Miscellaneous Ways to Save Money:
Lower Appliance Repair Costs and Drop Unnecessary Insurance
Lower appliance repair costs. It seems to cost a fortune to get anything repaired these days. You can save thousands over your lifetime by performing routine maintenance and small repairs yourself. All you need is the know-how and often you can get that from a do-it-yourself manual you can purchase online at Amazon.com at a bargain price. Tips on slashing repair costs are as follows:
(1) Modern electronics that appear to be broken might need only to be unplugged for half an hour to let them “reboot”. Before having a television, computer, refrigerator, dishwasher, or cellphone repaired, find out if all you need to do is unplug it and wait awhile before plugging it back in to see if it works. Often it will and honest repair people will actually tell you this over the phone if you call them
(2) If you do need to have an appliance fixed, make sure he is an authorized servicer. People who don’t know how to fix a particular appliance model often will make things even worse or not fix it at all
(3) Visit the manufacturer’s website for free tips on troubleshooting problems with an appliance before hiring someone to fix it.
Drop unnecessary insurance. While auto insurance and homeowner’s insurance are important things to have, there are certain types of insurance that are a complete waste of your money since they often include terms that are vaguely written so that the insurer can deny claims. Get rid of the worthless insurance outlined below and save about $800 per year:
(1) Credit insurance is supposed to pay off your credit card balance if you ever lose your job, usually because of a permanent disability. This insurance costs about $350 a year, and very few people ever qualify for it. It’s basically a cash cow for the credit card company.
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(2) ID-theft insurance is supposed to reimburse you up to $1 million for losses through identity theft. Actually, the average person loses less than $500 since most banks and credit card companies eat the loss from theft.
(3) Cell phone insurance is supposed to replace your phone if it is every stolen, lost or damaged and can cost as much as $200 per year, but less than 20 percent of people will ever lose their phones or have them damaged or stolen. It would be better to put the money in an account to buy a new, updated phone in a few years.
(4) Pet insurance is supposed to pay all those vet bills but the policies are full of all types of exclusions, deductibles, caps, that they probably would not ever pay more than what you paid to the insurance company as premiums for pet insurance.
(5) Life insurance for children is completely unnecessary since so few children die in the USA. You could insure a child for 15 years and at his death at age 15, you would have paid more in premiums than the cash value of the life insurance.
(6) Car rental insurance. If you are a licensed driver with your own car insurance, chances are you don’t need to pay for extra car rental insurance since your regular insurance policy will cover any damages from an accident or loss of property due to theft. Check with your agent to make sure you are covered.
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