March 25th, 2009
I’ve been thinking about money a lot lately. I suppose a lot of people are. In an attempt to keep more of mine, I made some phone calls. The first two were successful; I managed to get my home phone and cell phone bills lowered. The total savings only amounts to about $30.00/month. But I won’t complain. (I’ll be able to save even more in a few months when I can get out of my current cell phone contract by switching to a different carrier.) I then had two unsuccessful phone calls. Both (not surprisingly) to creditors. It’s no shock that the last two companies weren’t interested in helping me lower my monthly payments. But it didn’t hurt to try. I’m also considering looking into the government’s new program to help lower mortgage payments. My apprehension with the program is that it seems like it’s geared more towards homeowners who are under threat of foreclosure. And I’m glad to say that I’m not in that boat. Still, it’d be nice to save some scratch on the mortgage payments. Guess I should take my own advice and just give ‘em a call.
So that’s about all I could do to try and lower my expenses. The flipside to the gravy train is finding ways to bring in more money. I’m already working about as much as I can. And due to certain constraints in my life, going out and getting a second job isn’t feasible. I signed up last night to write for Helium. Jen’s been contributing to that site for awhile. She’s made some money. Not a lot. But certainly more than we’ve managed to make through our combined blogging/podcasting efforts (i.e. Google Ads). The real dilemma for me comes down to energy/time vs. return. Contributing to Helium is a guaranteed return, no matter how small. I’ve got some ideas for web projects that could actually make money. But they’d be time intensive, with no guaranteed returns. And I already give plenty to an Internet that doesn’t provide much in return other than some ego validation and warm fuzzyness (both of which are rad, by the way.) To elaborate on these projects, one is a crazy idea I had based off of the Million Dollar Homepage. Yeah, I know. Sites like that aren’t likely to succeed. But my idea has a twist that could give it some legs. The other project would be an add-on service to Twitter that, somehow, no other site is providing. The problem with this idea is that I know nothing about API programming. So it’d be a steep learning curve. But once I got it working, it’d probably be an overall safer bet than the first idea. Decisions, decisions.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:47 am
Hey, $30/month is a start. Nothing wrong with that. I totally get where you’re coming from on the difficulty with making money on the internet. I’m in the same boat. I would love to get some decent money making projects going, but I’m going to need some more time to get some ideas I want to pursue off the ground.
I also had a few ideas in regards to Twitter and I think my other commitments and lack of API knowledge will keep me sidelined there as well. Guess we need to save some more money and then find us some developers. I’ll bet there are plenty of people out there looking for a little money in exchange for cranking out some code.
March 27th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Wow, you got your bills lowered just by calling? What did you say? Just ask them to lower your bills? I find that incredible. Well done! You should make a post on specifically how to do that.
Also, while milliondollarhomepage was way too disorganized for me… and didn’t seem to have any actual content besides ads, I love your idea for a Twitter add-on service. For programming help, visit http://www.getafreelancer.com/
March 27th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I just called and asked if there was any way I could lower my monthly payments. It was just that easy. With the home phone service, they changed the telephone/Internet combo plan I was on. And the cell phone company (same company, actually) offered me a rate plan that they don’t actually advertise. And it’s not a good plan if you’re someone who uses a cell phone a lot.
June 21st, 2010 at 7:49 pm
[...] Last year, I wrote about how I was trying to save some money on my monthly expenses. At the time, I was able to get my cell phone and home phone bills lowered. Since then, I’ve upgraded my cell phone to an iPhone, and that’s caused the cell phone bill to go back up. I found out earlier this month that AT&T has reconfigured its iPhone rate plans for data, and the company is now offering a $15.00/month plan for users who transfer less than 200 MB worth of data over AT&T’s network. I downgraded to this new plan from the $30.00/month “unlimited” plan I’ve had since I first got the iPhone. I checked my statement for last month, and found that I only used about 25 MB, so 200 MB should be fine. Also, AT&T only counts data that’s transferred over their 3G network, so when my iPhone’s connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi, that doesn’t matter. [...]