Recession

Recession, thats a pretty bad word for most people. It means that people are losing jobs, losing their homes and generally not doing too well but sometimes necessity is the biggest motivator.

During the down time, those of us that can still think straight and keep our heads can really take advantage of that feeling of thrift that comes from watching and hearing about others all over the world losing everything. It really makes one appreciate what he has.

To the point, there are a great deal of websites out there that have tips and ways to save money, conserve energy and basically get things together just in case things turn for the worst in your life and you have to make some difficult choices.

The first thing I would do if I were me and living in a recession, and I think that I am, is I would get together all my bills and all my financial info and budget. Now some may be confused about what a budget is and how to use one. Its nothing fancy, really. A budget is an index of what your estimated spending is in what catagories of your life, including back budgeting to index what you have already spent in what areas. This means indexing how much your spending on cell phone bills, internet, fast food, etc.

Mint.com is where I turn to get my finances in order. (www.mint.com) One can add all their accounts into Mint and it will collect all the transaction data. Add as many financial institutions as you need and get all your info indexed. Mint will even alert you when a bill is due, or you are charged a finance fee. You can set up custom alerts, set up budgets that can be tracked and set up your own catagories for your spending as well as use the predefined spending catagories to keep track of where all your money is going. You can then see how all your spending compares to others in the City, State or Country.

After checking on where all my money is going, there were a few catagories that I felt I was spending too much in. The first was internet access. I was paying about $52 on cable internet. Well I called them up and, in a very polite manner simply told them I could not afford to pay for the service at the current rate, but I need the service for online schooling. I told them I get offers from other companies with similar data speeds but better rates and I even get promotional offers from them with better prices. They very politely told me they could not downgrade my service but could upgrade my service and put me on a promo rate for 9 months with a cheaper price. So never hesitate to call and nagotiate with a company you are paying for service.

The next thing I decided I wanted to cut out was my cell phone bill. I have been with ATT (formerly Cingular) for about 4 years or so and have been paying the same price since I got the plan. The plan has 2 phones with 700 shared minutes and rollover, and all the other perks such as Mobile to Mobile that ATT offers. I use one of the phones and my wife uses the other. After reviewing my bill, and my previous bills I realized that we are just wasting all these minutes. We have 5000 rollover minutes saved up with about 500 expiring each month. Our combined usage on average was 50 minutes total! So I decided to shop around for a better rate or better type of phone. I decided to go with a company called Tracfone. (www.tracfone.com)

The phones are prepaid so you only pay for minutes as you use them, the minutes rollover and texting is subtracted from the minutes at a rate of .3 minutes per text out and free to recieve (depending on the phone you purchase, most are .3 in and .3 out but I shopped only for the free to recieve phone models). To keep your phone active with the company you have to add service time to your phone that comes with adding minutes. The lower amount of minute cards add 90 days to your service end date, and the larger minute cards add 365 days to your service date. All this means is that if you run out of minutes and decide you dont want to buy any more for a while, the phone will stay active till the end of your service date and after that, tracfone will basically stop paying the service fees on that phone number and the number will be up for grabs for new accounts.

Tracfone minutes come in 60, 120, 400, etc. minute cards and they have a bunch of different bonuses such as “double minutes for the life of the phone” cards and bonus codes that can be used when purchasing minutes online to get extra minutes free with your purchase. So check your phone bill and see if you are wasting minutes! If you are, check out the different prepaid phone companies to see if they have what you need.

The last thing I will mention here ( I did half a dozen more things but this is getting lengthy) is I basically eased off the gas pedal. I drive about 15 miles to work and back each day and I was driving home for lunch each day as well. Thats 60 miles a day. I started bringing lunch from home and staying at work. On the drive I just set my cruise control at 65mph and stay in the slower lanes. I have been getting better gas mileage and need to visit the pump less, thus saving money.

Do a little research if you start to feel the pinch and see where you are spending too much. Chances are, this recession that everyone is dealing with could be your biggest help to get yourself out of debt and into a better life in the long run.