Building Wealth - Cutting Costs

Right now if you are paying very much for domestic long distance in the United States I just don’t think I can help you. There are so many cheap options for domestic calling you kind of have to be stubborn to pay more then a few cents a minute. Or perhaps like many you tossed out your home phone all together and just use your cell phone, many have and there are good reasons to do so.

Now for international calling I generally recommend VoIP service but for some it just doesn’t work and others just don’t call often enough to bother. Additionally if you have gone the cell phone only route and don’t have a cable modem it isn’t an option. So what is the solution?

Try using discount international phone cards for saving money on all your international calling. GetMeCallingCards.com is a great source to shop for many different calling cards for many different needs. For instance I often call Russia to talk to one of my outsource programmers, I found a card for Russian long distance that costs only 1.2 cents a minute, that is a huge savings over even my VoIP rate.

Use this site to shop around they have a great card search tool where you can put in your country you call from and to and get the best rates and more importantly the best terms. Each card they recommend you can view all the details, charges and fine print beyond just the surface rate. Many times the lowest rate is not the best price over all so be smart read and pick the one best for where, how and how often you call.

GetMeCallingCards.com breaks all that down to easy and clear English so it definitely makes my list of recommended sites.

This post is an extension of my post on, not resenting people doing better then you from a few days ago because that is also part of a “poverty consciousness” but today I am going to go deeper into this concept that I call financial cancer. So what is a poverty consciousness? In short it is the belief that money and wealth are scarce. That you have to be lucky or crooked to become rich and that cheaper is always better.

Now given my blog URL is CutThatBill.com you would think I would be all over the “cheaper is better” philosophy but I am not. There is a place for it,

• When it comes to a mortgage get the lowest rate
• When it comes to phone service pay the least
• When you buy a car negotiate the lowest sales price you can

In essence when you buy a specific item of a given quality there is no reason not to pay less if you can. Unfortunately this is not how most of the psychologically broke thinks.

I remember the first time I went back to the little coal town I grew up in after having built a successful career and life. I was going to go off on my own and do some fishing and stopped by a local donut shop for a coffee and a couple of old fashioned donuts. I was going to grab them and go but decided to sit down and enjoy my breakfast because I was on vacation and had all day.

Being alone and just browsing at a paper I heard quite clearly all the conversations around me. One word was used over and over by the mostly elderly crowd in their chit chat. That word was “cheaper”, this was “cheaper” here, that was “cheaper” there, Joe was a crook because his gas was two cents higher a gallon that at Tony’s where it was “cheaper”.

I got up and left, I just couldn’t listen any longer. Cheaper, cheaper, cheaper it was like being subjected meat grinder. While I fished that morning for small mouth bass with the sun on my back enjoying life though I realized that I used to be exactly the same way. When I lived in this town I remembered driving to Tony’s Gas Station to save the 2 cents, (5 mile drive in a car that got 10 miles to the gallon). I remembered all of it and I realized it wasn’t success that shed this constant “cheaper” search from me it was getting away from a culture married to it.

I can’t blame the people of that town, specifically the elderly on “fixed incomes” it is a poor place that never really recovered from the depression back in the 1930s. In fact my Grandfather used to say, “the Great Depression came, then it went, we never noticed.” Yet what I realized is this mentality of poverty is a big reason why my town is still poor to this day. The people all think they are poor, they expect to be poor and so they are.

After that day I realized much of this mentality was still in my head. I had shaken some of it off but not enough. I was still limiting my vision of success, of retirement of what I could expect to gain in life. I was still driving exta miles for pennies off a gallon of gas. Today I use the gas station on the side of the road that is best for when I need to pull out back into traffic.

I was still standing in supermarkets evaluating which package would have me pay less per ounce, today I buy the size that best fits my needs. Indeed even though I had money, even though I had started to build a second business and even though I was saving for retirement and paying off debt I was still on some level the poor kid from that coal town.

I believe most Americans today are still carrying their own “coal town” poverty mentality with them. It is what makes you limit your dreams one day then the very next day be stupid about how much you spend the next. Believe it or not this poverty consciousness is why people buy 50K dollar cars when one half the price is much better suited to their needs and budget. The expensive do dad makes them feel rich even though they are cash poor it helps them run from the fear or poverty.

On the other side they do things just to be cheap! They buy a 9 dollar garden hose that is kinked and useless in a year. They buy the cheapest refrigerator and it wastes electricity. They think a guy that makes 20K more a year is “rich” until they get there too and then they think the next guy 20K further up the food chain is rich.

This all stems from “poverty consciousness” if you see yourself as poor you will figure out a way to keep yourself poor. If you always look for cheaper, cheaper, cheaper then you will always have the poorest and cheapest things in your life. You will cheapen joy, you will cheapen your personal value and you will cheapen your dreams. Try not to use the word “cheap” as a positive thing.

Save cheap to describe junk. Save cheap to describe bad service. Save cheap to describe a stingy miser. Save cheap for negatives and use terms like “good value” and “excellent price” when you find a lower cost on a good item. This is just one step to removing the poverty demons from your subconscious but it is a good start.

Cutting the monthly cost of your expenses does not have to be difficult and it often involves just doing a few simple things that we know we should do. Often it is simply that we don’t want to take the time to make a phone call, send a letter or deal with the hassle of making a change on an account or service.Yet this is a mistake, a place where apathy can cost you thousands of dollars or more over your life time. Consider a five dollar a month savings, not much right, sixty bucks a year. Well, 60 dollars a year, times 45 working years until you retire and that five bucks a month now equals 2700 dollars you could have invested. The big things is there are lots of five bucks here, and ten bucks there you can harvest right from your own home with out any sacrifice.

Consider home phone service for instance. Do you even care who’s name is on your bill? If you get your internet access from the cable company you might do what millions already have, use your cell phone as your only phone and throw out the home phone all together. Or Consider Broadband Phone options that you can run on your Cable Internet connection, they often cost well under twenty five dollars a month or less including any taxes or fees.

If you want to keep your conventional phone service one provider I really recommend is Cleartel. They are not available everywhere but if you are lucky enough to be able to get them you can get great service at a real savings.

I bring up phone service because it is easy to cut costs on but it is only one example. Look at every recurring monthly bill and consider your options. Mortgage refinance is not a fun process but with rates where they are it might put a hundred dollars or more a month into your pocket. What is 100 times the number of months you have left to work in your career? Electric service has been deregulated in many states so see if you have options there. A simple call to a credit card company and the phrase, “can I talk to a supervisor” or “then can you put me in touch with someone that can make a decision” can shave points off a credit card rate.

You get the idea, start at home and examine every expense. Start treating your household like a business, expenses are to be examined, cut and justified. Just because our government hasn’t learned that lesson does not mean you have to live that way.