Cutting your bills: What I did to get my monthly costs down!

In light of a very financially good 3rd quarter for me personally I am posting this small success story about myself. Even though I cut a lot of bills over the years I found that there is still room to move. I am willing to bet that you can find some places to cut back even more! Here are some examples of what I have done recently to reduce costs:

• Cable Internet -- I don't have cable TV just internet access. I called equipped with a price from AT&T for DSL and got my rate dropped $15/month for 1 year with Comcast ($180 saved!).
• iPhone Plan -- AT&T has a handy, somewhat hard to find chart on your data plan usage on their website. I had a look and based on where I spend the majority of my time (work and home) I have wifi and do not need a big data plan. I am downgrading to the lowest plan to save $15/month (another $180 saved!)
• Mortgage Refinance -- I just refinanced my house to roll in my line of credit used for repairs and my old 6% first mortgage. I now have it all locked in at 4.5% for 30 years. I freed up $200 per month that I can use for retirement, other debt payments, health insurance, and more!
• Homeowners Insurance -- I shopped around after I closed on my refinance. I saved another $250 per year by switching. This was easy to do and took a couple hours.
• Oil Changes -- I normally do these myself but I found some coupons on halfoffdepot.com where I can get it done, along with some other extras, for less than the cost of the oil alone! I have used 2 of the coupons and have 1 left.

As you can see all of the above are small changes that add up to a lot over time. I now have a much better monthly cash flow and I can add the extra money to my debt snowball. All of this began with comparison shopping for services and asking myself: "Do I really need _________?". I now have a habit of searching for deals, coupons, and alternatives if I need a product or service.