How I saved $146

Today I saved $146. Easy.

It wasn’t difficult to save this money, nor did it require much effort. Just a few clicks of my mouse. To summarize, I received my car insurance bill in the mail and after discussion with family and some online quotes I realised that I was going to be paying too much. My current insurer wasn’t interested in matching the quote I received online from another company, so I switched (my present insurer were only willing to reduce my premium slightly which wasn’t a good enough offer in my opinion). All it took was a few minutes of online research and a couple of phone calls and boom- money in my pocket.

It’s so easy to just renew things like this without actually taking a few minutes out of our day to re-evaluate our options and competing offers. This is not the first time I’ve looked at switching, it’s just the first time a competitor has come out cheaper. Now there might be some who say for $146 it’s not worth the effort or time, but imagine if I re-evaluated this every year and for the next 10 years managed to get a cheaper deal for the same amount- that’s $1460! Regardless, I’d much rather the $146 stay in my pocket. I like to think about what $146 means to me- as I consider it to be almost a month’s worth of groceries, it could be part of an airfare or even a nights hotel accommodation somewhere.

Looking at the bigger picture, what other products and services can you compare and save? Your home loan? Phone bill? How many hundreds or even thousands of dollars could you save in a year by doing this? It’s so easy yet most of us don’t do it. Either we don’t think of it or we just can’t be bothered.

Yes, it’s easy to stay with the same provider, but it might be significantly cheaper to do a bit of research and switch (or at least threaten to as sometimes that’s all it takes which is even better!). It is important however, to ensure you are comparing ‘apples with apples’ and are being quoted for an equivalent product and not something of lesser value.

With the advent of the internet, it’s never been easier to compare prices and products which definitely puts the consumer at a point of advantage and I intent to make the most of this at every opportunity.

How have you switched & saved?