Living frugally without hardship: let's share actionable suggestions

While I am not trying to degrade you, do you really feel that $14/year is worth all of that time and effort? How much time, really, did it take between calls and online research?

How much time and effort do you think you saved?

I would put it at about an hour per year, which includes the need to call back if things aren’t working on the first call. Not huge, but it is a really annoying hour.

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But the premise was that my monthly rate went up $15 since I went off contract. So I did spend about 30 minutes in total but saved $17 a month on a 2 year contract which is $408 and well worth my 30 minutes of time.

The reason I posted was because I was surprised was that the first rep and the 2nd rep found different rates for me for the same exact service. I was not aware that FiOS did that, I guessed everyone saw the same rates in the system but the second guy was almost $10 less per month than the initial guy. I would have just taken the first guys offer if I had not seen what I thought was a better rate online (which turned out to not be true).

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We’re a family of DIYers where DH leads the way. We save thousands each year by doing a lot of home repairs/landscaping/doing our own taxes/change oil on all vehicles/etc.

We also save a lot on heating our home by splitting logs using our log splitter around this time of the year when it’s cool and stack them in our shed. We just do this once every two or three years depending on our wood consumption each winter. Our wood is free from a tree company that dumps them in our land (saves them fees to dump elsewhere) and all our excess someone buys them to re-sell by ricks and make some profits. Everyone wins!

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On top of many of the techniques already described, I am saving thousands through super simple things like:

1.) Purchasing vacations at charity fundraisers. Often, trips go for 60-70% less than I would pay through careful shopping. For an upcoming Disney trip–staying on Disney property–I have purchased airfare, 1-bedroom villa, tickets and extras at several charity auctions. My favorite charities made out and so did I. We take at least one trip per year that we get at steep discount from a charity auction.

2.) I also purchase gift cards and products at big discounts from the auctions at local charity events. Sometimes, I don’t even purchase an event ticket. Many charity events now have their auctions online so I bid from home and pickup items later.

3.) I’m still doing SYW games for free points. With a K-Mart nearby, I get $10-$14 per week for playing the games in my free time. I pay no out of pocket and purchase whatever makes sense each week or two using my free and surprise points.

4.) I grocery shop with a list prepared through the Coupon Mom site. The site combines store sales ads with coupons and cashback sites to rank products by money-makers through percentage saved. It matches coupons from circulars and online printables and makes putting together my list and coupons easy.

5.) I am making ~$120-150 per quarter cashback by using iBotta (with one teammate), Savings Star, Checkout 51 and Ebates.

6.) I do surveys for points that I redeem for giftcards. So far this year, I have redeemed points from surveys for $250 in gift cards and 1000 airline points that I needed to get to a free airline ticket to Europe.

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What survey site(s) are you using?

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E-Rewards. I don’t find I have time for more than one.

Thanks - haven’t checked that one out yet - will now.

Nice suggestions!

On the SYW games specifically, are there particular ones that offer the best return for the time invested? My father shops Kmart every week, and I’d gladly plump up the balance for him if doing so were sufficiently quick and painless. TIA

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By far, the bonus games make it worth it. Wild Win Wednesday is my best day of the week for winning. I have downloaded the app onto my iPhone and enabled push notifications. I get a notification when a bonus game is live and try to do as many as possible. In the XTRA games, anything with “points” in the title is usually a better bet so I play those first.

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Good info, TY! Now we’ll see how much longer Sears/KM is around–I’m wondering if this is their last quarter…

$0 for prepaid VZW ?

I can’t believe I never heard of this. What happens after you upload the bill and create your account? Do they call you to get your personal info or what?

Most of the personal info is on the bill. They do ask for whatever else is required by the particular company. For Comcast it is last 4 of SSN, which did give me some pause. But I did end up doing it anyway, and that was that. I got an acknowledgement email and then the follow up with the results 5 days later. I then had to pay them either through monthly payments or a one time payment.

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Did they call or email for the extra info? Thanks.

On the page where I submitted the bill, there was a box for extra info. On the page, it stated that Comcast asks for last 4 of SSN. It did not say what others asked for, but I presume they would have contacted me if they didn’t have what they needed.
There were precisely two times I had to do anything:

  1. Upload bill and give last 4 of SSN.
  2. Set up payment once they gave me the results.
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They say the take half of what they save you, that would seem to be $18*12=$216 how’d you get to $24?

I have found when I do the fight myself, I can get $20/month ($240/year). So using them instead of doing it myself cost me $240-$216=$24. But I am ok spending $24 to not deal with them myself. Hence living frugally (saving some money vs the do-nothing option) without hardship (not having to deal with them myself). :slight_smile:

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I about lost it, then I checked what it would cost. It comes with 100MB/month shared data, then each 1GB of data is $12. So, it would actually cost more for me than what I pay now.