Ways to Cut Your Monthly Bills #013

I think on this podcast we think of ourselves more of like jack of all trades when it comes to financial topics. Like we're not experts when it comes to real estate or investing, but we're pretty solid on those things and are things we care a lot about and we spend a lot of time thinking about and developing ourselves. And you know, we are real estate investors and so it's something we talk about. But but I don't I don't know that much about it, Like, yeah, stop asking

me questions, right, But we're not experts. So but just getting on this, I mean, I think if I were to call myself an expert on anything, I think cutting monthly bills would be pretty dang near the top. Yeah, man, that's totally in your wheelhouse. You're just really good at like knowing you know all the deals. You feel like you know a lot of the different providers. What. I don't know how you know this, but you kind of know like all the current deals that are out there.

Even just when it comes down to like local gas. Sometimes too, you're like, oh uh, someone says offering a thirty nine point nine sense the firm, Like, how do you know that? Dude? Like, well, Matt, the Public Service Commission releases something every month in the state of Georgia and they tell you who's got the best deal on natural gas? Do they really? Yeah, I can show you the apples to apples comparison. Okay, so that's literally something

I didn't know that. So you just get this report evidently. All right, So first we need to tell the listeners that, uh, we're having our first giveaway. Man. Yeah, I'm super stoked about this, and it's a really good one. It's gonna be super cool. Like it's not an empty bottle of booze that we finished up. It's a really good giveaway.

So if you will go to our Instagram page at Poor not Poor, we are giving away three months of service to Republic Wireless and a three hundred and fifty dollar credit towards a new Republic Wireless phone, which makes a lot of their phones completely free and if you want to get a really high end phone, it's a good discount. So three three months of service for free, a sweet phone, a swag bag, and a six pack of beer. Yeah, because we're poor not poor, we're gonna

throw in a six pack as well. We're very thankful to Republic Wireless for for hooking us up with this,

uh for this giveaway. Yep, so sweet giveaway. Uh. For more details on this giveaway and how to enter, go to our Instagram page follow us at Poor not Poor p O you r n O T p O O R. And that's a timely giveaway too, man, right, Yeah, I mean it's really fitting with with this episode because we're talking about ways to cut your monthly bills and Republic Wireless is one of like the cheapest possible cell phone providers to be with. So awesome giveaway, perfect episode to

do it on, and we're pumped. Yeah, speaking of so like a monthly billgual? How much how much TV do you think you guys watch? Like you and Emily. I mean, don't you guys watch TV together most of the time. Yeah, when we're watching TV, we're watching together. I would say, like, if we were to boil it down to how many hours a week of television do we watch? I would say probably an average of two hours is a week. Nice, That's that's what's gonna say. I was gonna se like

two to three. Yeah, probably two to three because three hours, you know, you can kind of that's like the length of a movie as well, So if you only like watch a movie once a week or something like that. I think we used to watch a lot more TV. I know we used to watch a lot more, but now, I mean, between kids and work and just honestly other things I just want to do other than just sit there, sit there on the couch. There's that article on Bigger

Pockets titled the Case for not Owning a TV. The average person in the United States watches five hours of television a day. Yeah. I don't know how the crap that's even possible. I mean, these are legitimates, though this is a reporter from Nielsen. That's the average five hours a day. Mind blowing that that is even humanly possible. Yeah, it's an average. So there's some people who are obviously certainly watching TV a lot more, which is even more

crazy for me. That sad is like right up there with one and three Americans eats fast food every day like that. That gets that kind of mind blowing stat that you're like, how is that possible? How is that a thing? Um? And that that almost everyone does this and it's terrible for your health, terrible for your eyes, terrible for your general motivation in life. And I will say this too, I'm really into like a good show

or a good movie. I used to be like a huge movie buff, and the movies have just gone downhill a lot in the past, you know, ten years. And maybe that's just like old man speak, but I think

old man Joel. Yeah, but I have found so many other joys in life, so many other good things to partake in, uh, and so many other things that I just like have to get done that I rarely watched TV, and it is it is really fun to get to see sit down and watch a good show every once in a while, like every time Stranger Things comes out on Netflix. But yeah, I just can't. I can't in good conscience dedicate much more than three hours a week

towards watching television. That being said, this episode is not all about TV, so let's move on to the beer. So Joel, do you want to tell the folks what we have today? I have in my hands, Matt weighing in at thirteen point seven from Kansas City, Missouri, Boulevard Brewing Company, Grand Crew, Barrel aged Ale, and I gotta say, Boulevard is one of those national craft brewers that's been around for a long time that is still making some

amazing stuff. And thank you to Boulevard because they donated this beer to the podcast, and they donated next week's beer to the podcast, so we're gonna be drinking Boulevard two weeks in a row. I don't know what I'm more excited about this one or the one next week, because next week's is one of my favorites. Next week's

is one of my favorite beers of all time. And uh and this it's a new iteration, so you and I've never tasted it, but we've had previous very similar but this I hadn't even heard of, man, So I am beyond stoked to to try something new, which is kind of my favorite beer is a new beer. Yeah, so Grand Crew usually it's like a Belgian thing and it usually means like the best, right, So they're putting out like their finest beer. It's this, it's this epic creation,

kind of the cream of the crop exactly. And so Boulevard describes their as it's literally a blend of two of their beers and the finest barrels of those beers. So it's selected lots of their bourbon barrel aged Quad and their whiskey barrel aged Imperial Stout. I'm already a huge fan of their bourbon barrel Quad and any Stout aged and whiskey barrels I like. So it's a really good quad. Yeah, dude, this is gonna be epic. Let's

pop the top. This is pouring a dark brown Joel. Actually, as you're pouring it, I thought I looked a little bit lighter, But then I look I see it in the glass and it's like pitch black. I can't see through it at all. But looked a little bit lighter as you're pouring it as it was coming out and almost had like a reddish quality to it. And I don't know what the temperature is like for you listeners

right now. But as we're recording this, this is when that's that last sort of cold snap is hitting the East coast. So having a dark, huge beer like this, it just feels so appropriate to me. Yeah, there's like a northeastern New York right now, So if I was in New York, this is what I'd also be drinking. For me, Man, having the weather sort of reflect what you're drinking something about that just seems right, agreed. So smells wonderful. It's got a nice head, it's got that

sweet barrel aged quality to it. Let's take a sip, Matt. I'm just gonna keep sitting here with my eyes closed as I hold my glass. Does it help you, like imagine in your mind all the flavors rushing through your mouth there were? I mean, yeah, it kind of it does. Man. I'm not distracted by your your mug in front of me.

This is a fantastic beer. I feel like I'm getting the quad coming through the most with kind of those notes of like raisin and fig a little bit of that whiskey barrel, and that the combo is of those two beers blended together is is just beautiful. Yeah, I'm tasting that that barrel. Definitely that quad, and the sweetness is kind of actually reminds me of like a little bit of banana. I feel like there's like almost like this sort of sweet fruit mixed in there with those

darker flavors. It kind of lifts it a little bit. So it's not that this isn't a really heavy, dark, like sticky beer. Yeah. For thirteen point seven and just kind of being this like beastly kind of concoction, you kind of assume that it's going to be a little heavy, like yeah, thick monsters, but this it drinks like real lively if it feels good. Yeah, it really does have like a really fun character to it for something that

is kind of a darker beer. It's got these like and I think that's really like the Quad and this combo coming through. It's got this kind of livelier a little bit fruity, but not not certainly not over overly fruity. It's just delicious, it really is. It's this is a great beer, so Grand Crew from from Boulevard to a limited release and it's dang tasty. I could picture myself drinking this like in a cabin next to a fire, you know, there's like snow falling outside, like if you're

on like a ski trip or something. Yeah, thanks again to Boulevard Brewing Company for for sending us those bottles. We appreciate it very much, and this is a delicious, delicious beer. All right, let's get into the topic at hand, ways to cut your monthly bills. Monthly bills add up, and we think that you could legitimately stand to save hundreds of dollars a month, possibly even enough to fully fund a wrath i RA And that contribution limit is a year, so you might be able to save that

much on monthly bills alone. And we're not talking car, we're not talking mortgage. Yeah, like the different utilities or the different monthly subscription services that you have. That's for the most part we're gonna be talking about today. So first off, we want to talk general stratgy g's and we've got a few general strategies to lay out for you, and then we'll get into kind of some of the

specific bills and how to tackle those in particular. General strategies, though, the first and easiest thing if you feel like you're overpaying on a monthly bill is to shop it with another provider and get multiple quotes. And we'll talk later about how that's not possible for some of these bills, but any bill that is possible to shop with other providers and get lots of quotes, that's gonna be the best way to to save money. Right, is essentially using

capitalism for what it is people competing for your business. Yeah, Joel, this is something that's relatively easy to do, but it's just something that kind of takes some mental work. Like it's it's it's it's almost emotional because you kind of

get locked into your ways. You're kind of used to paying a certain bill, and it's not that it's hard work to go find say a new gas provider or something like that, but it's just something kind of extra that you're just like, I don't really want to do that, but you could be saving a good bit of money every single month. That's true. That's the first step in general strategies is to shop with other providers. The second

actually read your credit card statements. That's really key, and I feel like a lot of people in this day and age don't go through line item of their credit card statements, and they're likely overpaying on a lot of things. And there's likely service subscriptions, Matt that they have like a monthly recurring charge that they don't even know about, and they're not gonna know about it because they're not

looking at their credit card statement, Yuel. That's one way that having a budget every month, where you're actually reconciling it and keeping track of your expenses, you're gonna know what those numbers are. And we've talked about why you need a budget in a previous episode and we still highly recommend it. I mean, if you don't know where your money is going, then you're not gonna know what steps to take in order to reduce your monthly expenses. Yeah,

technology can help us as we're tracking our bills. And there's this really cool service called ask trim dot com a s K t R I M dot com. I've never heard of that. Yeah, it's really cool and it's free and it's actually they will you log in you with your credit card information, kind of like you would into mint dot com, which we use I used for budgeting and I recommend it, uh and and terms kind of similar in which they log in and they kind of pour through your statement for you and they pop

up this list. Hey, here are all your recurring monthly charges. Do you want us to cancel any of these for you? They actually ask you that, and they can, on on many of them cancel it for you, so you don't even have to take the time out of your day. There's a couple like, for instance, let's say you signed up back in the day or something with yesterday, even with one of the credit bureau monthly services to get

your credit reporter score or something. And on a recent episode, we talked about how you can get your credit score and credit report for free, for free, completely free. So if that pops up on your ask Trim run through, you don't need that cancel it, right, And there's a lot of things like that. Maybe you didn't realize you're paying for Hulu and you only watch Netflix, and ask Trim says, you know what, what do you want to

cancel this? And so it's a really cool service that will essentially just pop up all your recurring monthly, uh monthly obligations and then give you the option to nip him in the bud. Nice I had no idea that that even existed. Man, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to check that out. Trim it up, dog, That should be their phrase, their catch phrase. I think trim it up. Yeah. Oh so Matt the next one on the list. So

number one, shop it with another provider. Number two, check your credit card statements or use a service like ask trim, which kind of does that for you. The third one you kind of disagreed with me on this. As we were putting the outline together, I said, don't use auto pay for some of those bills that are subject to change. Yeah. Well, auto pay for me is like a godsend, like dude, for me to not have to log in every month

and pay all my bills. I can't think of the number of hours that I would waste every month doing that. So there's some bills that I do manually pay or push money to. So yeah, do you not do auto pay on the majority of your bills? Yeah, So here's my philosophy. So anything that is sub to change month to month basis, I want to kind of feel the pain and and see, like if I said it on auto pay, I might forget to shop it or or

forget that it's gone up. And so I want to personally pay the bill every month because it reminds me what I'm paying for that thing and makes me think about whether I actually want to have that bill or not or I need to reshop it. So, for instance, I like to physically pay my water bill every month, not have it on a recurring payment, because I like to like go into city hall in person and write out a check my hand as well. Excuse me, who do I make this checkout? Too? Uh? Usually you like

to go that old school totally. Let let me write my carbon copy check as well. I put on my like Dick Tracy suit, you know, my Fedora hat, and I you know, and and roll up in your eighties seven niecean exactly. Well, no, you gotta do something even older than that. So, yeah, my month water bill strategy. I like to see it every month and acknowledge that I'm paying it. I usually fluctuate either between a sixty

three dollar bill or a seventy five dollar bill. It's only twelve dollars a month, but I'm, you know, kind of weird about it, and so every time I see it, if it's the seventy five amount, it kind of gives me that extra kick in the butt to shower less flush my toilet list and generally use less water. Yes. So it's almost like your own asked trim, where you're just kind of presenting the facts to yourself and kind of making yourself answer the question like was it worth it? Yeah?

And so like, for instance, I changed internet service providers and we'll get into this a little bit later in the show, but I decigned to sign up for gig service to kind of see how it was. Like it was it's like the new hit thing, and I was like, oh, it's gonna be so fast. You're not the biggest fan from what I collect. Well, it's it's fine, It's it's good, but it doesn't feel like it's better than my thirty dollar a month internet service that I had before. It

just doesn't feel like it's that much better. It's not worth fifty dollars a month, and so it angers me every month that I pay that I think about six dollars a year that I could put back in my pocket to do things with awesome things. The value that I'm getting for faster internet just isn't worth it to me. And so I think for me, not having auto pay on these bills that can fluctuate really helps me to make the decision every month, Hey do I want this

Because I'm actually physically paying this bill. I'm actually signing in to the website and clicking through to make this payment and doing that instead of just letting it be on autopilot. It has this like psychological and we talked about recently that you know, the psychological power of money. It has a psychological effect. It gives me the kick in the pants to make a change in my personal life and how I'm using that resource, or change providers or you know, call in just to see if I

can get a reduced bill amount. Nice man, Yeah, I see the advantage of doing that. And I think a lot of folks too would say, oh, fifty bucks, that's not that big of a deal. But sort of a quick math rule that's out there, I've seen a lot of people refer to it. But basically, if you take an amount that you're spending per month and multiply that by a hundred and seventy three, you know where you to take that same amount that you're not spending and

invest it. That amount compounded over the next ten years would equal you know that answer. So yeah, so you take that fifty bucks and you multiply it by hundred and seventy three, and we're that fifty dollars a month to be invested for the next ten years. Compounded, you'd end up with, you know, here on the calculator, eight thousand, six hundred fifty dollars. Whoa slow down, rain man. So I'm the calculator. That is a lot of money, man.

And so it's I think it's easy for we're so shortsighted, I guess, is what I'm trying to say a lot of times, and I know I'm this way and I think, oh, it's just a little you know, twenty bucks here, twenty bucks there, or whatever. But all this money adds up, and you're talking about making a change to go from a D to thirty, and we're talking about a larger amount of money than I think we even realize in

the end. Yeah, I think it's easy to kind of rationalize away the small amounts that we spend a month on a certain service or uh you know something that maybe we're not even using, like a gym membership or whatever whatever it may be, that uh, well, it's twenty or thirty bucks, it's forty bucks here, it's fifty bucks here, and for me that that that fifty bucks a month. I mean that's meaningful because, like like you said, you

know the way it impacts you over time. Fifty bucks for one month, right, is not very much, but fifty bucks compounded over ten year, but yeah, and then it invested and compounded, Yeah, it makes a huge difference. And so you need to kind of change your mindset to thinking about it as opposed to just that twenty or fifty dollars for that one month. Well, that adds up to multiple months, and then over those months you could have done something else with that money, and it adds

up to this like outrageous amount at the end. And so we'll put a link on the show notes to the rule of one seventy three because that's really helpful when extrapolighting some of these bills that you're overpaying on. So, yeah, but just to recap that, that rule of one seventy three, you take whatever your monthly payment is for a certain bill,

multiply that by one seventy three. That gives you were you to take that amount and invest it for the next ten years as opposed to continuing to pay the bill, and then you don't have any money. Yeah, you don't have that. You know that at the end of ten years. The next general strategy to cut down on your monthly bills is to make use of customer service and particularly the customer retention department. Uh And so I think people in general don't know this. They're talking to maybe a

general customer service person on the phone. And there's really a couple of ways to get through if you want to negotiate what you're paying every month and uh, and there's ways to do it and talking to someone in the actual customer retention department or lots of times the customer service people through Twitter. Twitter is like an amazing

place for customer service and negotiating your bill. I've gotten bills lowered, monthly bills lowered, credits added to my account just by reaching out the companies on Twitter and sliding into their d m s and it works. Some wonders that sliding into the d MS man get to that discount exactly. So check out the customer retention department or a company's customer service department on Twitter on social media.

That goes a long way. That's actually so much better than just calling their one number and The main thing that you need to know going into that conversation is what their competitors offering, Because if you really want to stay with the company you're with, let's say for internet service, you want to make sure you know what their competitors offering and say, I've been a faithful customer for this many years and if you will give me a deal

that matches what they're offering to their new customers, I'll stay stay. But if not, I'm walking. Yeah, And that's that's I mean, that's the biggest thing, Like you need to be able to because sometimes they're gonna call your bluff. If they don't have a deal going on, or if they're not authorized to to kind of match the current deals that are out there, they're not going to give you a deal. And so you need to be able to literally say, all right, well, I'm just gonna go

ahead and go with the other company. You have the power to walk away, and you need to be willing to walk away if you're if you're wanting to get that that actual deal. Yeah. Almost every time I have used this tactic, it has worked. And there are a couple of times that they have called my bluff and I've had to walk away because I'm just not willing to pay the price. But you have to be willing

to make the switch. And I will say, it's kind of pain in the butt, but I was gonna say in those instances, I'm kind of like, oh, man, I was really hoping they would just lower it. But maybe you'll get something. And in most cases you do like you will get a deal. But it's just kind of like, all right, well, I gotta call those guys that get you know, set up my account. But yeah, because most of the time, I'll be honest, that's what I want.

I just want them to lower the price so I don't have to set up a new account with some other company. But you know what, in the end, if if I'm not willing to pay, you know what the new rate is, you need to be willing to walk. So those are strategies that, yeah, you can use for most any monthly bill that's out there, not all of them,

but a lot of them. You can use. The strategies we're gonna now talk about, uh some approaches that you can take for specific bills um and a lot of these actual categories we got from our our listeners and members on our Facebook group. Yeah, so if you're interested, please join. It's a really fun community. People asking really good questions and a lot of good interaction. You get a lot of good info. To you, man, I'm glad that we have a lot of informed listeners that are

helping each other out. That's the best. Just go to Facebook and type in how to money and you'll find our group. Join in. It's a lot of fun, alright. So my favorite bill to talk about that that people a lot of people struggle with overpaying on is their cell phone bill. And the easiest way to save on

yourself phone bill is to use less data. Using less data every month means a smaller bill, It means you can shop with a bunch of different providers if you don't need the unlimited And by the way, most people use two and a half gigs of data or less every month, so you don't really need that unlimited data. Even though it feels like this like cocoon that you enter into that it feels nice and warm and soft, you don't need unlimited data, the warm, soft cocoon of

data of data data. Most people ninety percent of the time have access to WiFi because of the time you are at home or you are at work, and if you can be on a WiFi signal wherever you are, you can drastically cut down on the amount of data you're using. And uh that helps a lot. That cuts

down on your your usage. And you can sign up for a plan like something from Republic Wireless that is fifteen dollars a month for unlimited talking text and then five dollars additional per gig of data that you need. Another approach I was gonna mention too, is consider going on a family plan. Now they're calling the family and friends plan, but all of the major cellphone carriers out there offer them now, and they're a great way to be able to basically group together, going with a group

of folks and get your costs down. That's right, and that's what we do. Yes, we have nine people on one plan. Oh what happened? I thought we had ten? We did poor Cebo. He left us, he got married and he flew the coop. Got it? So yeah, and I think, yeah, there's some great family plans out there. I'll name just a few that you should strongly can sitter if you're looking for you know, four or five plus people to be a part of your cell phone plan.

It's a good way to do it. So yeah, like we said, Matt and I were on the same plan and we cash you every month via the cash app and for us per individual, it's like fifty or something like that a person. Yeah, a month and before which you cannot beat. Right in a while ago, like we even had a better deal. Uh, it was like even, So yeah, we just hop on the deal and at this point it would were still got a pretty good deal.

So we stick around. So if you're looking for a family plan and you've got you know, four or five people that could be on one, metro PCs has an awesome plan for four people at a hundred dollars a month. Sprint has a great plan for people five people to be on a plan for a hundred dollars a month.

And the best deal out there right now also comes from Sprint, And if you're switching from another provider, most people are eligible for a whole free year of service from Sprint if you're switched from another provider, So they're specifically aiming for Verizon customers with their promotion, but even if with your with somebody else, you can likely get the deal, and uh that could be up to like nineteen hundred dollars in free cell phone service for a year.

So uh so check that out. We'll put a link to that on our site as well. Yeah, and this kind of goes back to some of the general strategies as well. But a lot of you might be thinking, oh, Sprint sucks. The reason I went to Verizon is because Sprint was so terrible. Shop around, man, look at the coverage maps, because that's something that is constantly expanding. The different providers out there are are always improving their coverage.

And there may have been as part of town where you never got coverage and that's maybe where you worked or something like that, and you know that wasn't it was kind of a non negotiable for you. Check it out. That's something that definitely, uh may have improved since the last time you you've you checked. Yeah, and someone specifically on the Facebook group mentioned that they had Verizon service,

and Verizon is definitely the most expensive. So if you need to have Verizon service, if you feel like if you live in a more rural area or you feel like you travel a lot, and Rizon just has the best coverage for you. And and it's true they do have the best coverage, but most of the time it's pretty unnoticeable. If you are traveling often or going to rural areas, you might find yourself needing Verizon service. And

there are a couple options for you. I would say to check out if you have Comcast Home Internet, check out Exfinity Mobile. You can get unlimited talking text and a gig of data for twelve dollars a month. So the bummer with that is you have to buy a phone from them, whereas like with Republic Wireless, who we mentioned earlier, you can bring your own phone or get

a really cheap phone. Exfinity doesn't have a great selection, but you drastically cut what you're paying every month, and that's one of the best deals out there right now. Another option is Total Wireless. They also run on Verizon's network and they've got some really great deals over there too, so you can check out their offerings at total Wireless

dot com. If you're a Verizon person and you don't want to let them go, that's the really the only way to save a bunch of money and stay on their network edel And you mentioned, I mean, all these are companies. But I mean, we'll go ahead and say too that we would never recommend a company or a

product that we wouldn't use ourselves. So we're currently with Sprint because they've got that sweet ten person family plan, right, But these other plans that are that we're talking about, like Republic and Total Wireless, these are also great plans that we would absolutely recommend and use ourselves were we not with another carrier already. Yeah, it just depends on your needs. And if you're like a single individual and you have Comcast Home Internet, I think Exfinity Mobile is

a great choice. If you're a single individual and you don't, I think Republic Wireless is probably the best choice. If you are a family and you're okay having Sprint service, I think Sprint is probably the best choice. And like we said, you know, verizing customers, like, I think that there's just it's really down to the individual and what you need. But there are so many good options that

save you money over a lot of the traditional carriers. Yeah, I guess I just I wanted to miss that to you because I didn't want people to think that we're just pushing stuff that we wouldn't use ourselves. Or like we're getting paid for it or something like that. We're not getting paid. We're just trying to get you guys thinking outside of the Verizon box, which tends to be I feel like the default for a lot of folks. Yeah, no doubt, and the most expensive for a lot of folks.

All Right, So the next specific bill we need to talk about is internet. Internet. Uh So the first thing, skip the money saving triple play packages. Don't bundle home calling, internet and cable. By the way, who still has a homeland line? So the really the internet thing is a harder one to shop. Like in the cell phone sphere that we were just talking about, there are dozens of players in the internet sphere. You likely have two choices. Really.

The way to do this is to watch for offers and then try to get price matching, and if they won't price match you kind of essentially ping pong back and forth every year to the turn it company that provides service where you live. And Matt, did you at one point tries cheering internet service with a neighbor to save money? Yeah? Man, I figured this is something worth mentioning because it seemed like a great idea at the time, but it wasn't such a grid. Uh, this is at

our old house, but a neighbor. Get this, they weren't even our next door neighbors, but they lived two houses over, and so we were trying to figure out a way to sort of boost kind of do an extender across our our neighbor's backyard. And we're like, I think it'll work. Yeah, it did not really work out. So well. Yeah, we tried it out for like a week maybe for just like a like a one week trial run. And in that one week period, we found that it constantly went

down and it wasn't really strong enough. And you know, in the evenings when we were both watching streaming TV, we saw that the speed drops significantly. So I don't even try. I guess our heart was in the right place where the like, we're gonna stick it to the man. But in the end, it just did not work. I love I love that you tried, though, that yeah we had to try. That's very poor, not poorish of you

to at least give it the old college try. So. I think the other thing too, on saving money on your internet service is knowing about the customer retention department that we talked about earlier, and then also knowing about the customer service on Twitter being the best, especially for some of those bigger cable and uh telephone company operations. So use those things to your advantage when you're shopping your internet, although it's kind of a difficult one because

you've got fewer competitors in the arena. Yeah. Man, on that note, our internet service has definitely creeped up over the past few months. That's because you're on auto pay, fool. I mean, yeah, I'm on auto pay, and but I still want to have Internet. I just haven't gotten around to, uh the shopping it. I haven't seen what the other big internet provider his offering at the moment, and we're just busy right now. So I met me none like

you said. Yeah, that might be one on side to it, because if I was forced to manually go in there and do it myself, I may have taken that time instead to go ahead and shop it instead. Is just getting paid every month, and I know that they're kind of sticking it to me because I got a great

deal the first twenty four months. Actually I was. I was able to get them to extend the first twelve months expired, and I called them up and did the whole tough guy, I'm gonna walk approach and I was going to and they, you know, they extend it for another twelve months. But now they're they're they're kind of exacting their revenge on me. A few months have been like sky high and I'm I'm just too too busy at the moment to take the time and shop it around,

which I need to do. All right, your homework for the next week, customer retention and Twitter use them, all right, so that the next major specific bill you need to tackle is your cable bill. And by tackle you mean just get rid of it completely, right, axit, Yeah, just obliterate it, please. I think a lot of folks have cable still because they let's go back to what you talked about before, like the triple play, the landline, the

cell phone, and the internet service. I think a lot of people still have cable because it's just kind of bundled. They feel like they're getting a good deal, and really folks are getting roped into watching more TV because they have that that bundle where where cables included, and in reality, man, you do not need cable with a different sort of services that are out there. Let's just cut cable. Yeah, I mean, I think in having cable feels like having

a typewriter. There are so many good services if you want, like fifty channels in your life. I personally think that you should really strive to cut down and have a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu or something like that alone, Amazon Prime, whatever it may be. But essentially there are services like YouTube TV, like direct TV now, Hulu, Live TV, and Sling. They're all these players now that offer you from anywhere from twenty to forty a month, a lot

of what cable offers you. So you can slasher bill from a hundred and twenty five dollars to thirty five dollars just by switching to a different provider and getting your cable service over the internet as a is too

through a cable that that runs into your house. An argument I hear man is a lot of times folks are talking about a certain game or like certain sport that they're not not able to get except through cable, and man in those cases, I think what we would recommend to is to go over to a friend's house that has cable, which sounds kind of mouci but like make it a thing like show up with a six

pack and you guys can you can hang out. You can actually make it a social experience instead of just sitting there on your couch watching it, watching a game, or even like going to a bar. That's one of the things we love you and I let love about soccer is that there's such a sort of social aspect around it. And the most fun you have is obviously going to an actual match, but man, going to a bar that's playing the game, where there's a bunch of

bunch of friends there who are also into it. How much more fun is that than watching a game on cable at home by yourself, maybe with one other person. I yeah, I completely because it sounds very fun to me. Yeah. And I'd rather, you know, drop fifteen bucks on b years and hang out with some people and watch it with a crowd. And I don't think you have to be an extrovert to think this way. I think there's something really about the solitude of having cable and watching

it alone on your couch that just seems a little depressing. Yeah. And if you are a die hard sports nut and you're like, no way not cutting it out of my life, not gonna happen. There there are a few options and uh sling, Like I mentioned, YouTube TV, direct TV. Now, some of these guys offer different packages starting at the in the twenty dollar a month range, and you get some of those sports included with that. So consider alternate

ways of getting your sports in the home. And let's say you're paying twenty dollars a month for one of those sling packages so that you can watch college football on ESPN, whatever it is that you're into. You're getting that channel that you want, but you're paying a lot less for it, and then there's just fewer channels in general for you to peruse, and and you're just probably gonna watch a lot less TV where you're just wasting

your time, right, Yeah, exactly. And so now we got to talk about Matt the monthly stream mean subscriptions, because let's be honest, at this point, it's kind of gotten to a point where people have four or five there's a lot of them, right, like sign ups for monthly streaming, and it's just it's just too many streaming options at

that point too. Originally just Netflix than Hulu than Amazon, and then you start throwing sling some sports packages in there and HBO go, youve got a cobple together this content because you want a little bit of everything. Yeah, one of one of our listeners was talking about how she felt that by the end of it, she was just like, you know what, maybe just makes sense just to go with the actual the bundle package, because like it seems like I might be paying more with for

for all these different packages altogether. And that might be true, because if you're paying for every single small Alex Hart option that's out there, well, yeah, that's you know, that's that's a lot of money, a lot of subscriptions that you're signed up for. Yeah. The tough thing is like each streaming service kind of has their signature shows at this point, and so so you know, on Netflix they're

Stranger Things and how's the Call arts. Then on Hulu you want to watch The Path or The Handmaid's Tale. So I think you can rationalize, you know, I I gotta keep this because I love that show. I gotta keep this service because I love that show. And there's a couple of ways you can tackle it. First off, you can share streaming service passwords with your friends. What do you mean by that? Joel is like, a moral

issue there. So yeah, I will say this, there's a article that the Washington Post wrote that will put in our show notes that was really helpful and thinking through this. The terms of service for most of these companies, they're totally cool with you sharing passwords, and they they specifically set it up to where there are a maximum amount of devices allowed to stream like at once at once, and so you know, if you shared it with fifty

two friends, like they shut you down. But Matt, you and I we share Netflix, we share Amazon Prime, And if you read the Washington Post article, look at the terms of service from Amazon and from Netflix, we're not breaking any rules and it's actually perfectly okay. You know, underneath those terms. One easy way to save some money is to share it with a friend. Share your Netflix, you know by the middle tier Netflix package, share that

with a friend, split the costs. Yeah, I mean that's a big reason why they started, I mean the past couple of years they started rolling out multiple profiles, and so I think Netflix may have been the first, the first provider to do that, but then shortly after that, Hulu did the same thing because essentially what they realized were that like, oh okay, well, folks want kind of their own little profile to be able to watch the shows that that they watch without kind of screwing up

the recommended shows or whatever else that they kind of have going on or or marking it as as as watched. But yeah, all that is is going in the direction of the fact that they know that folks are are sharing, whether it be within a family or close friends, and and that's a huge way to save as well. And one of the way you can save is by when your favorite show comes out, join the streaming service for a month, binge your show, and then ditch the streaming service.

I think we just kind of start paying it every month, and then you know, maybe we're sticking around Netflix or Hulu for one show that we love, and so, you know what, sign up for a month and then ditch it and be done. And then next time you know, your favorite show comes around, sign up for the streaming service again. There's like a lot of outside the box

ways to tackle this streaming service issue. But there is a good chance that you have at this point accrued too many streaming services and you're overpaying and you're really not getting enough usage out of all of them. And so you really need to consider kicking a couple to

the curb. I feel like that the as trim, Like I haven't even used it yet, but I feel like that's this is where a site like that would come in handy, where it's just like reminding you that, like, you know, just kind of prodding you, saying, hey, are you sure you want to kind of keep this around, because even just thinking about it right now, I'm thinking of like, is there something like have I watched shows

on Hulu recently? Like we pay for Hulu Plus and I'm kind of like, man, we haven't even freaking crack that app open in the past couple of weeks and only and I we're just talking about that because that's really biel do we share? And we were like, man, we never maybe we should go cut that um. But hopefully by the end of this episode two. That's what

we're kind of wanting you guys to think. We want you to think through that, like, what are some things that we're just used to paying we're not really taking advantage of it. It's maybe a bill that's kind of gone up in recent months and maybe we're just too busy or too you know, I'll be honest, Like, I'll say that I've been too lazy to to shop around and that's just kind of where we are with it.

And you know, I'm paying an extra twenty bucks because of that, because I just haven't really gotten around to it. And hopefully this will be a good kick in the pants for me as well to to be able to pull some of my bills down because I know I need to. So when it comes to cable, cut the cord, moved to streaming. When it comes to streaming, you know,

cut a couple of those you just keep cutting. You ultimately just need less television in your life in general, and consider sharing that streaming service with a friend because if you're having your costs as well as cutting in half how many streaming services you subscribe to, you're gonna drastically reduce your bills. Cool man, So you want to talk now about just like some of the household utilities,

you know, like so power, water and like gas. Yeah, let's do it all right, So, and it will acknowledge right now that they're in that these are can be different in different parts of the country. For instance, where we live in Georgia, we have deregulated natural gas and so we have providers that can market to us and provide different rates, and that's not the case in every state.

So where we live, that's something that we shop. Electricity is something that we can't shop that that we essentially just have a flat rate that we pay per killer watt hour used, and so the only thing we can do is drop our usage. And in the same with water, the same thing with the water we don't really have. We can't like shop our water with the next water provider because guess what, there's only one city of Atlanta water, right, So most of these things in most states, that's typically

your option. Yeah, that's the case. It's literally just talking about usage and how much water, how much gas, how much electricity you are actual using. Yeah, so specifically with water. I know, Joel, you like to uh if it's yellow, let it mellow. Oh dude, heck yeah. I'm all about the yellow let it mellow rule, and I think it's underutilized.

I think the hardest part about the yellow let it mellow is training my kids to do it, because I feel bad because like when they go to the school, they're probably not flushing the toilet after the U said their teachers are like one of these gross kids learning at home. Man, they're just like leaving everything everywhere. But I think it's becoming a little more societally acceptable. We're not cheap, we're just hippies. I think considering that rule,

considering not flushing after up is worthwhile. Also consider you know, there's water saving like shower heads that you can use. There's this really cool one that will link to that you can buy on Amazon. It's like and you can click a button that pauses the will flow of water, like let's say, while you're lathering up, you know what, be cold for a minute while you're lathering up, and then click it back on, and you're just kind of saving a little bit of water, a little bit of

money here and there when you do that. So there's a lot of options for saving money when it comes to water low flow toilets. Consider like maybe not watering your lawn because it costs a lot of money to keep your grass green. Maybe consider some alternate landscaping options. These are more sort of behavioral things, like there's not like techniques necessarily that where you can talk to a customer retention department and get them to you know, lower

your costs. This is gonna come down more to you and maybe just challenge yourself to to try some things that you're not used to doing, maybe like skipping a shower, you know, every other day in the winter, you know, when you're not getting hot and sweaty, your skin is already dry anyway. Like that's one of my big pet peeves. Man.

People shower like every day and they like use other soaps and they dry out their skin and they're like, oh, my skins so dry, and then they get lotion which they pay for and then they just pump all the so lotion on their skin. If you just showered less, then you wouldn't need the lotion, you know. Think about it food for thought, dude, it's totally free for thought. Like that's that's what you're watching off. Like when you get in the shower, you're washing off like the natural

oils and your skin. That's true. No, that's totally true. All my college friends are gonna be like, yeah, dude, I remember when you didn't wash your hair for like a month in college, And to that, I'll say, yeah, that probably wouldn't right. I shouldn't have done that. Sorry about that, friends, But literally I mean, I think people do we live We live in such a sort of sterile like hand sanitizer world where everything has to be

perfectly clean. I'm not a hippie, but you know what, like literally in the winter else I'll skip a shower every couple of days or so. And in the end that you know that affects our water bills some Yeah, and quickly I want to mention a couple of other monthly bills and I'm not going to go into the specifics on them, but just that you should be aware of. And one of them is your home alarm. If you have home alarm monitoring, try a service like simply Safe

or do what we do. We bought something on Amazon that's essentially just a noisemaker that you turn. We turn on at night before we go to bed, and if someone were to mess with the door, the alarm would go off. And it was like of teen twelve dollar or something like that. Uh, No, monthly service, zero monitoring costs, zero monitoring costs. And don't get me started on why monthly home alarm monitoring is. It's it's like diamonds being sold to you essentially keep your family safe. Hey, don't

get me started on that. It pisces me off. So another thing is your quarterly pest control treatments and those are incredibly expensive and it mostly is due to the labor of someone coming out to spray your home for for pests. And so we have an article on our website Poor not poor dot com. You can check it out and I walk you through kind of how to treat your home on a on your own quarterly basis and save hundreds of dollars a year. Edel And I'll say that that same chemical, uh, I mean, you can

use that for like aunt control cockroaches. But that's the same stuff that some of the local guys in our

neighborhood used to spray for mosquitoes. Yeah, we had a listener that mentioned in the Facebook group to talking about how they hated sprain from is because we have MS gets really pretty pretty badly down here in the South and to pay a huge feet on a monthly basis in the summer here for that, but that it's the same stuff, because I like, I literally asked him, I was just like, hey, what you know, like what do you use And he was totally friendly and was just yeah,

we just like use this stuff, and I was just like, oh my gosh, I've got that. I've got that same bottle in my basement that I used to spray around my house. Yeah, that's what's called. They have the equipment to be able to kind of missed it, you know, they got they have it hooked up to their blower or whatever. But you start looking around and kind of asking around and doing a little bit of research, and you'd be surprised at how much of the stuff that

you can do yourself for much much cheaper. Yea, So we're literally using the chemical that the pros use when they come to your house to spray, and they're charging you four dollars a year, and you cut out that person and you buy the product yourself, and you're saving I think, you know, we boiled it down in in the post, but yeah, what was the math a year? Yeah, like literally, you're spending I think under ten bucks a year time, so I won seventy three. How much are

you saving over ten years? It's incredible, it really is. And so a couple of other things I just have to mention really quickly. If you're paying a fee for having a banking account, you really need to change banks, because you should be having a free checking and savings account, your insurance. We have a post on poor not poor about that. Gym memberships, audio memberships, dollar shape club newspapers.

There's all these memberships that you might be paying for in a service like ask trim dot com can help you out, or you looking at your own credit card bill by yourself can easily do these things as well. Make sure that you are not paying too much on a monthly basis or subscribing to something that you really

don't use or really don't need. Yes, Joel Man, So, I feel like that's like our final, our final sort of strategy approach, which is like consider whether or not this is something you even need in your life at all. We live in a world where there's so many options that are presented to us, and like we want to be able to have access to everything all the time. In reality, is it really necessary? Are you actually going to do those things? Are you actually going to go

to the gym instead? And maybe you should just go for a walk or go for a run or or there's just different things that we think we need and we might do them for a little bit. We get used to paying the bill and that we don't continue to do whatever it is that they're offering. And those are the things that we want to cut. If there's something that you do that you love doing every month, man,

keep it up. Like there's there's certain things that we pay for every month that's worth every single penny, and we would never cut those things. My eleven dollar Netflix bill that we split is completely worth it. They're worth it. Are so many good shows on there that from time to time I get around to watching, and my water bill is completely worth it. I'm not going to cut that. Yeah, there's certain things that we don't have control over whether or not we have, but we do have control over

how we use those utilities. So we just want you guys to consider some of these things and hopefully you'll be able to sort of reduce your monthly bills. All right, mat So back to the beer. What's your take on Boulevard Brewing Company Grand Crew Barrel aged Ale. Dude, this is a solid beer. I feel like it's got like a nice sort of chewy flavor to it, you know

what I'm saying. It's got like that sort of brown chewy. Yeah, brown chewies tastes like Brown's Brown Chewies Brown Chews with us being a bigger beer, I can feel it a little bit. And again, if you want to hear what we sound like drunk, listen to us in half beed. Yeah, grab your phone right now, switch it from times one two uh half speed and it'll sound awesome. No, man, I think this is a really fantastic beer. I don't

drink a lot of quads anymore. I feel like it's been I mean literally, it's probably been close to a year at least since I've had a quad. And it's just a fantastic style on. I need more quads in my life. Yeah, and I think a quad is like a perfect winter beer. Uh. A quad, by the way, traditionally a Belgian beer, and it's usually higher a BV, thicker, darker beer. Uh. And it usually has like kind of raisin fig fruit notes in it at the same time. And this is a blend of quad and with key

barrel aged Imperial stout, it's truly delicious. Thanks to Bulevard again for sending this over. We really dig it all. R Joe. Let's do a quick recap. Let's talk about some of the quickly ways to cut your monthly bills. So first, you need to remember that your monthly bills

add up. And if you if you're not thinking about the rule of one seventy three that Matt mentioned, you're not thinking about how these bills actually, over time decrease your net worth and you're wasting money every month, then that's really the impetus behind cutting your monthly bills. You might think they're small bills, but over time they're meaningful to your bottom line. So first, let's talk about some of the general strategies, and this should apply to most

all bills that are out there. So the first thing shop it. You don't want to be a loyal customer to like your insurance company or to utility. You might want to be a loyal customer to like a local store or like restaurant that you visit, but loyalty does not pay off when it comes to utilities. You'll see your rates continue to climb. And actually read your credit card statements. Most people they get the email or they get it in the mail and they don't open it.

Read your credit card statements go through a line by line. You'll know where your money is going every month and whether you're spending too much on a service that you don't value, or money on a service that you don't care for at all. And on that note, use a service like ask trim dot com. Uh, it's really cool and it's free and can just kind of notify you of some things that you need to cancel, and you know what, they'll actually help you cancel it so that

you don't have to do that hard work yourself. And also another strategy is to get to know the customer retention department. Ultimately, you need to be willing to walk out the door, know what the competitors are offering and get them to price match. And if they're not willing to meet you there and match that, you need to be willing to hop over to the other provider. And the final thing, consider just getting rid of it. Drop that bill, whether it's cable or some of your monthly

streaming services. You've got too many. You kind of gotten into that trend where you've got five six monthly streaming pervioces is that you're paying for. Consider cutting it out altogether or at minimum splitting it with a friend. Because really, going back to the beginning of the show, we want you and we want ourselves to watch less TV in general, it's just a waste of your time and man, and also there's not just an easy sort of answer. Like

a lot of these things. You can, yeah, you can make a phone call, you can kind of ask around, shop around. But ultimately, if you're looking to reduce your monthly bills, a lot of it is is based on your behavior and sort of having the discipline to say no to certain things and to cut certain things out of your life, and ultimately you're going to see the most difference in making those kind of changes in your life.

So thanks for listening. If you like this show, please review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It really means a lot. Thank you for subscribing and listening and being a part of this awesome community. We're having a lot of fun. Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out. No