How My Household Easily Saved $400/month in Expenses
When COVID hit, my wife and I decided to seriously look at our finances to ensure that we were as stable as possible heading into the pandemic. Here are 4 ways that we were able to significantly cut down on our monthly expenses, ultimately saving thousands of dollars per year:1) Cut cable and switched internet providers – Previously we were paying ~$170 per month through Shaw for basic cable and internet. We cancelled this subscription and signed up with Teksavvy as our internet service provider at $65/month. We chose to go without cable and stick with Netflix and Amazon Prime for television, and have never looked back. This represented a month savings of $105.2) Switched cell providers – Previously we were paying $180/month for our two cell plans through Telus. We cancelled with Telus and switched to Koodo for $100/month for both plans. This represented a monthly savings of $50.3) Blended and extended mortgage – One of the benefits of COVID has been been ultra low interest rates. Unfortunately we were locked into a fixed mortgage at a high interest rate, and the mortgage wasn’t up for renewal until mid-2023. We contacted our bank and were able to ‘blend and extend’ our mortgage, which meant we blended our existing higher interest rate with the our bank’s current low interest rate, in order to get a new interest rate somewhere in between. This lowered our interest rate by a full 1% and represented a monthly savings of $200.4) Switched car insurance to ‘pleasure’ – Since the pandemic began my wife has been working from home. Given that she now doesn’t have to commute daily to work, she was able to switch her insurance to the ‘pleasure’ rate class. This represented a monthly savings of $50.Altogether, through these 4 simple changes we were able to save $405 per month without having any material change to our day to day lives. Over time, these savings are quite significant:1 year – $4,8605 years – $24,30010 years – $48,600 via /r/PersonalFinanceCanada https://ift.tt/39itLqk