Free stuff? Who doesn’t love to get freebies and deals? Especially if you’ve been struggling fiscally, a few choice free items are like a shot in financial moral booster. I spend a vast amount of time scouring for the best deals. Often I won’t make any purchase until I’ve compared prices and scouted reward programs, cash back offers and searched the net a few times. This behavior of mine incidentally, drives my children crazy. However, they all appreciate it on the other side, when they reap the benefits of making a dollar stretch.
Usually I do these searches proactively, finding savings before we make a purchase. Sometimes, however these scavengings are born of necessity. Today, it was for a life saving (literally) need. I almost killed a child of mine when I got the cell phone bill. To my horror, there was almost $29 in added fees tacked on. Being the annoying human I am, who notices these things, I pounced on Sprint, ready to tear the arms and legs off the nearest customer service agent. Alas, it wasn’t Sprint’s fault. I was thwarted in my zeal for blood.
I had, instead to turn my wrath upon my own flesh and blood culprit. It seems, my newest child in college was unclear about campus and off campus sites. Being the industrious child she is, rather than ask directions, she was calling information for this data frequently. At several dollars a call, (and more to come already in the next bill) she was racking these up nicely. I can comfort myself that she didn’t get lost due to these calls. However, had I not noticed this practice promptly we’d have spent an extra $300 a year on 411 calls. This only underscores why you should always go over all your bills monthly.
A few searches and toll free calls later, I found a few resources to share with you:
Try Google directories free service for businesses, which is ad free- 1-800-goog-411.
Or use 1-800-free-411 for both residential and business free listings. This one does have short, annoying commercials, but it’s far less annoying than paying out the cellular fees on information calls.
For those of you with children, these also save on attorney fees for getting the manslaughter charges reduced to a lesser sentence. Program these numbers in your kid’s phones for quick use while you’re at it. Another, more time consuming , option is to search phone numbers from a phone that receives the internet.
No $29 won’t break me, but again, it’s the small ways most of us lose our money. Be vigilant with reviewing bills, go on patrol for bargains and find the deals. It is, as I often state the small things that add up, keep an eye on your outgoing cash as well as find ways to do nearly everything on the cheap or free.