How to Save Money on Monthly Internet Service Expenses

Reliable Internet services are simply a necessity in modern society, whether in a business or at a private residence. The monthly costs of service, however, can be substantial, and you might be wondering if there are ways to save. Here are some methods to do just that.

Take Advantage of Special Offers

Internet service providers often have special sales where they offer services at a discounted rate, usually for a set amount of time. This is common when you sign up for service as a new customer but might also be offered at various times throughout the year. Take advantage of these deals whenever possible to pay the least amount for Internet service.

Bundle with Other Services

Most companies offer discounts on services if you buy them together. For example, they may bundle Internet and cable TV together into a monthly package that is cheaper than either service would be on its own. 



It’s important to note that you shouldn’t buy services you don’t want or need because you’ll actually be spending more. But if you want cable TV or a phone line, buying it through the same company as your Internet can save you some money.

Shop Around

Companies want to stay competitive, so one provider might be offering comparable services for a lower price. If you don’t need the Internet with high speeds and lots of bandwidth, some basic services exist that are often much cheaper as well. 

Be sure to only look at providers that offer service in your area, for example, Internet providers in the Phoenix, AZ area. The best deals will mean nothing if the provider doesn’t operate in your area or if you get a weak signal that causes the Internet to not function properly.

Buy Equipment Rather Than Rent

Many Internet service providers give you the option of renting a modem or router from them for a small monthly fee. However, you can buy these devices (or a device that has both in one) for a one-time cost that is usually cheaper than paying to rent them every month. 

Buying one yourself also ensures you get a quality device that will often provide you faster Internet and better meet your usage needs. This is especially important if your household regularly has several devices connected to the Internet or you need heavy performance for uses like online gaming.

There are ways to cut down on your Internet costs. Carefully consider your needs and then shop around for the best arrangement that meets them. This can save you valuable cash that could be better spent elsewhere.

How Seniors Can Manage Rising Healthcare Costs

Aging isn’t fun for many people. Retirement and the free time it gives you is countered by increased aches and illnesses and rising healthcare costs. Even if you’re on a fixed income as a senior, there are several things you can do to manage rising healthcare costs.

Take Advantage of Your Free Time

The flexible schedule of retirement means you can find time to eat healthily, get plenty of sleep, and exercise daily. These preventive steps can improve your overall health, decreasing your healthcare expenses. While you’re at it, make sure you get your annual flu, shingles, and pneumonia shots.

Understand Your Healthcare Coverage

Whether you have private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, or a combination of coverage, take time to read the policies and understand what’s covered. Compare what’s covered in your policy to the bills you receive and make sure that you’re not paying for anything that should be covered. 



You should also ensure that you know which pharmacies are in-network and determine if you might save more money by using mail-order prescriptions.

Consider All Your Assistance Options

When you start to need assistance with cooking, cleaning, taking medications or other tasks of daily living, your first thought might be an assisted living or nursing home. But before you leap to that often expensive option, consider in-home senior care first. 

In-home senior care allows you to remain in the comfort of your own home while also getting the assistance you need. It’s often a fraction of the cost of moving into a facility.

Borrow Medical Equipment

There may be times you need a wheelchair, walker, crutches or other medical equipment, but only for a little while. If you know you won’t need medical equipment permanently, or you’re not sure, try borrowing it from a medical equipment lending closest. 

The equipment is in perfect condition, cleaned and sanitized before lending it out again. This can save you an enormous amount of money, especially if you’ll need more than one piece of equipment—graduating from a wheelchair to a walker to crutches after a leg or hip surgery, for example.

Healthcare is a necessity throughout life, but especially as you age. But it’s not entirely non-negotiable. If you know what to look for and the steps to take, you can make your healthcare more affordable. Whether you’re counting your pennies or looking to have a little extra fun money, saving money is always welcome.

4 Refinance Options to Balance Your Finances in 2020

Debt is something that just about all of us struggle to handle. No one ever intentionally tries to get themselves into debt, but when the cost of living exceeds one’s income, debt can often be unavoidable.

If you feel like you’re drowning under the weight of your financial burdens, there are options available that don’t involve bankruptcy. Here are four refinancing options that can help you to improve your financial health in 2020.

Student Loan Debt

There are two types of student loans. The first is a federal loan, where you owe money directly to the government. Thankfully, federal loans don’t require refinancing, as repayment is calculated based on one’s income. Talk to your loan manager if you need to adjust your federal loan payment structure.

The second type of student loan is a private loan. These can indeed be refinanced. When you talk to your student loan provider, provide them with proof of income and explain that you need a new payment structure that reflects your financial situation.

Car Debt

The last thing that any auto loan lender wants is to see a borrower default on their loan. The process of repossessing a vehicle is expensive and time-consuming. Talk to your auto loan lender about refinancing your auto debt. Not only will refinancing your car loan help you to save money each month, but it will often have a positive impact on your credit score.

Mortgage Debt

It’s a good idea to sit down with a financial planner if you’re interested in refinancing your mortgage debt. There are many predatory financing companies out there who take advantage of people who are in desperate need of fast cash. 



Ideally, you want to ensure you have a monthly rate that’s lower than the national average. If you have an adjustable-rate mortgage, you might be able to refinance for a longer loan term in order to lock in lower monthly payments.

Credit Card Debt

Credit card debt can be absolutely toxic for anyone who’s trying to get their finances back into order. If you owe money to multiple credit card companies, consider getting a single bank loan to pay them all off. Not only will this eliminate the need to deal with multiple creditors, but if you stick to the repayment schedule on your bank loan, you’ll very likely begin to rebuild your damaged credit score.

Financial health and wellness can be difficult to obtain. However, if you take these smart steps towards improving your financial condition, you’ll likely finish 2020 a lot happier than you were when the year first began.

Entrust Your Future—Why You Should Invest a Portion of Your Savings

From being able to weather the storm to make major purchases with greater ease, good financial management skills can often make a world of difference. While adequate savings is crucial for any long-term financial plan, squirreling your money away in a low-interest account may not always be the best option. 

Learning how to invest a portion of your savings can help to amplify your efforts and ensure that you will have the funds needed to deal with whatever the future holds.

Dealing with the Unexpected

Even the most comprehensive budget or detailed financial plan cannot account for every single eventuality. A robust investment portfolio can generate the funds you need to deal with anything unexpected. Budgets that are too narrow or that may lack flexibility often mean that even a minor issue or complication may lead to more serious problems.

Capitalizing on Opportunities

From real estate deals to planning a vacation or buying a new car, the right investment strategy makes it much easier to make big purchases or to take advantage of time-sensitive opportunities. 


Having stock to liquidate, the added revenue that bonds may provide or the financial benefits that come from learning how to trade forex can all play an important part in ensuring you are able to reach your financial goals. Being limited to your just your savings and salary often means that even modest purchases and opportunities will remain out of reach.

Planning a More Secure Future

Savings alone is rarely enough to provide a comfortable retirement. Investing a portion of your savings can go a long way towards ensuring a brighter and more financially secure future. Getting an early start is also important as the revenue and income that your portfolio may provide can be reinvested in order to maximize returns.

Coping with Major Economic Trends

Getting by during a recession or a down-turn in the market can be quite a struggle. Many novice investors mistakenly assume that an investment portfolio is little more than a financial liability during a bear market. Continuing to invest a portion of your income and savings can go a long way towards helping you to cope with such situations more easily and effectively.

Crafting and maintaining a more successful investment strategy may require a wide range of resources. Investing in a mutual fund, discussing your options with a financial planning service or learning more about how forex and currency exchange markets function can provide you with the insight and understanding you need in order to make more effective decisions. Planning for your financial future is never a concern that should be taken lightly.

Focus in on Your 401k: 4 Retirement Planning Tips for Today

Retirement is a time in your life to spend time with loved ones, enjoy hobbies and traveling, and live stress-free. That isn’t always how it works out, though. The ability—or inability— to retire with financial security is a real concern that looms over the heads of many people. However, with some simple planning, you can be sure to enjoy the golden years of your life without worry.

Limit Extra Expenses

While you may think of large purchases getting as in the way of your retirement, little purchases can hurt too. Expenses that cost under ten dollars are often ignored as inconsequential, but they build up and can hamper your retirement goals. Daily coffee runs, eating out for lunch, leaving the lights on, and data charges on your cell phone are little charges that add up quickly.

Keep a detailed journal to see where all of your money goes. You’ll be surprised by how much you waste at the end of each month. Set a limit on how much extra money you can spend, and stick to it.

Contribute to your 401k

Take full advantage of the 401k option your employer offers. Enroll in your company’s 401k program and meet your employer’s match. You can also get advice from a 401k advisor to ensure you’re making the most out of this benefit. 



It’s also wise to increase your contribution by one to two percent each year. If you start early, the amount you contribute to your retirement will hardly be noticeable on each paycheck.

Plan your Living Situation

Hopefully, by retirement age, your home is paid off or within striking distance. A hefty mortgage can be difficult to pay with your retirement income. If you’re going to be empty-nesters, it may not make sense to keep that huge home. You and your partner should decide if downsizing is a better option. 

The equity from your home can be used to pay for a significant portion or all of your new living quarters. Renting is also an option if you can find an affordable community. A lot of retirees move to states such as Florida or Texas because they have no state income tax.

Automate Savings

Set up your monthly contributions to your 401k and other retirement funds as automatic deductions from your bank account. Although you may feel the sting of these funds being withdrawn, the investment is well worth it. These monthly “bills” will pay for themselves many times over when you are ready to retire.

Retirement may be far in your future, but the earlier you start saving and investing, the more secure you will be. Even if you’ve had little financial awareness, it is never too late to start saving for retirement.

There's No Wrong Time To Be Thinking About Your Pension

There might not be a wrong time, but there is a right time, and that time is now. Whether you're in your twenties, thirties, forties, or fifties, if you've not started thinking about your pension, there’s no time like the present. Obviously, the earlier you start preparing the better.

If you think your retirement is a lifetime away, you’ll be surprised how quickly it comes around. Before you know it, you’ll be knocking on the door of retirement and have made no financial preparations. Do you want to spend your twilight years worrying about every penny you spend? Surely that’s not why you’ve been working all these years.

Getting the Best Pension Deal

There are plenty of different pension options, but you need to be sure you've got the right one. You might have caught one of the many media stories about pension misselling. 

If you don’t want to get caught out with a mis-sold pension, you must do your research. Here are some of the contract-based pension schemes you might want to sign up for.

SIPP – Self Invested Personal Pensions are a type of pension that can run alongside a workplace pension. These pensions are an individual contract between yourself and a pension provider. The broad investment powers of a SIPP mean you can invest in a range of assets.

SSAS – SSAS stands for the small self-administered scheme. It is a type of defined contribution pension an employer can self-manage. There do, however, have to be fewer than 12 members.

QROP – A Qualified Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme is an overseas pension scheme that meets specific HMRC requirements. A QROP has to have a beneficial owner and trustees. It can receive transfers of UK pension benefits.

These are just three examples of the type of pension scheme you might be able to sign up for. For a person without any pension scheme knowledge, navigating the pension waters can be very dangerous. But who can you ask for advice?

Where to Get Your Pension Advice

Trying to find the best pension advice can be challenging, especially if you have no previous experience. Whether you want SIPP, SSAS, QROP, or any other type of pension, having someone you can trust in your corner is vital. 

To lower the risk of mis-sold pensions or a mis-sold annuity, you should seek the advice of an FCA authorized financial adviser. Don’t be tempted to get help from a pension introducer, as these people are not the best place to go to for pension advice. 

There have been numerous cases of a pension introducer playing a part in one of the many mis-sold pension and mis-sold annuity scandals of recent years. A pension introducer often cold-calls potential clients. 

They then pass on your details to an unregulated marketing firm. They are not regulated by the FCA and therefore could be a party to a pension mis-selling scam.

If you find you’re the victim of a mis-sold pension, it is possible to get claims advice, but the route to getting your money back is fraught with obstacles. To be successful with mis-sold annuity claims or SIPP claims, you have to be able to prove you were given the wrong advice. It might relate to a final salary pension transfer, defined benefit pension or one of many other pension alternatives.

There have been many cases of mis-sold pensions and annuity claims in the recent past. So much so that a whole industry has grown up around mis-sold pensions. SIPP claims, annuity claims, problems with a defined benefit pension, or a final salary pension transfer can often be solved. 

Provided you know where to get claims advice. The best place to start is by calling the Pensions Advisory Service.