Lowering Bills

I’ve taken a couple steps to lower some of our bills. It’s just getting out of hand.

Yesterday I noticed that the APR on my Visa card had gone up to 22.24%. That infuriated me since I never pay late, have been with this card for over 12 years and use the card for all credit purchases in order to get the miles. So I called and asked that it be reduced. The woman on the phone was very nice and said that she would make it a 12% fixed rate instead of a revolving rate. It’s still high in my book, but better. I’ll be moving my current balance over to my Discover card since the 12% is not applicable to my current charges.

This morning I called Verizon to ask them to reduce our service. I had actually asked for the $15 service when I signed on with them originally, but it just never happened. We finally received the $50 credit from them for signing back up with the service, so upon paying the bill with the $50 credit I called and asked them to reduce our plan. We only use the phone for incoming calls for the most part, so now if we use it for regional or long distance we’ll pay out the ying-yang, but we really only use our cells for those types of calls since that’s “free”.

Which reminds me – the $300 rebate on our cellphones can be sent in next month. We had to wait six months from activation before submitting the rebate. I’m just waiting for March 1 to come around and that paperwork will go right in to get the $300 back.

I’m also thinking about reducing our Netflix plan to the cheaper one. We just haven’t been watching movies that quickly and it doesn’t make sense to have three a time when we only watch one a week nowadays, two if we’re lucky.