".

• We just paid hubby's annual car registration.  His car is old so the annual fee is $110 but using his veteran tax exemption, we only paid $34!
• I got an email that our bi-annual car insurance payment is due in a month.  If we pay every six months it is $650 (Vegas is one of the highest car insurance places in the nation!) but if we pay it monthly the price goes to $825.  Needless to say, we pay this every six months.  I also call a handful of car insurance companies once a year to make sure we are getting the best deal on car insurance (there can be $200-$400 difference from company to company when I last checked!).
• Our two-year-old garage door opener just decided it didn't want to work.  We have tried everything to fix it so the next step will be calling a repair place :(  It shouldn't cost that much but I would think it would still be working since it is so new (but it is also 100+ degrees in the garage four months of the year so there's that).

Baby It's Hot Here!

So we hit 113 degrees today and it will be hot the rest of the week...

...the news even compared us to Timbuktu in Africa (we were hotter than there)...

...I'm a little afraid to see our next electricity bill... 

Costs My Grandparents Never Had to Worry About

I came across this article a couple days ago which got me to thinking.  There are A LOT of costs that my grandparents never had to worry about which are now part of almost everyone's monthly bill list.  Here's a typical monthly bill list compared to a typical bill list for a family in the 1950s:

• Mortgage (they bought their land and home with cash).  Of course they started with a tiny piece of land and a shack and slowly expanded as they had the money.
• Electricity (this is one bill they had).  
• Water (they had a well--their only option for water--so no water bill)
• Sewer (they had a septic tank--no sewer system back in the day in the rural areas they lived in--so no sewer bill)
• Gas (they were far removed from any natural gas line so no gas bill.  They usually burned wood for heat which they cut down and cured themselves)
• Trash (they processed their own trash by composting and burning; they produced little trash because they rarely bought anything).
• Credit card bills (unheard of back then; they paid cash for everything).
• Cable TV (ditto; they had a TV with "rabbit ears" and about three channels).
• HOA fee (unheard of back then; no HOA bill)
• Internet (ditto)
• Cell phone (ditto ditto)
• Health insurance (in the early days they paid cash for medical care; eventually the union paid for the family's medical care).
• Car insurance (when this became common my granddad always carried car insurance).
• Life insurance (ditto)
• Food (they did shop in grocery stores but they produced as much as their food as possible with a huge garden and orchard.  Hunting and fishing supplemented the meat they would buy or barter for.  They did always have to buy coffee--it was a staple, as were sugar, flower, spices, etc).
• Eating out (I can count on one hand the number of times my grandparents went out to dinner.  Granddad preferred to eat at home; in later years grandma went out to lunch once a week with the "Lunch Bunch" ladies and thoroughly enjoyed eating out).
• Cars (they always paid cash for their cars and never had a new car--granddad said it was a waste of money to buy new--so he would barter or cajole or otherwise end up with quite decent vehicles for very low cash prices).
• Gas for the truck (this was a necessity; back then gas was like 35 cents a gallon)
• Entertainment (they always had a farm in a rural area so entertainment was a barn dance, playing cards with the neighbors, or playing music).
• Clothing (some was purchased, some was handmade; they never had an excess of clothing or shoes)
• Telephone (they had a phone when service got to their area; of course they had a "party line" for many years)
• Travel (this was exceptionally rare and neither one ever traveled by plane; they would either drive or take the train to visit family).

Things they did pay for that might be a bit uncommon today:

• Guitars (granddad loved his guitars)
• Guns, fishing gear, hunting gear (these were necessities of life back then)
• Livestock (they had horses for a while, chickens, etc)
• Seeds (they would receive massive orders of seeds each late winter for their farm)
• Books and magazines (they were avid readers so there were always books and subscription magazines at their house)
• Canning supplies (grandma canned a ton of food each summer and fall)
• A huge freezer (for as far back as I can remember they always had a huge freezer full of food)
• Whiskey (granddad loved his whiskey)
• Chocolate (grandma loved her chocolate)

The bottom line was that they lived simply but had a full life.  They didn't need a lot of "stuff" to make them happy but a full freezer and pantry were both a joy to them and a kind of insurance against hard times.  Both had lived through the Depression and were very frugal.  Granddad always had a wallet bursting with cash yet he hardly ever spent it, and grandma saved what little money she had as well (it was called "pin money" back then). They seemed to have everything they needed but little extra when it came to extravagances (no fur coat for grandma, no travel to distant lands just because, etc).  Life seemed so simple back then...

No Wonder I Was Broke!

I was going through a box of stuff last night and came across the notebook I used to write my monthly bills in.  The notebook covered the years from 2002 to 2008.  Looking back through those list of bills was a startling trip down memory lane.  What was I thinking?  Each month I was burying myself in more and more debt and I didn't notice anything wrong with that??  My today self should have slapped my then self upside the head--at least then I may not have kept adding "small monthly payments" that eventually added up to nearly overwhelming debt. Here's what one of the biggest months looked like:

• Mortgage $1500
• Second mortgage $325
• Car payment $595
• Car insurance $195 (we had five cars at the time)
• Water/sewer $40
• Gas $90 (it was winter)
• Electricity $75 (ditto)
• Cable/internet $195 (apparently we needed every station known to man)
• Garbage $15
• Health insurance $35
• Cell phones $250 (we must have still had some kids on our plan)
• Son's family in the Philippines $150
• Tithe $100
• Newspaper $10
• Macys $50
• Sears $75
• J C Penny $60
• Chevron $250
• Visa $125
• Mastercard $100
• Other visa $90
• Discover $100

The list didn't include all of the cash we paid out each month for restaurants (daily), clothing (stuff we didn't put on the credit cards), money we would give to the kids, etc.

Just looking at that list made me cringe.  We were paying almost $800 a month just on credit cards!!!! (sadly most of that money went to interest, over limit fees and late fees).  I was such an idiot.

Fortunately we (eventually) got our act together and got out of debt and our monthly bill list now looks much more reasonable:

• Rent $600
• Electricity $112 (but going down next month!)
• Cell phones $80
• Health insurance $35
• Car insurance $33 (liability only for one--paid for--car)
• Son's family in the Philippines $95
• Tithe $50

Basically it was a three step process to go from over-the-top bills to spending a fraction of the cost to keep us fed, sheltered, and entertained each month.  The first step was paying off debt as quickly as possible and not using credit cards any more.  The second step was cutting down on the cost of things we can't do without (ie: we don't need a big house but we do need shelter so a small, one bedroom condo works very well for us and, fortunately the rental fee covers water, sewer, and garbage).  The third step was doing without things that don't impact us too greatly (ie: no cable, liability only car insurance, cheaper cell phone plans, no newspaper since I now read this online, etc).

Now that the trip down memory lane is done, I never want to go back there!  I'm debating whether to burn the notebook or keep it as a reminder in case I ever edge toward debt again...

The Joy of Paying Bills

I never thought I would be happy to pay bills but these days I am pretty happy because, #1, there is so few of them, and #2, they aren't expensive bills. Thinking back to when our bills totalled somewhere around $8000-$10,000 per month, I am positively giddy when I look at our short bill list! Here's what we pay now: Annually: private mail box (around $150), grandson's school ($480), car registration ($40) Semi annually: car insurance ($200 every six months) Monthly: cell phone ($85 per month), tithe ($50), have mail sent from PMB ($10), storage unit ($55 per month), health insurance ($35 per month) Notes:

• A private mail box is way more expensive than a postal box but well worth the money when you travel because they will hold your mail for an unlimited amount of time and also send you all of your collected mail to where ever you happen to be (for a small fee; we usually have mail sent once a month for about $10).


• We have committed to sending our grandson to school in the Philippines so this expense will be around for another decade or so. Currently he attends a public school but we told him that if he does well we will send him to a private school for high school and college so this cost will most likely increase. Since they don't have such things as Social Security or welfare in the Philippines, we feel his education will be the only thing that will help support his family in the future so it is well worth the cost.


• Even though our car has been parked since early February, we still pay liability-only car insurance so we will be insured when we drive other people's cars. We also get to pay the annual registration to keep it street legal so the guy who is watching it can drive it around occassionally to keep it running.


• Our cell contract will expire in December at which time we will go to no-contract cell phones since we don't use them much any more.


• I used to tithe 10% of my income but since I am not working and don't have much income, I still feel it is necessary to tithe monthly so I have settled on $50 a month until I earn more.


• Our storage unit is holding about $15,000 worth of stuff so the small monthly fee we pay for this service is well worth it. When we decide where/when to resettle this fee will go away.


• We have an amazing health insurance plan for such a little bit of money; hubby has this automatically deducted from his retirement pay each month.


• I really like paying bills on an annual basis so you can pay once then forget about it until the next year however some bills won't allow this (cell phone, car insurance). Since we are unsure of how long we will store our stuff, we have opted to pay for the storage unit monthly although we will pay some months in advance if we are out of the country.


• Online bill paying and online banking are awesome! This makes it so very easy to keep track of your money and move it around to pay bills. Unfortunately my bank doesn't have a way to scan checks in order to deposit them so when we get checks in the mail (a nice after affect from the sale of our house--we still have small checks coming in for various things) I have to mail them to our branch in Washington, however it only takes a few days for them to post.


• Money that comes in monthly (hubby's pension and Social Security, my small earnings from online stuff) is put in savings or used to pay for our daily needs (food mostly, make up and toiletries, and other small random things we need). Fortunately we don't have room to cart stuff with us around the country so we don't shop for many material items.


• So far we have been able to trade services for room and board and the use of a car so that in itself has cut what would be regular monthly expenses to nearly nil for the time being.


• I came across this blog post from Married With Luggage which outlines how much another set of travelers spend each month. Interesting!


• We have talked about the possibility of buying another house and settling down again but neither one of us feels compelled to do so yet. We plan to keep traveling for another year or so, but, as we have learned with this lifestyle, you never know what will happen. Our plans have already changed significantly about six times in the last two months so we really don't know where we will end up next or what new adventures await us.


• As Betsy said in the blog post above, when you get into the traveling (free!) lifestyle, you don't have many constraints and can be open to many more possibilities. We may look for house sitting opportunities, we may look into volunteer opportunities that provide room and board, we might camp for a month (a distinct possibility when I bike from Canada to Mexico later this summer)...you just never know. What I do know at this point is that I never want to be saddled with many thousands of dollars of monthly bills ever again!

Our Annual Bill Paying Plan

For most of my financial life, I have got by just paying the "minimum payment due". Obviously not a good thing, especially when paying credit card, car, and other debt because you can justify any loan amount if you are only looking at "small monthly payments" as opposed to the total amount owed.
Fortunately, our debt is just about paid off so there won't be any minimum monthly credit card or car payments, however, now I am looking at the monthly payments on our regular bills and have come up with a new annual bill paying plan. Here's how it will work:

• Our current debts include a mortgage payment (which includes property tax and house insurance), health insurance, car insurance, water, garbage, sewer, electric, gas, cable, cell phones, tithe, school for a grandchild, and taxes.

• As soon as we move (our house is in the process of being sold) and we become nomadic, our bills will drop to health insurance, car insurance, cell phones, tithe, school for the grandchild, and taxes.

We plan to pay these remaining six bills on an annual basis. We are doing this for a couple of reasons--one, while we are traveling, we won't have to worry about paying monthly bills, and two, often when you pay annually instead of monthly, you get a discount. In January we will pay $600 for a year of health insurance and $200 for six months of car insurance, putting $200 in savings for the second half of the year's car insurance since this can only be paid bi-annually. I have already put aside $500 for our grandson's school (in the Philippines, you have to actually pay to go to school, even elementary school), and we also have money in savings to pay our 2010 taxes which will be due in April (since I am self employed we always end up paying something to the IRS). The only things that we aren't paying annually are the cell phones (they are still on a contract so we will be paying this bill monthly), and tithe (since I tithe 10% of my income and have no idea how much income I will have in the coming year).

I hope to reduce these bills even further in a few ways: obviously health insurance will be a constant bill and at this low price I am more than happy to pay it however it will drop in half in a couple of years when hubby goes on Medicare. We think that eventually we may sell the car and be totally car free so that would preclude the need for car insurance. Our cell phones will eventually be of the pre-paid variety and I think our taxes will be reduced significantly beginning in January because I won't be working (my goal is to live so minimally and need so little that we end up paying zero taxes). Tithing will continue as usual at 10%, and while we are in the Philippines next month, I will talk to the grandson's family about setting them up a small business of some sort with some seed money so that they can pay for his school out of the proceeds of the business thus ending our commitment to pay his school fees for the next decade or so.

Obviously there will be other variable costs we will pay just for living like food, clothes, sundries, and "rent" of sorts to whoever we are staying with but these will be reduced as much as possible (and will be some good topics for future blog posts!).

My Annual Bill Update

Each year I take a bit of time to update my bill list. I do this for a number of reasons--first, I can check each bill and see if there are ways that I can lower the bill or maybe even get rid of it all together. The second reason I do this is to make sure I have all of the most current information about the bill on a list I keep in my computer; this includes the account number, the mailing address, and the contact number in case I need to discuss the bill with the creditor/company. There's been more than a few times when I was out of town or just didn't have the most recent bill with me and needed to contact the company--it's is a major hassle if you don't have the contact info and your account number to do this. Here is my bill list and things I have done to try to reduce these bills:

• Mortgage payment. Since our interest rate is at 4.25% and we are on a 15 year fixed rate loan, there is not much more I can do to make this payment lower without stretching out the term which I don't want to do. I want to get this bill paid off AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! We did change our house insurance to bundle it with our car insurance so that saved us about $200 per year off of this bill.
• Cell phone bill. We have a very old plan from TMobile which gives us two lines, text messaging, and internet for around $70 per month. There are cheaper plans (like the $25 per month Virgin Mobile pre paid plan) but then we would have to cancel both lines and pay a $400 early termination fee. I think we will just wait until the contract ends to switch to a prepaid plan.
• Tithe. I tithe every month to the Unity Church since I do not go to a local church. Oddly enough, it seems like the more money you tithe, the more money you get and if you stop tithing, the money stops coming in too. Tithing is a good thing.
• School bill. We pay $40 every month to send one of hubby's grandchildren to school in the Philippines. We think this is a solid investment in the family's future and will make a big difference in the child's life so we are happy to pay this bill each month.
• IRS. Being self employed, I need to pay my own taxes. A few years back my accountant made a mistake which put me a year behind paying my taxes which I am still trying to catch up on. I recently made a deal to get these back taxes paid off by next spring. Unfortunately, taxes are one bill you can't lower unless you quit earning money!
• Health insurance. We pay $38 a month for very comprehensive health insurance for the hubby and I. This is an extreme bargain considering what other people pay for health insurance so I am happy to pay this bill.
• Car insurance. We changed our car insurance about six months ago to liability only because the car was getting older. Since we only have one car, we pay $53 a month for insurance. I could try calling around and getting quotes from other insurance agencies but I think this is a good price plus we get a discount on our mortgage insurance because it is through the same company.
• Cable TV/internet/phone. If you read some earlier posts, you know that our bill for these services shot up to almost $180 per month. I called the company and took off a bunch of TV stations so our next bill should be around $110. I would love to cancel all of these but hubby loves his TV and we both love our internet and the price would have been the same with or without phone service.
• Electricity. Electricity is about $55 a month. It goes up about $20 more than this in the winter because we tend to use space heaters instead of heating the entire house. We could probably make a bit more effort to lower this bill such as unplugging and even selling appliances (a big freezer, a second refrigerator in the garage) that we don't use.
• Garbage. Garbage is $42 every three months. We already switched to having our garbage picked up every other week as opposed to every week because we really don't generate much garbage and this cut our bill down from what we paid for weekly service. The only way to get rid of this completely would be to haul our own garbage to the dump and that seems yucky so I will keep this service.
• Sewer. Since we aren't on a septic tank, we pay our sewer bill of approximately $104 every other month. This is the base residential rate and won't go down no matter what we do.
• Water bill. We pay $50 every other month for water and again, this is a base residential rate so we can't lower this bill either.
• Gas bill. Because we have gas heat and hot water, our gas bill ranges from $20 in the summer to $100 in the winter.

The only other bills we have are a couple of hubby's credit cards that we are working diligently to pay off, and annual bills for my business (PO box rental, licensing, website hosting). I would LOVE to sell the house and sell everything and see almost all of these bills disappear but we are waiting until (hopefully) the economy improves and home prices rise before selling.

Bill Reduction 101

One way to have more cash to spend as you like is to have less bills to pay. This means both a lesser number of bills that you need to pay each month and a lesser amount per bill that you need to pay. Each year, usually around January, I review our bill list and see what bills I can reduce and what bills I can get rid of all together. Here's how this looks:

• Mortgage payment. At the end of last year we refinanced our mortgage and knocked off both the number of years of payments (from 18 years left on a 20 year contract to 15) and knocked down the interest rate (to 4.5%!). This resulted in our mortgage payments, even with the reduced number of years, being about $100 less per month than we were paying before. Also, just this month, I called my car insurance company and asked about their rates for house insurance; turns out that by switching our mortgage insurance to bundle it with our car insurance, we are now saving over $200 per year.
• Car payments. This was a biggie--the lease payments for my car were huge so at the end of the lease a couple of years ago, I turned the car in, got a bus pass, decided to share our one paid off car with the hubby...and ended up saving nearly $1000 per month!
• Credit card bills. Since we do not use credit cards anymore, we simply pay the minimum on all of the credit card bills then choose the one credit card bill with the lowest balance and hammer away at it until it is gone. This has reduced the number of credit card bills from eight to three over the past couple of years. Soon the remaining three should be paid off. On a side note, if you are still paying off credit card debt, be sure to call the card companies and ask for a reduction in the interest rate you are paying, this can save you a significant amount of money each month.
• Utilities. You need electricity, water, sewer, garbage, and natural gas but you can still reduce your rates on these bills by conserving. We have put low flow shower heads on all of our showers, we turn off lights and other electrical appliances when they are not needed, and we take other steps to conserve both water and electricity. We also did a bit of research and found that we could switch from weekly garbage pick up to every other week service and save money that way as well.
• Cable TV. While cable TV isn't a requirement, most people can't imagine living without it. Each year we look at this bill and then call the cable company and see if they have a better deal. Often times this works--they will give us a promotional rate, say a $10 discount on the package that we have, for a year, at which time we call again and see what deals they have available.
• Phone. We have done various things over the years to cut the cost of phone service. In some locations we have had great cell reception so we cut out home phone service all together. More recently we found that we do need a home phone (mostly for business purposes) so we researched the cost for regular phone company phone service vs. internet phone service and found that by bundling phone service with our internet we save about $20 per month. Other people have decided to use Skype in lieu of phone service, or switched to using cell phones only.
• Cell phones. It always pays to review the various cell phone service plans frequently as they change often. You need to be aware of any pre-term cancellation fees you may be under before switching over, but it does pay to keep an eye on both the cell service packages that are available and also check to make sure that you are paying for the most cost-efficient service level (ie: if you only use 500 minutes a month, why would you want to be in a 1500 minute per month plan?).
• Car insurance. We try to make sure that our car insurance plan meets our needs, both in terms of the rate we are paying as compared to the rates offered by other companies, and in the type of insurance we are paying for (ie: when the value of the car drops below a certain amount, we will take off comprehensive insurance and just go with liability).
• Variable expenses. This category, which includes food, gas, clothing, entertainment, etc., has the most room in which to make a dent in the amount that you spend. In these areas, we tend to spend like misers (in a good sort of way). Food is bought on sale, we conserve gas by organizing our trips in the most efficient manner, clothing is bought at 50% off or more clearance sales, and entertainment is often a movie at home or a walk around the park. We realize that by living frugally in these easy-to-be-frugal categories, we have more cash on hand to spend on the things that are most important to us (like traveling to visit the family).
• Extraneous expenses. We have cut out many expenses over the last few years that simply lopped these categories right out of our budget (and resulted in fewer bills to pay each month). These include cancelling the yard guy, the housekeeper, the gym membership, subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, etc.

By simply reviewing your bill list each year and considering your options, you can literally save hundreds of dollars per month (which can be better spent to pay down debt, bulk up your emergency fund, or pay for your CASH ONLY vacation).