Lowering my monthly expenses, or, I cancelled my Lingo account

As part of my overall attempt to get some structure into my spending, I went looking for ways to reduce my set monthly bills. I decided that I should cancel our Lingo account because both Boyfriend and I have cell phones with free long distance. We had originally gotten the Lingo account because I wanted to have a home phone (since I had friends who were cell phone only and it was terrible getting a hold of them when their phone was dead or under the couch...) but there was never an issue with getting a hold of Boyfriend and I during the whole last year. So I honestly couldn't tell you if the service was any good because we didn't use it more than two or three times.

So I pulled up my account page and called them. I got transferred to a rep in India (with terrible phone quality, which isn't a good thing for a phone company to cut costs on...) who didn't seem particularly motivated to keep me. Which is good, because I wasn't particularly motivated to keep paying them $10 per month for a service I don't use. I wonder if she handled only cancellations, as she sounded kind of like a tired parent arguing with a not-tired toddler about why he should go to bed, offering half-hearted attempts. I kind of felt bad for her. But it was cancelled nonetheless, and I got my last month's (prorated) charge on my card yesterday. And apparently my timing was good; because I was a customer for more than a year (13 months) I don't have to pay a cancellation charge or send back the equipment.

So that's one bill out of the way. I think I'm also going to pre-pay my newspaper subscription ($10 every 10 weeks for Sunday only) through March 2007, which is the farthest out I can pre-pay, so that will also be one less thing to worry about. I'm not going to change the amount of money I send to the bills account, though.. it'll leave a little buffer room.