Ever since we noticed our monthly food bills rising without good reason,since we heard more and more about the so-called ‘credit crunch’and the predicted downturn in the economy,we started thinking seriously about what options we had to make ourselves recession proof.
A brief look at our fixed monthly outgoings identified our rent,food,fuel,insurance premiums and phone bills as our biggest expenditure areas.
An extremely quick win was to have a short and pleasant chat with nice customer service people at our respective mobile phone providers to agree new (and lower) rates for fixed annual contracts (including a free brand new phone each despite my telling them that neither of us needed new handsets).
This is great news as it means a net monthly reduction of about £70 between us plus two swanky new Nokia handsets which we will immediately try to sell on eBay (it worked last time) without even taking them out of the boxes.
Put in real terms the results of these two short phone calls will cause us no hardship (we will still be able to make phone calls and send sms messages which are the only two functions we use on our phones despite them being apparently capabable of so much more) and will save us the equivalent of the approximate cost of twenty new pairs of jeans,ten pairs of good shoes,about forty take away meals,two thirds of a months rent or one week in the sun for the whole family.
Tremendous.
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Well done! What a good idea!
Was your contract due for renewal or did you manage to get a better deal mid-term?
We contacted them to find out when our contracts were due up and as they were due up in the next month they said they would put us on the new contracts immediatly.
Ah right. Still a way to go before I can do anything similar then.