This month it seems has been money saving month. No, I haven’t stopped spending, but I have managed to get some of our household bills reduced.

Firstly it was the renewal time for our mortgage. We had previously had a variable rate but it was set in 2006 so the rate we were paying was high compared to todays rates. I know that all the extra money we have paid is reducing our mortgage further which is great, but it still means the money is coming out of our bank account every month!

So I contacted the mortgage company to re-evaluate the terms of our mortgage and after going through the various options such as fixed rates etc we decided to stick with the variable. As the rate is now much much lower – so is our monthly payment. Obviously if the rate does go up, so will our payment but it has to go up a lot to reach the rate it was set at before. SAVING NO 1.

I then contacted our satellite TV company. A friend of mine had recently switched from our supplier to another and had saved some money. I called our supplier explaining this and stating that I did not want to change, but the savings outweighed the hassle etc. Basically she asked what package we would like with them in order that we would stay. Our current package was one of the basic ones with the HD and some extras. In total we paid $75 per month inc taxes.

I said that we used to have the films but at $20 per month extra it wasn’t worth it so we had cancelled and that my husband also missed some of the sports channels. She asked me to hold and when she came back she offered us the same package we currently had, plus movies and sports for $10 per month less. Obviously I grabbed this offer with both hands and now we have loads of channels. SAVING NO 2.

Next I phoned our alarm company – well by now I was on a roll…..

I explained that I had been looking at other security systems and ours seemed old by comparison and that ideally we would like to have a key-fob to activate the alarm and pay less per month. The guy said that although he could not reduce the payment he would upgrade our system, include a key-fob and a warranty – result. SAVING NO 3. Okay, this is not technically a saving, but we are getting a better system for the same price so we are happy.

The moral of this story is that you should not be afraid to ask for better or cheaper service. After all, they can only say no and you won’t have lost anything by trying.

On Saturday we came back from an outing and realised that the HD receiver for our TV was off – no time showing.

We reset it and did everything we were told would work in the book but nothing. Phoned Star Choice and they went through lots of bits, pull out this, put in that, hold this down etc but nothing. They finally decided it was knackered and said they would send a repairman out within 24 hours.

The guy on the phone said that it was unusual for someone to have a problem so soon – does this mean we should expect problems later?

Sunday – waited for the repair man but no one called and no one phoned. I then phoned them again to ask what was going on and was told that someone would come out within 72 hours!!!!!!!!!!!

After some choice words about their service etc I was told all we could do was wait for someone to call to say the repair man was coming and when. Some things don’t change wherever you live!