How I Saved $4,400 in a Day … and (Maybe) You Can Too

A little time and some simple negotiation tricks can go a long way

Diane Harris,

AARP

Comments

Published October 02, 2024

harris with giant scissors cutting a long receipt

Harris, pictured here, says you can cut a lot of bills in one day.

Chris Buck; Photo illustration by Chris O’Riley

How much money could you save if you devoted one full day to the challenge? I recently decided to find out, tackling as many money-saving tasks as I could fit into a nine-to-five workday — all the pesky stuff I kept meaning to do but never found time for.

The result for me: Eye-popping savings, on an annualized basis, of precisely $4,466.41.

Along the way, I learned some seriously valuable lessons. For starters, you can easily get a better deal on almost everything; the real challenge is how big a price cut you can nab. I also learned there’s an easy-to-master formula to achieve the biggest savings. Finally, it became apparent that the benefits of this exercise go beyond dollars and cents to a feeling of empowerment.

“When we start taking personal control and achieve some success, it creates a positive emotional experience that releases all of this energy,” says Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist in Boulder, Colorado. “We move from being frozen about our finances to a desire to take continued action.”

Here’s a closer look at what I did — and how you can do it too.

Go for the easy wins first

I spent the first hour of the day looking through the accounts I use to pay or track bills, identifying recurring charges and determining which ones to cut or renegotiate. The exercise revealed two streaming services I forgot I had, a mystery monthly charge from Apple, a duplicate Netflix account and a handful of subscriptions to magazines I rarely read. All told, I was spending about $100 more a month on these services than I’d guessed.

I’m hardly alone in this morass. Consumers, on average, estimate they spend $86 a month on subscription services, while their actual outlay is $219 a month, according to a C+R Research survey. Three-quarters of the respondents said it was easy to forget about monthly subscription charges, probably because so many of those people elect to auto pay their bill.

Armed with my checklist, I started with what seemed like the most straightforward task: canceling subscriptions. A pattern became apparent: I’d click to cancel, then get a reminder of how great the service was; click to cancel again, then get an offer with modest savings; click to cancel a third time and get a much better deal.

“The company’s goal is to get you to stay on as a customer while giving away as little as possible, so they will never offer their best deal first,” says Yahya Mokhtarzada, cofounder of Rocket Money, a budgeting app that helps track recurring charges. (A premium version of the app, which costs $6 to $12 a month, will cancel subscriptions for you; so will Experian’s BillFixer, $24.99 a month, which includes bill negotiation. Rocket Money charges separately for bill negotiation, 35 percent to 60 percent of the annual savings, in line with similar services like BillCutterz.)

Determined not to give in again, I ignored the enticements and clicked goodbye in quick succession to The Washington Post, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Kiplinger, Fortune, MGM+, Starz and that second Netflix account (the result of a new cable bundle my husband signed up for). Then I capped off cancellations by scrolling through my phone settings to figure out that mystery Apple charge. It was an audio recording transcription app I no longer use. So I dropped that too.

Time spent: 2 hours, 10 minutes

Savings: $1,078.53 per year

Deal with a human

To get a provider’s best offer, experts told me, you need to talk to a real person. So when I shifted to negotiating a better deal on services I wanted to retain, I hit the phone.

I followed this basic script: “Say you want to cancel your service, which will get you to the retention department, where they have more liberty than a regular customer service rep to give you as much as you can squeeze out of them,” says Barry Gross, founder and president of BillCutterz. “Keep your questions open-ended, like, ‘What can you do to help me reduce my bill?’ and keep asking, ‘What else can you do for me?’ ”

Be nice, advises LendingTree chief credit analyst Matt Schulz, author of Ask Questions, Save Money, Make More. “The person on the other end of the line has probably been yelled at 10 times today,” Schulz says. “Ultimately, people want to help people who are nice.”

First up was nabbing a better rate on my $498.88-a-year Wall Street Journal digital subscription. The rep quickly offered what seemed like a sweet deal: a three-year plan for $99 for the first year, then $299 and $467 for subsequent years. I took it. That was a rookie mistake. If I had checked the WSJ website, I would have seen a new-customer offer for $52 a year. Knowing that, I could have asked for the same price.

Determined to do better, I checked the available deals on the New York Times website before calling. That was helpful when a pleasant rep named Javi offered to reduce my $51-a-month subscription for digital access and the Sunday paper in print to $25.52 a month for six months. I mentioned a new-customer promotion for $20 a month for a year. Javi said he’d look into what else he could do, and came back with an offer of $12.40 a month for six months, then $24.80 for the following six months. Score!

Time spent: 40 minutes

Savings: $788.68

Save the thorniest bills for last

Getting a better deal on cellphone service is typically one of the toughest negotiations, I’m told. “They keep you on the phone for a long time to wear you down and overload you with confusing details about different plan options that often don’t offer any real savings,” says Mokhtarzada.

That neatly describes my experience with a cheery Verizon agent named Brenda, who said she’d be happy to help me reduce my bill. She then offered me — “don’t laugh,” she said — $4 off my $234-a-month family plan as a reward for my 20 years as a loyal Verizon customer.

I laughed anyway. “What else can you do for me, Brenda?” I asked.

She then bombarded me with details about plans I could switch to — 5G Ultra Wideband for enhanced speed! More pixels for higher resolution! The Disney+ and Apple Music bundles! None shaved more than a dollar or two off my bill. “I don’t need those features,” I said. “I just want to save money.” We did this dance for an hour until a then-exasperated Brenda asked, “How much do you need to save?” At least $50 a month, I told her. Then she magically landed on a new basic plan, which, combined with dropping a hot spot on two lines and insurance on another, cut my monthly bill by $51 a month.

Later I learned I’d made another rookie mistake. “Typically you can get the discount without giving up anything in terms of service,” says Mokhtarzada.

The last item on my agenda took the most time but also yielded the biggest savings: applying to have my Medicare premiums adjusted due to a “life-changing event.” In my case, that means my recent move from a staff job as deputy editor of Newsweek to a freelance writing and editing career that doesn’t pay nearly as much. Since my Medicare premiums are based on the income reported on my tax return from two years ago, my husband and I are paying more — $1,987.20 per year — than we should pay, based on my current income. So I filled out an application for the adjustment, gathered the necessary documentation and uploaded it, along with a letter explaining the circumstances.

Time spent: 3 hours, 37 minutes

Savings: $2,599.20

Keep the momentum going

The most delightful part of my day wasn’t how much extra cash I put in my pocket. Although that was pretty great, even better was how exhilarated I felt and motivated to keep the savings game going.

I’ve already mentally earmarked bills to tackle on another money-saving day, like my cable and internet bundle and homeowners insurance. Other tasks that experts say lend themselves well to this exercise are fighting medical billing errors, lowering credit card fees, and negotiating reduced prices for gym memberships and home security systems.

“There’s very little downside to trying; at worst, you’ll break even,” says Schulz. At best, like me, your savings may run into the thousands. Not bad for a day’s work.

%{postComment}%