Recently I was talking to a person who was complaining about her cell phone bill and she mentioned that she was forced to change carriers. Reason being was that apparently since she was using a smaller provider, many times people could not reach her as a result of the smaller network reach and so she was forced to change.
Now she used the phone a lot due to the nature of her work. Everything from constant phone calls to text messages. However, when she told me that her bill was approximately $600 each month I was just shocked. She explained that she literally signed up for as much discount plans too that the company offered. Example, pay $5/month for unlimited evenings. To make things worst, she couldn’t exactly write it off as an expense either.
The interesting observation I had was that while she was obviously displeased about the amount, she basically surrendered to it as she needs a cell phone for her line of work. Afterwards, I told her about the plan I was on and she was shocked as I got a lot of similar features as her (We are on the same network) and my base plan is about 1/8th the cost of her base plan.
I noticed too where so many people have that same mentality and are not as aggressive in trying to find the best prices when it comes to bills that are deemed as necessities. Example, when the gas/electricity bill comes it’s just one of those “Well, I have to pay that†type of scenarios where one doesn’t look into ways to save money such as seeing if there are different packages/options available.
I was just doing some quick math in my head and at $600/month that is about $7200/year. That’s one way to motivate yourself in trying to find better deals too for necessity bills is to add up the yearly total. Like with this case, if she just signed up for a similar plan that I was on at minimum she would save at least $1000 a year. I’m sure that figure would motivate a lot of people to do something about it.