The Bargaineering store is an auction based system that is is bidded and paid for by Bargaineering Bucks and not cash. How do you earn BBs? It’s quite simple. Just read Jim’s blog (I suggest the RSS feed) and put your mark on the stories by leaving a good comment. Each time you leave a comment, you’ll get one BB. Become a regular reader/contributor to Bargaineering and you’ll get a nice stack of bills to chase after these books. You can also win ING Direct referrals, which is the easiest money to get. Those links go like hot cakes on Jim’s site.

So Jim gets more readers and a variety of contributions to his site and you get the chance to win some free stuff. Word of warning – don’t spam his site. Odds are you’ll end up getting booted and lose your money. If you have something meaningful to say and contribute to the site then leave a comment.

I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between swine flu news and personal finance. When emergencies occur in both the medical and financial world, it pays to be prepared. Here are some ways to protect yourself from the h1n1 virus or swine flu:

• Wash your hands.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.
• Cough in your sleeve or tissue and dispose of immediately.
• If you do feel sick, seek medical attention and get help.

These four precautions and steps for swine flu avoidance are very similiar to handling your day to day budget. Here is my list of equilavent solutions to avoid a monetary swine flu:

• Know your spending. Just like washing your hands, you have keep track of where your money is going and what it is touching.
• Avoid excessive spending. Buying that $2.50 Coke at Bob’s Quick Stop is like picking your nose. Sure, it might feel good at the time but the feeling is short lasting and you end up with a booger on your pointer. Plan your spending wisely, just like plan on bringing some pocket wipes to help that booger habit.
• When you do have a cough or bump in your finances, make sure it does not spread into other areas. Confine your emergency to one area. Use your emergency fund (aka tissue) to stop the advancement of debt.
• If you find yourself financially sick – excessive debt, constantly borrowing, unable to pay for your basic needs, please seek help! Chances are that by yourself you can’t overcome this financial virus. Learn about financial planning, budget setting, and debt reduction from the experts.

The moral of the post is this – be cautious with your spending, prevent mistakes with budgeting, be prepared for emergencies, and if you do get the financial swine flu, get help.

Free Electric Bill Reductions: Simple steps you can do for free to reduce your electric bill

• Turn it off. This is the absolutely best power saver out there. There is absolutely no need to have your lights on all over the house. When you leave the room, turn the lights and other electrical items (TV, radio, curling irons) off. If you have a computer, shut it down instead of standby or hibernate. If you have a gas furnace or fireplace, blow out the pilot light during the spring and summer months.
• Unplug it. Lots of appliances and electric equipment still use “vampire power” which means they are sucking wattage even when not in use. Devices with power adapters are notorious for this. Toasters and coffee makers too. Don’t forget to do this when you go on vacation. If you don’t feel like having to plug and unplug, you can simply flip your breakers at your electric panel.
• Cold Power. Wash your clothes in cold water. I have always washed clothing in cold water, and I can honestly say I don’t know why you need to do otherwise. Your hot water heater costs a lot of money so save some of that energy cost and wash in cold water.
• Set the Mood. Your thermostat is a hot spot for high energy bills. adjust your temperature a few degrees higher in the summer and lower in the winter. This will lower your bill as far as heating and cooling costs. If you leave during the day, adjust accordingly. I wouldn’t turn it completely off as it will take much longer to reach your desired temperature. Not using a room? Close and cover their vents. This will force the air to the rooms you want.  Also, don’t block vents! Pull furniture and drapes away from vents to increase the efficiency of your heating/ac units.
• Window Dressing. Covering your windows will keep heat from entering and exiting your home. Your AC will run much longer if it has to battle the Sun. Also don’t forget to close your windows – I can still hear my Mom saying something about “cooling the world” when I left a window open.

Cheap Electric Bill Reductions: This are low cost ways to decrease your energy bill.

• Light Bulb Exchange. Sorry Thomas Edison, but incandescent light bulbs are so last millenium. Switch out your old bulbs, which lose most of their power to heat, to the new CFL bulbs. The price of CFL bulbs has dropped significantly and you can always find coupons and sales for them. CFLs use about 75% less energy and can last up to 10 times longer. One word of advice – I noticed that CFLs aren’t as bright to their equivalent, so you might want to buy a higher wattage. For example, switching out a 60W incandescent bulb for the 75W CFL equivalent. They have CFLs for everything, including flood lights, dimmers, 3-way, and even candelabra shaped for your chandalier.
• Jacket Required. Your hot water heater needs a jacket. This will reduce the amount of heat lost trying to keep your waiting water warm. Take the measurements and hit up your home improvement store. Not really an energy saver, but you should also consider buying insulation for your water pipes. Having a pipe bust is no picnic and can put a serious hamper on your emergency fund.
• Reaching for the Star. If you are in the market for new appliances or electrical equipment, make sure they are registered by Energy Star. These appliances are energy efficient and can have tremendous electrical savings associated with them. Heat pumps, tankless water heaters, washers, dryers, and so many more products are produced with energy efficiency. You can explore more of these products here.
• Replace your Filters. No catchy title here, just simply replace your AC and and furnace filters. If your vents have filters, replace them too.  You should do this at least every 3-6 months.
• Fan-tasize Your Home. Installing ceiling fans will help improve air flow. Stand alone fans work just as well. Use these instead of cranking the AC to cool off.
• Slow your Flow. Replace your showerheads and faucet aerators with low flow units to reduce hot water usage. This will also help keep your water bill lower.
• Strip. Replace weather stripping around your doors and windows. This will help with insulation and keep your heating/ac inside, not out. You can also insulate power outlets to reduce air escaping.

Higher Cost Electric Bill Reduction – Most of these are going to be higher ticket items that can impact your electric bill over a longer period of time.

• Replace Insulation. If you are in an older house, more than likely you have little or no insulation in your attic or crawlspace. Adding insulation will keep the heat in during the winter and the cold in the summer.
• HVAC Cleaning. Get your ventilation system cleaned at least once a year by a professional.
• Upgrade Windows and Doors. Replace old windows with multiple pane ones. Newer windows are more energy efficient. Some even are gas filled which provide even more efficiency. New exterior doors offer better insulating core material to help keep energy costs down.
• Get Rid of the Tank. Tankless water heaters are a great way to save on energy costs. Instead of having a big tank of water heating 24/7 just waiting for you, tankless provides you hot on demand. These units can cost around $1k or a little more to purchase and install. With yearly savings around $100, tankless heaters will pay for themselves in 4-5 years.
• Make it Yourself. Install solar panels or wind turbines and reduce or remove your dependency on public energy. If you live in an area with lots of sun or wind, you could even find yourself making money. Any energy that you produce and don’t use can be sold to your local energy company for consumption. No worries about losing power in a store if you are self sufficient!

So, you can see there are several ways to save money on your electricity bill. Whether you want to just change a behavior (turn off lights), spend a few bucks (CFL bulbs) or do an energy savings makeover (Insulation replacement) you have many options available to make an impact.

• Get a shopping card. Almost everywhere you go, including grocery stores, they have some sort of MVP/Preferred Customer shopping card. You can sign up for these at checkout or customer service. Taking 3 minutes to fill out the form can literally save you hundreds of dollars a year depending on your grocery bill. Stores also provide more discounts for shoppers who use these cards. Bonus Tip: We actually have a keychain that contains all of our cards and keep it in our car. This ends the hassle of having 20 cards attached to your keys or poking you in the leg when in your pocket.

• Coupons. Yeah, nothing really shocking about this one and my honorable no-brainer mention for saving money. Picking up a Sunday paper for $1.50 or $2 can yield several dollars back in valuable coupons. Sure, a majority of the coupons are for products you don’t buy, but you only need 2 or 3 to break even. Too cheap to buy a paper? you can even get coupons online now and print from home. This is one site in particular is good. Circulars are also a good place to get coupons. Mine shows up in the mail on Tuesday and Wednesday. You can thumb through these in 2 minutes tops to find anything useful. You can even get the coupons emailed to you (be sure to use a junk email account). Bonus Tip: Proctor & Gamble, the people who make pretty much everything, allow you to load their coupons on your customer card. Check their site out, and you can see here if your grocery store card is eligible.

• Plan Ahead. Having a grocery list is crucial to saving money. I guarantee that if you go on your weekly trip to the store and don’t have a list, you will do at least one of two things – spend more money on things you already have or on thing you don’t need. It’s really not hard to plan meals. Using your coupons and figuring out your work week, write out your meals. Now check your fridge, freezer, and pantry to see if you have those items. If you don’t, write it down. Hopefully you have a pad on your fridge that you add items to during the week that you want to remember. Dishwashing detergent is one of these things. Real pain in the butt to come back from the store and realize you forgot soap. Toilet paper would be worse. Bonus Tip: keep your meals on the grocery list. This will help you remember why you are buying peppers or whatever. Have a list for all the stores you shop at, which leads to -

• Comparison shop. We have two stores we do most of our shopping at – Trader Joe’s and Safeway. If you don’t have a Trader Joe’s, I’m sorry. If you do, I hope you shop there. Trader Joe’s is probably my third biggest budget saver behind customer cards and coupons. Also under comparison shopping is warehouse purchases. Costco, BJ’s, Sam’s Club, etc all fall under here. For some items, you can save a lot of money if you use that much. Otherwise you are just being wasteful. Buying in bulk doesn’t always save money. For the most part, things like paper products will be better off purchased using coupons and sales offered by grocery stores. Don’t forget about places like Target that also have food sections. The point is you can save money by checking the cost of common items that you purchase among your area stores.

• Don’t go hungry. Studies show that you will end up buying more if you go to the grocery store hungry. Fill your belly before you fill your cart and you will keep your wallet full!

• Add that up. Bringing a calculator to the store can also help cut down on costs. You keep track of what the estimated total is of items in your cart. If you are on a strict budget, you’ll know if that pint of Breyer’s needs to go back. You can also use it to determine the value of items for comparison. Most stores have the “price per ounce” or “price per pint” however there is a problem. Sometimes they will list two different measures for comparison. You could be shopping for apple juice and one brand is listed as “price per ounce” the other is listed as “price per liter.” I’m not going to do fractions in the juice aisle. Bonus Tip: Embarrassed to be using a calculator in public? Use your cell phone – people will think you are texting.

• Buy store brand. sometimes. Everyone knows that store brands usually cost significantly less than their brand name equivalents. You do have to be careful here as some items just aren’t the same as far as quality. We love our private label green beans but steer clear from mustard. It’s worth the $.10 to get French’s. Also, with coupons sometimes you can get the name brand for even less that the store label. Just like other places, you get what you pay for. Spending a few total bucks more to ensure you will not only like but use the product goes a long way. You aren’t saving anything if you end up throwing it away.

So there you have it. Take these tips and tricks with you the next time you go to the grocery store and enjoy the savings. The wife and I even try to make shopping a game. We always try to save at least 20% off our total bill. I think the biggest discount we ever had was 42%. That’s $42 off of $100. Can you imagine saving that all the time? Most likely you can’t but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. None of these items are are going to push you too hard or are difficult by any means. That’s the point – saving can be easy, you just have to work on it a little.

So what do you do when you can’t afford to cancel your phone but don’t want to keep paying high monthly costs? Well, you call customer service of course! But first grab copies of your cell phone bills and current phone plan, which should be listed somewhere on your bill. Most companies keep your bills online for at least a year, so download or print at least the past 3 months, if not more. Also pull up their current phone plans from the site. Once you have that, follow these tips and words of wisdom:

• One, two, three, four: Start counting up your minutes used month over month and compare that to your allowance. How close are you to the limit? Review the current plans by your provider. Do they offer lower minute packages closer to your average usage? You should think about changing plans. Are you going over on your minutes? If you are paying over what the next plan is you definitely want to upgrade. Just make sure that this wasn’t a one time overcharge.
• Brb k? l8r: Do you text? Does your plan even offer text? If so this is a way to save some money. Texting has become increasingly popular and the cell phone companies know it. They consistently change pricing plans on text and messaging. If you are going over on your text messages, look into unlimited plans that can end up costing less that your current plan. If you get unlimited service and only send 3 texts a month, you are paying too much. Find a smaller text package or don’t pay at all. Paying $.25 for 3 messages is better than $10 for unlimited plans.
• Say no to Geico: I’ve had a cell phones for over 10 years and I have never had to replace a phone because of defect. Sure, insurance makes us feel warm and fuzzy and the cell companies will rush right out and make you whole again. Only a few problems with this. Most companies only offer refurbished models, so there is no telling what new problems will be met. The other problem is a deductible which with the monthly cost of your insurance, could exceed the value of your replacement phone. You may be better off saving the difference and if your phone kicks the bucket, then pick up one from eBay or craigslist. Friends are also a good source for backup phones.
• With six you get eggroll: group discounts are also a way to save money. Most big corporations and companies have specific carriers they work with and get employee discounts. Another way to save is by getting family plans. Make sure that you and yours are on one phone plan. Individual plans will bleed you dry.

Hopefully you’ll fall under one of these areas and find ways to trim down your cell phone bill. If you are nearing the end of your contract, check out billshrink. It’s really simple – input your usage and costs (you already have that from working above) and you’ll get a custom output of available plans with possible savings.

So, does all this really work? Like I said, I’ve never purchased insurance and the saved money pays for a new phone in 2 years when my contracts end. Just the other day I was able to switch my wife from 50 text/pix messages a month (unlimited same carrier txts)  to 250 total txt/pix for the same price. She was pushing the limits every month and at $.40 a text it could get ugly pretty fast when you have a teenage sibling. Last year we dropped our 1400 minute plan to 700 minutes, resulting in over $300 saved a year. I also get a discount through my employer which nets me 20% off a month.

Of course, if you only use your cell for emergency uses, you can look into the pay as you go phones. Most of them have expiring minutes, but the overall cost can be lower than a normal phone plan.

What other ways do you save on your cell phone bills?

The first one I’d like to tackle is the dreaded cable bill. I recently bought a house and after years of suffering I moved my television to satellite. I will never go back to cable television unless forced against my will. This post isn’t about bad mouthing cable companies, so I’ll just say that I don’t feel you are getting your money’s worth from them. Television, radio, and print media are littered with great rates and deals for cable companies. The hook is that it’s for new customers only. Sorry, but in my commercial viewpoint, it’s your current subscriber’s that matter. Sure, cable companies have you by the short hairs when it comes to alternative options, but that doesn’t mean they can stick you with a bigger bill. Cable is (although some may disagree) not a necessity, and as technology progresses more options are going to be available to avoid paying for cable altogether (see hulu).

So, pull out your cable bill and head to the company’s website and let’s take a look. See those offers for new customers? Is your bill slightly (or grossly) higher than that? Time to make a call to their customer support service. Here are a few tips and tricks to make sure you lower your cable bill:

• Be like Fonzie. Above everything else, be cool. The person you are talking to isn’t pocketing your money and they aren’t the problem. They are the people who can make your life easier. Write down their name when they answer, and speak to them in a calm and collective voice. 
• Tell your story. Give a 20 second speech on what you are trying to accomplish and then open it up for the representative to respond. Some typical opening lines are “I am redoing my budget and noticed that my cable bill is pretty big. I like the service, but at these rates I might have to cut my service. Are there any specials or promotions going on to help?” There is also the tougher, more direct approach “Yes, I’m thinking of switching to satellite/FIOS/etc because they are offering me [repeat offer from their site]. Do you have a similiar offer?”
• Don’t be greedy. Unlike Gordon Gekko, greed is not good. sometimes you’ll get an offer for a discount rate for 3 months. Sometimes it’s 6. Sometimes they’ll offer you a free bump to the next level of service for a year (yes this happened to me). Whatever they offer, say thanks. You can do the math on the fly on how much you’ll save while saying “Wow, that would really help out alot. Can we make that change now?” Remember to be nice.
• Triple Dog Dare them. If they won’t help you out, simply ask to have service terminated. Don’t worry, there are a few questions that have to be asked before you do lose service. This will hopefully let them know you are serious and that if they want your business, they need to act fast. It’s okay to be more assertive if your call has escalated to this level. You can even ask for their supervisor or manager on duty. This is also a solid tactic for faster resolution.
• Try your call again. Not all CS reps are going to be easy to work with. Do you have additional information to support claims for lower rates like poor service or lack of programming? Did you threaten to cancel service and now they are going through the process? Looks like you lost this one. Simply say “I don’t have time to take care of this now. I will call back later. Thank you” and then hang up. Call back in 5 minutes and try your magic on another rep. I have had to call no more than 3 times in order to secure a deal.
• Take notes. Most of these offers are going to expire, so make note of when the promotion will end. When the time comes, call them right back up and follow the tips above. Sometimes it works best if you pay a full month’s service so you can have the argument of “My bill just increased x% and I just can’t afford it.”

So how much can you save? Your mileage may vary, however I’ve been able to cut my “listed” bill nearly 50% while still getting top service plans, HD service, premium channels, and DVR service. Currently I have to use cable for my Internet, and when my first bill came in they tried to stick me with a “non cable service fee”. That was an easy phone call as I let the rep know that I was never informed of this fee and that I wanted my service cancelled immediately and reimbursed. I noted that there was no listed fee on the application and no mention of this on their site. How did it work out? 6 months service 40% lower than what they wanted me to pay. These tactics work for all cable offerings including phone service

Some may think that this is cheating and that people should pay full price. I think those people are the same ones who pay sticker price for cars and don’t use coupons. Prices are haggled all the time, and you shouldn’t have to pay more than what the market demands. It’s like the old Meineke commercials.

Have you tried this before? Do you have any success stories or stories of doom?