April Increase Your Expenses? Here’s One Thing You Can Do To Reduce Them

Dear Fellow Financial Freedom Seeker, 

Last month my: 

🏡 Property tax went up by 5%

💡 Energy bills went up by 6.7%

📱 Mobile phone contract went up by 12% 

🔗 Internet cost went up 10% 

🚰 Water rates went up 19%

April is notoriously the month of increasing bills. 

Some of these are hard to avoid like property taxes and water rates as you would need to move home to reduce these. 

But others are not as hard to reduce as you might think. 

Your One Simple Step this week is to 

Negotiate on just one bill 

Especially when it comes to mobile phone providers, internet providers, insurers and many Saas subscriptions, there is lots of competition in the market with providers wanting as much market shares (customers) as possible. 

This means that they are more open to negotiation to keep you as a customer. 

Sure, when your contract is up for renewal they might give you a standard quote, but that doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate on it. 

In fact, most providers will give you a higher quote than they’re willing to accept because most people wouldn’t challenge it, they’d just accept it. So the service provider makes more money by quoting a higher price. 

However, if you negotiate often they will reduce their pricing. 

The other week my neighbour had a quote for buildings insurance renewal. We have very specific buildings insurance requirements under our leasehold which seems to only be fulfilled by one insurance provider so we can’t even threaten to leave them. Yet my neighbour simply asked if they could give her a better price than the one they initially proposed, and they reduced her insurance renewal by £20. She didn’t have to threaten to leave, she didn’t have to research competing prices - all she had to do was ask! 

Watch this for more tips on how to negotiate your bills so you can reduce them. 

Have you ever managed to negotiate on a bill and get it reduced? 

Til next week, 

Pernia | Your Finance Travel Buddy