www.OnSavingMoney.com

Whew.... ever have one of the moments where you're not sure you can handle it?

2 months ago I received a letter that I knew would come. Our lease is up on Wednesday, (we've lived in CO for 1 year on Thursday!) and rent was going up. I looked at the numbers and they scared me, so I ignored it. Left it for "Future Brittney" to figure out (reference to HIMYM).  Well "Future Brittney" became "Present Brittney on Saturday when I actually did the math and realized our rent was going up $85!! That was 12%. We looked into it and the average for Colorado is 3.9%. So Saturday, Nick and I went in to talk with the management. But it was Saturday and Management doesn't work on Saturday's! Duh!!

Last week sometime, I started looking into other apartments, but we would have had to get something around $5-600/month to make the moving fee's worth it, and anything for that price is a dump. We started asking around to see if anyone from church/seminary knew of a basement apartment for around that much. We're still waiting to hear back about one possibility.

So I went into - how else can we save money mode. Well for month and maybe even year's I had been receiving flyers from Spring Arbor saying we'd get a discount on Car Insurance with Liberty Mutual if we got in on their group discount. I liked Statefarm and it's soo much work to call and switch insurance. You have to know your VIN #'s and your mileage, and admit to accidents and/or speeding tickets etc.  Too much work, but I put it off no longer. I switched and ended up saving $55/month!  It might be a bit less than that, once you figure I'm keeping my renter's insurance with State Farm, but still: MONEY SAVED!

So that brings us to today. I made an appointment to go in and talk to the Leasing Office Manager today on my lunch. I got there, said a quick prayer that my words would come out clearly and not sounding angry, that I would express my concern and my desire to continue living there, but that on 1 income, with 1 in a Grad school program, we really couldn't afford to pay $85 more per month. She was very pregnant and very understanding! She came down $60/month!!! Wow! I can handle that! Lesson Learned: Always go in to negotiate! If I could have afforded the increase and just paid it, I would have wasted a lot of money!

I still have plans to call and see about switching our internet company to save some money there too, but with that we'll have to pay the new-installation fee.... We may end up spending less overall this next year by the time I'm done with all these annoying changes!


Anyone know of any other ways to make cuts to save money??   

(We already don't pay for cable, our cars are both paid off)