Saving Money

Currently I'm obsessed with saving money ;)  It's funny beause I used to be eager to spend spend spend.  Shopping and buying new things felt good.  Now I can't wait to have extra so I can put it into our savings account :)  So we cut back on some things like Direct TV.  We had a bigger package with more channels that we never watched and an HD package with select channels that was an extra $5 a month that we never ever watched!  WTH?! Who signed up for that?!?! sneaky.  Our contract with them is up in November so we will be canceling it then and just go with basic cable. So until we can cancel our contract, we're only paying for the bare minimum. Saving almost $20 there.

Our internet company decided to start charging us double what we were originally paying for internet saying our original price was a special and that special was over.  I called to complain and to get our rate back and the cust service rep said there was nothing she could do. LIARS.  So I proceeded to switch companies to get a cheaper price.  Well after calling to cancel my service with them suddenly they can do something for me!!  Really?!?! How interesting.  Why wait for your customers to get so upset they are going to cancel to give them a better rate when you could have done it in the first place and NOT made the customer angry? Seems pretty logical to me but what do I know? Anyway long story short I'm now getting our same speed internet for an even cheaper price we were paying before.  Saving about $5 a month there. 

Cell phone bill cut down by $20 by a wonderful sprint cust service rep that tried to give it to my Dad when called about his air card but he does not have Sprint phone service so he said give the discount to my daughter!  And Voila! 

Brinks Home security. System never calls them when an alarm goes of. Nothing but problems. Stupid.  Canceled.  Saving $43.99 a month AND receiving a refund from the past 3 months that our alarm system was not operating because they took down a tower in our area. (we had the wireless system because we don't have a land line). The alarm will still go off if someone trys to break in, and we have two dogs that will tear them up ;)

Now couponing is something I'm starting to get into.  My friend Janet is incredibly awesome at it and I'm hoping to be able to have one of her coupon parties at my house in Feb. Also she has a facebook page ( you can find the link here on my blog for that and her own blog) where she posts great tips on where to find coupons and great savings.  For example today I was able to purchase $145 worth of gift certificates to local restaurants for only $11.60!!  She shared a coupon code that gives 80% off!  http://www.restaurant.com/  They only have a few local restaurants that participate but we actually go to a couple of them so booyah!! 

Anyway we are doing more to save money too like not eat out as much and not buy frivolous things.  So I pray we continue to keep this up!  We're going to be almost completely debt free in just a couple months!  Only have my car and house payment as debt.  The rest....finito!!