A Few Bucks Saved

Our house is not worth what we owe on it anymore, in fact we owe about $50000 more than we could possibly sell it for right now. A few years ago it was worth $100000 more than what we owe on it, but, things happened and the housing market rightfully crashed and now houses are once again 'affordable' and are worth a more realistic amount. And since we have no plans to sell this house any time soon, it's not all bad that we'll have to ride it out and hope that eventually once again this house will be worth more than what we owe on it. Since housing values have plummeted, property taxes have also plummeted, which is bad for the State of California but good for us since we don't have to pay as much in property tax.

We have the type of mortgage where your property tax and homeowner's insurance bills become part of the mortgage payment and the dollars are put into an escrow account until said bills come due. Since the property tax bill was lower than estimated, our house payment has dropped by $27.00 each month. Not a huge earth shaking amount, but hey, $27.00 is $27.00, right? In our penny pinching lives, it's kind of a big deal.

I also finally took a good look at our phone bill yesterday and called to have some services that we really don't need canceled. Years ago I had gotten call waiting put on the phone because it rang a lot more back then and kids were at home and this was before cell phones were in everyone's hands and you kind of needed call waiting because someone was always on the phone and if you ever wanted to be able to get any of your phone calls, you really needed call waiting. And I kind of forgot call waiting was even on my phone plan and kind of forgot that I was paying for it each month. We don't use the phone that much and really don't need call waiting and while it's only $6.50 a month, hey, $6.50 is $6.50.

And what the heck is this WirePro for $7.00 a month? So that I don't have to pay for a service call if the phone wires in my house ever need repairing? Have I ever ever had anyone come to repair the phone wires in the all the years that I've had a phone? No! So, cancel that and save another $7.00 a month and now we're up to $13.50 saved.

Then, the person that I was talking to said that we could cut the basic rate for long distance by $1.00 and cut our internet fees by $5.00 so now we're talking, and we're up to $19.50 a month saved.

So, the $19.50 on the phone and the $27.00 on the house and we've got an extra $46.50 each month, which is $558.00 a year, which is not exactly chump change now is it?

Of course after all these savings that I discovered yesterday, we went over to Coco's for dinner and spent it all, but there was nothing in the house that even came close to sounding good, and after all that hard work of saving money I deserved a night out!