Mint Mobile
Are you tired of overpaying for your mobile phone service? Do you want a reliable network with affordable prices? Then you should consider Mint Mobile’s 4GB plan that costs only $15 per month!
With Mint Mobile, you’ll enjoy unlimited talk and text, as well as 4GB of high-speed data each month. That’s enough data to browse your favorite websites, stream music and videos, and check your emails without worrying about running out of data.
I switched over in 2019 and have had zero issues. It uses T-Mobiles towers so reliability is there. I rarely used over 4GBs worth of data in a month, and it beat me paying $30 per line a month using my previous carrier. Highly recommend if you are looking for some quick cost savings in your budget
Mortgage/Student Loan/Personal Loan Financing
Refinancing existing loans is boring but extremely effective in generating cost savings. First I will share the links and then give you some stories
Student Loan Refinancing
Mortgage Refinancing
New Mortgage
Personal Loans
The thing I like about Credible is that it allows you to compare multiple rates in minutes. Credible is a loan comparison service provider that allows you do to rate comparisons between multiple lenders without having to file seperate applications for each provider. This keeps you off mailing lists and allows you to get the best rate for you saving thousands.
When rates were low, I refinanced my mortgage moving from 3.625% to 3% allowing myself to save about $55 a month or $660 a year. I would highly encourage you to view the market and see what opportunities are out there. If you hold credit card debt, highly encourage you to consider consolidating that debt to a lower interest rate. That may save you thousands of dollars as you develop habits to pay down your debts.
Car Insurance/Home Insurance
I would reccomend going thru an insurance aggregator like Insurify to view quotes from various institutions and to find what is best for you. As you build wealth, you may also want to carry an umbrella insurance policy to make sure you are covered if anything goes wrong other than your typical home-owner or car owner events.
Re-quoting your insurance should save you hundreds of dollars each year. Insurance companies have to pay out different claims in different areas. Insurance companies will adjust their fees accordingly to cover those claims. Those fee adjustments may make your current carrier who was competitive in previous years no longer competitive in the current environment. I typically will get 3 quotes from different carriers and pick the one that best fits my needs.
You Need a Budget (YNAB)
For people who are having a hard time saving each month and have more expenses than they should, I have heard great things about You Need a Budget (YNAB). Odds are there is a good chance you don’t have a handle on your finances if you are your typical American household. This program allows you to give power to every dollar you spend giving it purpose and meaning. You can connect your bank account and other information with real time syncing, goal tracking, and spending and networth reports.
Credit Cards
I’ve opened up more than 30 credit cards utilizing sign up bonuses to help pay for vacations, helping get gift cards to pay for home improvement opportunities, or getting cash back to help pad my emergency fund savings. If that interests you, I’d consider reviewing some of the different credit cards that are currently out there and pick some of the ones that are best for you!
Investing
I’ve heard great thing about both Fidelity and Vanguard due to their cost structures being so low allowing you to make more with your money over your lifetime. I personally use Fidelity thru my employer for my retirement savings account.
For alternative investment companies two others I would recommend is Betterment and Interactive Brokers
Betterment is a more user friendly way to do index fund investing. Betterment can handle automatic rebalancing and minimize tax costs for a nominal fee. Many people feel that this service is worth
Interactive brokers has an amazing margin loan rates compared to it’s competitors. In March 2023, it’s margin rate loan for $25K appears to be about 6% compared to the 12-13% from others. For those who have a high amount of wealth in the stock market I would highly recommend consider using them. If this interests you please use my referral link here
Costco
I like to get the expensive staples like olive oil, nuts, cheese and coffee at Costco once per quarter, which saves our family about $1000/year on groceries. I don’t mind buying more and storing in our house for cost savings and for ease of mind in case any emergencies occur.
Amazon
For all of your other needs, I recommend Amazon. For cost savings ideas, I’ve purchased some of the following items from Amazon.
1) I changed all of my incandescent bulbs in my house to LED bulbs. I would highly recommend warm lights versus white lights as it makes the rooms seem much more comfortable. LED light bulbs typically have a payback period less than a year, if the light bulbs are used more than 5 hours a day. They also have a long life. Anything with a payback period less than a year is a no brainer.
2) I’ve bought a drying rack for Amazon along with dryer balls. The drying rack allows me to hang dry clothes saving on gas/electric using the dryer. The dryer balls allows clothes to dry more quickly and also allow me to not use fabric softener which both saves money and also saves maintenance on washer with fabric softener gunking up.