Comments on: The One Hour Project: Cleanse Your Monthly Bills http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/ Financial talk for the rest of us Sat, 16 Feb 2013 01:14:45 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: steve http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-256250 steve Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:58:53 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-256250 It’s funny how the exercise of looking at your bills with a view to cutting down on them can really let you see your life in a fresh way and reprioritize. Like the couple who dropped cable and started getting videos from the library, then discovered that they might want to just drop the tv altogether once they did a “time budget” on how many hours the tv was sucking out of their lives. (I did the same thing many years back–realized i was spending at least 15 hrs per week in front of the tube, and decided to go cold turkey by rolling the thing into a closet (out of the “center” of the room) and putting some heavy boxes in front of the closet door! Nowadays I have one in the house but I very rarely use it at all, even for rentals.

]]> By: dawn f http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-80693 dawn f Tue, 02 Oct 2007 19:05:01 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-80693 Eric-
I would love to know how you negotiated a lower rate on Tivo and the cable company for that matter. Our cable is a bundled package for a year w phone & internet but at the end of the year it will go up quite a lot. Comcast never seems to want to negotiate with me just bill more. any insight into how you did it would be fabulous.
Thanks

]]> By: lotsofbluesky http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69705 lotsofbluesky Tue, 11 Sep 2007 17:39:57 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69705 I canceled my landline phone about three years ago and have never missed it. I only use a cellphone which saves money and is very convenient. I registered the number with the local police for their emergency notification system (to call me if there is an evacuation or emergency advisory like having to boil water before use). I’ve used it for 911 calls (faster since I didn’t have to run into the house to make the call). I call and receive international calls.

]]> By: Been there http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69570 Been there Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:21:38 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69570 We dropped our pay cable channels awhile back after finding out the library has some current movies. But they also have some oldie but goldie movies we hadn’t seen and are watching them now. We also find we do not spend as much time infront of the tube, my husband started to calculate the number of hours we spend just on the weekends wathing TV, figuring that into months and years of just our lives together, it is scarry. You work for the weekend and spend it infront of the TV. We are actually talking about throwing the thing out, it’s 12 years old and not working well anyway. Most news and important stuff can be found on the internet and we are considering classes and hobbies to fill the time.

]]> By: Kate http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69560 Kate Tue, 11 Sep 2007 11:42:56 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69560 I put my Netflix account on hold, printed out my queue, and went to my local library to see which of those movies they had in their collection. Turns out they have quite a few. I’ve been watching those for the last three months. My local library has free dvd borrowing, as does another nearby library. Another library not far away charges $1 per dvd for a week’s borrowing, except for educational dvd’s. Obviously, I’m using the two that offer free borrowing.

I found out recently, that my local library will also at least attempt to get me dvd’s through inter-library loan. I’ve gotten three dvd’s this way. They take a while to get them, but with a long queue courtesy of Netflix, I have plenty of stuff to choose from and am not in any hurry.

I haven’t yet decided whether or not to re-start my Netflix membership. I’m going to wait until I’ve seen or tried to get every movie from my queue that I can before I make that decision.

]]> By: Eric http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69413 Eric Tue, 11 Sep 2007 03:47:08 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69413 My wife and I did this earlier this year. We also called folks to negotiate lower rates than we were paying (on our TiVo and cable for instance), and signed up with a discount program we found after trying to find out how to reduce our Sprint bill (Sprint has a lot of discounts you might not know about until you look). Just becoming conscious of how we were spending money on our bills helped us clear out quit a bit of money each month that we didn’t need to spend.

]]> By: Empress Juju http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69400 Empress Juju Tue, 11 Sep 2007 03:12:09 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69400 I just did this recently!

It’s good for me to do with some regularity, because the little splurges creep in… and before you know it, there’s another group of things that are being paid for, but not used.

I’m constantly checking with the cell phone & cable companies to re-negotiate rates, and the things that seemed like such a good idea six months ago get taken for granted now…

Thanks for the reminders!

]]> By: Don Simkovich http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69394 Don Simkovich Tue, 11 Sep 2007 03:02:40 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69394 I’m going to mention your blog on my blog where I offer real life tips in business, money and real estate.

I’ve got some financial clutter as well and it’s so easy to procrastinate on it. This week, I was going to do some posts on money.

]]> By: Red http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69368 Red Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:33:40 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69368 And the electric bill.

]]> By: Red http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69367 Red Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:33:12 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69367 Forgot the gas bill. I knew there was another one…

]]> By: Red http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69365 Red Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:30:11 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69365 @Elaine, you answered your own question. Living in a house (even renting a house, which I do), produces a slough of bills.

Monthly bills include:
- Trash bill
- Water Bill
- Phone (Landline) Bill
- DSL Bill (separate from Phone in our case)
- Cell phone bill (Through a family plan, again separate)
- Rent
- Credit Card (Though I normally pay this weekly)

Non-monthly bills include Car Insurance, AAA, and renters insurance.

Unlike Elaine, I don’t have cable, so I saved a bill there.

These would definitely take me an hour to find and then go through.

]]> By: Elaine http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69356 Elaine Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:57:55 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69356 How many bills do people have that it takes an hour to go through them? I have a phone bill and a credit card bill. Utilities/internet/cable are all included in my rent.

]]> By: doug m http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69333 doug m Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:06:28 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69333 these are some good steps to eliminating bills that might not be necessary. good post!

]]> By: Pamela http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69332 Pamela Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:06:02 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69332 Great ideas. Here are a few further ideas on cutting down your monthly phone bill. I managed to trim about $20 off our monthly phone bill. We had the packaged local phone service that included voice mail and a couple other options – none of which we used. While surfing around the phone company’s web page, I discovered they had a basic local package – without the bells and whistles and for $15 less/month. I switched our long distance to a per-minute plan instead of an unlimited. I looked at our long-distance usage over the previous couple months, calculated what our montly charges would have been with each plan, and went with the one that cost us the least.

]]> By: Holli Jo http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69285 Holli Jo Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:55:55 +0000 http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/10/the-one-hour-project-cleanse-your-monthly-bills/#comment-69285 Trent — I love your One Hour Project suggestions. I’ve already tried a few of them and plan to work on more. They’re great! I liked them so much I linked to them from my blog.

Thanks for sharing such useful ideas for getting finances in order.

]]>