The tagline for this blog is ‘concrete ways to declutter your home and mind and get your shit together’. While I often focus on the ‘decluttering your home aspect’ in my posts, today I want to hone in on the ‘get your shit together’ part. Lately, I’ve been doing just that with my finances. As a stay at home mom, I find that one of the many valuable ways that I can contribute is to manage our financial life. While I have always been interested in personal finance and went so far as to overhaul our finances about 5 years ago, I sometimes forget to be on top of the little things that make a big impact over the long run. While I know it is savvy to call your phone carrier once a year to ensure you are getting the best bang for your buck, I often forget (or straight up forgo) to do this pesky task because, let’s face it, I don’t got time for that shit. Luckily, I recently was forced to make that call which made all of my savings dreams come true. Do I have your attention fellow nerds? If so, here is how it went down.

My daughter is 9 going on 10 and in the hopes of giving her more independence without my anxiety going through the roof, we decided to buy her a Gizmo watch. For anyone that isn’t familiar, this is a great tool for parents who want to be able to communicate with their child when they aren’t home but are not ready to give them a thousand dollar phone that would take over their still developing brains and friendships (Too harsh? Apparently I have a lot of opinions about this and need to dedicate my next blog post to this controversial subject). Anyway, with this watch, my daughter will be able to call and send pre-formatted texts to 10 parent-approved contacts. Yay! The watch itself was $105 and after taxes our monthly bill would increase by about $15. I don’t love the idea of spending an extra $180 a year but it is worth it for the peace of mind.

After adding the watch to my cart and preparing to check out, I noticed that my previous monthly bill of $121 was going to increase to $150 and I couldn’t figure out the reason for the $29 increase when it should be $15. I decided to put on my big girl pants and do the thing we all hate doing- I called my phone carrier to get to the bottom of this. Soon enough, I am on the phone with Jon from Verizon. He is also confused by the problem and takes some time to figure it out. Apparently the employee discount (my husband gets a discount from his employer and so we were able to get about $14 off our monthly bill with his discount) wasn’t going through but he assured me it would once we got to the final steps. My total bill moving forward would be about $136. Problem solved. High five Jon!

This is when things get exciting. My dear friend Jon told me that he thinks he could find a way to save me money by upgrading my account. Say what? Sounds like some scammy BS but he sounded trustworthy enough so I went with it. He said if I upgrade to the unlimited plan, he could apply a loyalty discount which would save us $40 (but we would no longer receive the employee discount) and bring our monthly bill down to $129. That is like getting this new watch line for just $8! At this point, Jon and I are BFFs and I am ready to see what he is up to this weekend. But there’s more! Before ending our call, Jon lets me know that if I sign up for paperless billing and change my payment option to debit, I will knock $20 off my bill. Jesus lord, the exhilaration continues! Fuck yeah I will do that Jon!

So by adding a $15 gizmo line to our shared data plan, upgrading our account to unlimited and changing our payments from credit card to debit, we went from paying $121 per month to $109. A $12 savings per month. That’s like two Starbucks lattes or one package of chicken breast at the grocery store (I know, I know.. weird example but I really needed to feel seen and heard about how expensive groceries have gotten). Hell yes. I thank Jon profusely and make sure to get his boss’s email address in hopes of getting him recognized for the extra effort he generously put into our call. Then I proceed to run around the house telling anyone that will listen about the nitty gritty details of my financial finesse and success. By making that one phone call, I saved $144 per year moving forward. Boom!

Have you had any financial wins recently, big or small? I would love to hear all the geeky details so please leave me a comment with every last detail.