Securing your Family Finances - Paring one Wasteful, Ill-Planned Bill

Securing your Family Finances - Paring one Wasteful, Ill-Planned Bill at a Time

It is the American way - being a consumer of the most cutting-edge products and services man has invented is, for many, the greatest pleasure of life. But you just wish that through all of this, you didn't have to deal with the uneasy anxiety all the time that it was always up to you to get a reasonable deal on everything you ever bought or subscribed to. Your cell phone plan, you've heard from friends, isn't a good deal anymore - there's a better plan you need to change to; and the same goes for your cable plan. You never really know with your financial choices - your checking account does not reward you as it should, your credit card may be robbing you blind; and isn't there something your friends say about calling the health insurance company and asking to raise your deductibles? If you wish that this constant nagging at the back of your mind that you aren't protecting your family finances the way you should, would just go away , there is no magic bullet - you'll just have to get around to doing it all one day.

But there is a substantial reward waiting for you if you could actually save thousands of dollars every year in unnecessary bills and poor returns on your investments. I actually got the incentive I needed to get going the day I realized that a free magazine trial that I had signed up for was really impossible to cancel and they just took $150 out of my bank account before I could do anything about it. I vowed to make up for the loss any way I could - my best shot was to finally get out my to-do list, and check off a bunch of items that day. I made back my $150 many times over that week. If you want to do a really good job of it, you can't put it off for a weekend when all the banks and customer service departments will be either off, or working at half capacity. You'll need to take a day off (or three) on a weekday, and really sink your teeth into that list. My family finances have never been in better condition - just change the payment method on one thing for a $20 savings, or look for a new frequent flyer plan that might give you a better deal, and there you have it. Here is how I went about my list.

Those cashback offers the credit cards have, make them out to be a great deal. Our K-Mart co-branded card offers cash back on our purchases, but they make you actually go down to Kmart ten miles away to pick up a $300 cashback check. I suspect lots of people don't actually go to the trouble, leaving the credit card company with some tidy pocket change. I also found out that we had other cashback rewards worth about $100 that we had to call Capital One and Chase for. In about a couple of hours, I had all three redeemed - either in my pocket, or on their way. To earn a few rewards with Verizon, I'd been trying to get them to actually put me down for payments by the Capital One credit card that I have statement credit for. Somehow, my requests never went through until I stayed on the phone with them and got them to really put my name down for the plan. Sometimes you just have to take extra time out to pursue the call centers to get something done. I'm wondering if all that will happen is that if I don't get enrolled in the program, I won't end up getting a bill in the mail either, that month, and I'll just end up missing a payment. You might secure your family finances by no more than $50 with this maneuver; but that's $600 a year, isn't it?

Insurance plan overhauls certainly took up a lot of my makeover day for my family finances. I figured that our home insurance plan that had been running ever since the day we got the house 12 years ago could be getting a bit long in the tooth. We have since bought lots of stuff around the house and done remodeling jobs. Surely we must be underinsured by now? I spent the better part of a Sunday walking about the house and jotting down everything we owned, and how much they cost. When we totaled it all up, it turned out that we were insured for only about half of what the house was really worth with everything it contained. And I also remembered that it would be a good idea to add a little in personal liability coverage; A mere $200 extra added to the insurance premium settled that. And of course with a list made out like this, should something happen and we lose everything in the house to a hurricane, we will know what to claim for with the insurance company.

That last one was an added cost, not really a saving. But you know, I could count that as savings, if the event we were insuring against, actually did happen.