Slashing cable & phone

[cupcakeninja]

This is probably a commonly known trick, but if you have cable or a home phone call your cable and phone company and tell them you're paying too much. See if they're willing to cut you a lower cost deal. Often time they will lower your bill for x amount of months, or add more features to your existing plan. Just make sure you set a reminder for yourself to call them back to renegotiate the deal before it's over. We just did that with our cable bill and saved ourselves $360 a year in under 5 mins time with very little effort. I wrote about it in a bit more depth in my blog, but it really wasn't difficult at all. I think the thought of calling and asking for a rate reduction was more intimidating than anything else.

[couponsanta]

Thanks for the tip! I've thought about doing that. I have called in the past when I got an offer from a different company and they matched it for 3 months!

[Mickey by Matt Travel]

Ooma is the way to go for home phone service. For around $150, you buy a phone router (similar to vonage), but there is no monthly service fee. You get unlimited local and long distance calling. You can even keep your current phone number. The only thing you pay for is monthly taxes. My tax amount is about $3.50 a month. Even with Vonage's cheapest plan, I was paying $20 a month.