How to Negotiate Your Bills (and SAVE 6-Figures!)

Transcript:

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, how to negotiate your bills and Save six figures.

Ooh, what's up everybody? And welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of Master money.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're gonna be going into how to negotiate your bills. And it's. Save six figures. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money Newsletter by going to master money.co/newsletter.

And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love, listening to this podcast on it. If you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today we're gonna be diving into how to negotiate your bills.

And save six figures. Now, here is what my goal is for this episode is first we are gonna go into some of the bills that you can actually negotiate. See, most people don't realize that you can negotiate pretty much any bill that you have on hand, and I'm gonna go through a big list of those bills so that you understand what you can negotiate.

Number two is after we do that, I am gonna show you the framework. On how to negotiate your bills, and in fact, I'm gonna give you a couple of scripts. I'm gonna give you a couple of things to think through when you go and negotiate your bills. I'm also gonna show you how to stay organized as you do this, and I'm gonna tell you how frequently you should go out and negotiate your bills.

Then third, we're gonna dive into the impact of that money. Once you start to save these dollars, well, what do you do with them next? Do you just hoard 'em in your checking account and they get wasted on something else? Or do you make sure that they go towards things that you actually value? Wealth building activities.

And we're gonna talk through all three of those steps, all three of those stages in this episode. This episode will literally save you six figures if you actually take action. I'm gonna show you the math behind that and exactly how that is going to work. So if you're ready for this, we're gonna take a quick break and without further ado.

Let's get into it. First, let's talk about the bills that you can negotiate, because a lot of people don't realize that you can negotiate the majority of your bills, not can you negotiate your water bill? Can you negotiate your power bill? Maybe in some instances, some of those bills are gonna be fixed, but a lot of the bills that you have on hand, what you don't realize is that you can start a negotiation.

And so when you see our process, this is gonna be something I think is very, very powerful for most people. Number one, and this is one of the biggest expenses on most people's line item, is you can negotiate your rent. And we've had an entire episode talking about how to negotiate your rent. But I just wanna dive really quickly into some of the things that you should think about or should consider.

Now, negotiating your rent is a little easier if you have a landlord in place who is, just someone who owns rental properties is a little bit more difficult if you're at an apartment complex or something like that. But that's okay. You can still get it done, and we have had tons of people get it done.

And I'm gonna show you exactly how to do this right now. Now, when do you have leverage is 60 to 90 days before your lease actually expires. And if vacancy rates are rising, even if you're in a complex and you're noticing, hey, a lot of people don't live in some of these units, then you have the power to negotiate.

And if similar units around your area are cheaper. You can use that as leverage, or if you've been a reliable tenant and you've been there for a longer period of time, you can utilize that as leverage as well. Now, what's should your expected savings be? If you negotiate your rent is anywhere between 50 to $200 a month typically, which is a huge, huge deal.

Just imagine this for a second, $50 a month over the course of 12 months. Well now we're looking at 600 bucks, but if you can get to $200 a month over the course of 12 months, now we're looking at $2,400. This is real money. You could be putting that in your off IRA. You could be putting that towards your vacation.

This is real dollars that we wanna make sure that we are looking at, and so this is typically around a three to 8% reduction in the overall cost of your rent. Now if they won't lower your rent, I'm gonna give you some ideas of things to get added onto your rent. Maybe you get one month free and asking for that month free is gonna give you the same exact impact as some of these other things.

Maybe you get free parking, maybe you get waived pet fees. Maybe you get free storage, or you just get zero increase this year. Even avoiding a $150 increase could save you well over a thousand dollars over the course of a year. And so some of these things, it's just negotiating so your rates don't go. Up.

That's all you're really trying to accomplish, so this is something very important for most people. Two, what are the most negotiable things on most people's list is your internet and cable. And in fact, if you have two internet providers in your area, you can bounce back and forth and really utilize the other one to get your rates down.

This is something where 15 to $40 per month is typical. When saving on internet and cable, but I have told a story a number of times in this podcast. I saved over $120 a month just by negotiating my cable and internet bill. And so this is an area that you can definitely see a 15 to 50% reduction depending on how high your bill is.

And so this is saving you another 200, two $500 per year. Three cell phone plans. Cell phone plans are one of those plans that really, really. Have some room for you to negotiate so you can save anywhere from 10 to $30. And if you go to a low cost cell phone plan, we've had Mint Mobile in the past as one of our sponsors on this podcast.

You can save even more. You can save 50 to $70 every single month. That is real money. And when you start to add all these up that we're talking about here, it is a massive amount of cash on hand. Sometimes you can get device credits, sometimes you can save, even if you can save 10 to 20 bucks per year, that is going to add up over that time.

And a lot of major carriers will price match, especially if you're a loyal customer. They will price match some other carriers. And so this is an area where I think you should definitely be negotiating. Four auto insurance. How many of you out there do not get price matched with your auto insurance? You need to negotiate.

Most of your insurance is out there, but your auto insurance is a huge one for most people. You can save another thousand dollars a year just by negotiating your auto insurance. Insurance has gone up dramatically over the course of the last couple of years. We need to make sure. That we are looking at our auto insurance and actually reducing this cost.

It is not uncommon for you to save 10 to 25% on your auto insurance, but just by negotiating anywhere from 20 to $75 per month is some of the reductions that I have seen. And if you have multiple vehicles, that means 20 to $75 per month per vehicle. And so this is one of those areas where you definitely always need to negotiate every single year in Master Money Academy we talk about this and we give some.

Examples of you need to make sure that you are negotiating this every single year, and this is a really, really important thing. Now, if you are going to negotiate your car insurance or auto insurance, we're gonna link down below. I'm gonna give you a link to a car insurance comparison tool. This tool is one of our tools.

We absolutely love and we have had people use this tool and be able to find cheaper rates on car insurance. So I am going to send that to you. It'll be linked up, down below in the show notes, so make sure that you check that out. Number five, home insurance. Home insurance is a very competitive industry.

It is one that you should always be shopping every single year. It is one that you should have an independent broker who can shop your policy across a bunch of other policies and typically. When you do this, you can save anywhere from five to 20%. Don't just bundle with who you have your auto insurance with.

Don't just bundle with who you have some other insurance with instead, go price this out. Insurance is so important to make sure that you're pricing this out. This could save you another 150 to $800 per year. Alright, here's a big one. Alright. For most of you out there who haven't done this before.

Medical bills. Medical bills are one of the most important things that you always, always, always need to try to negotiate. These are very negotiable. Most people don't realize this because there is margin in medical bills, and so if you pay cash, you have negotiation power. If you request an itemized bill, this is gonna be one of those areas where you can get an itemized bill.

And a lot of times medical bills have mistakes on them. And so every single time you get a medical bill, especially if you go to the ER or you go to a hospital, make sure you get an itemized bill so you understand what you are paying. Then start slashing some of those costs. You know why they do this?

And a lot of times, this is my theory, this is my conspiracy theory, is I think a lot of times they throw those things on because they know insurances are just gonna pay them. And so insurance is just gonna go pay those things. And obviously this is just one of those areas where if you are paying out of pocket.

Anything whatsoever, you need to get this stuff slash So get an itemized bill. Ask for financial assistance because they can also put you on payment plans. And a lot of times these payment plans don't have any interest rates, and so this is something where you could pay it off over time and figure out a plan that works.

For you. So your expected savings here are anywhere between five and 20%. We've done an episode on how to negotiate your medical bills. If you want us to do a deep dive on any of these though, by the way, please comment below on YouTube or Spotify and let us know if you want us to do a deep dive on any of these.

I think it's very important. We're gonna do some deep dive, very specific episodes coming up, and we may even do an additional bonus episode when we do these deep dives. I wanna do a whole series on this so that we can do very tactical things to get you guys to be able to accomplish your goals with money.

My entire goal is to give you actionable things that you can do with your dollars so that you can become millionaires. Every single person listening to this podcast, we want you to become a millionaire, so hospitals would rather get partial payments. Then to get no payments from you. So try to negotiate your medical bills and go through that process.

Here's a big one. If you are in credit card debt, you can negotiate your credit card interest rate. A lot of people don't know this. If you're sitting there paying 30%, you need to call up the credit card company and start to negotiate that a PR. You need to make sure that you are doing this. Even if you can get two to 10% in a PR reduction, that is a massive, massive deal.

And so this could be hundreds of dollars per year in interest. And depending on how much you are paying on your credit card, this could be thousands of dollars per year. You don't know how big of a deal it is to have credit card debt and it's a pants on fire emergency. And the easier you can make this, the better off this will be.

Gym memberships. Alright. Gym memberships are one. Most of you have. If you are, you know, within a health or fitness club, this is something you can also negotiate. Maybe you get the same perks as you currently have on your current plan, but you downgrade to the lower planning. Or maybe this is just one of those things where you just try to get the rate reduced and you can save 10 to $30 per month.

Every single time that I have canceled a gym membership. Now I have a home gym, so I don't go to a gym anymore, but every single time I have canceled a gym membership. They try to offer me an introductory rate. Look at the introductory rates that are out there for new members. See if you can get that locked in a long term for you, not just for a year, not just for two years, but doing it over and over again is really important.

See if they'll waive those annual fees. Maybe they will freeze a couple of months, but you can still go to the gym. Lots of things that you can do here, but always threatening to cancel. Works very well when it comes to gym memberships. Storage units. Another great thing that you can negotiate, you can save anywhere from 10 to 30%, and this is why a lot of times I recommend going to mom and pop storage units if you can, because.

Typically they are willing to negotiate and they're willing to keep. It's a lot more of a headache to have a turnover than it is just to make sure that they keep you on hand. But if there's a lot of competitors nearby as well, you can definitely negotiate this security systems if you have one that is gonna be one that you can negotiate.

A lot and you could just compare them to two other folks out there, 10 to $40 per month at least, and you can get equipment credits as well. Just say, Hey, I want some updated equipment. Then if I'm gonna stay on, otherwise I'm gonna cancel. They can come and update that equipment if they're gonna keep you at those same rates.

But you should always be doing this stuff. I mean, you should always, always, always be doing this stuff. HOA fees another one that you could negotiate. And I have seen people do it successfully. It is a lot harder to nego HOA fees. So if you have the ability. And you are very good at negotiating. This is an advance tactic for sure, and I have seen people do it successfully.

Car payments, let's say for example, something changed in your financial life and you are making car payments right now and it's really just boom, just crushing you over the course of the long term. You run total cost of ownership and you say to yourself, ah, I got an issue here. You either need to negotiate the rates, the interest rate on your car payment, and that's what I would highly recommend you do and or negotiate the way that you're structuring these car payments.

You need to run total cost of ownership first before you do that, and then streaming services a lot harder to do this. Most subscriptions though, you can look at negotiating and see if you can, but usually the rate is the rate. If you threaten to cancel, they are based on volume and so they're not gonna care as much.

And then utilities. This is very limited and in regulated states there is no flexibility here. But in deregulated states, you can shop providers and at least shopping around for providers can't help you. Like in where I live, there's no other providers. I am stuck in a monopoly and I just pay what they ask me to pay.

And it's really frustrating and I absolutely hate it, but it is one of those things that I don't know why. That is still legal, to be honest, because it doesn't help us as consumers whatsoever. This is the reason why they got rid of monopolies. I'm not gonna get on my soapbox here, but this is the reason why they got rid of monopolies and then all of a sudden now we have all these monopolies in place.

But anyways, that's gonna be a fun thing. So let's say for example, someone came into play. And they negotiated an internet bill at $300 per year. They negotiated their insurance at $700 per year. They got their rent reduced down at $1,800 per year, and they got their cell phone reduced at $240 per year.

And a medical bill in $400 in savings. That's $3,000 plus from just making a few phone calls. Most of you listening right now, most likely don't make $3,000 for making a few phone calls, and so investing that long term, that could be life changing. There's an opportunity cost to that money that you're saving every single year.

And I wanna show you what that looks like. Let's give a realistic savings example here like we just gave, but I want to go through one that has a big, big deal. Okay? Let's say you got your rent reduced, you avoided an increase, and you saved yourself $1,800 per year. Well, if a rent increase was going to happen and then you made sure that it wasn't going to happen, let's pretend like it did increase and let's take those extra dollars and put them somewhere really, really valuable.

Two is, let's say you also. Went out and then you called up your auto and home insurance provider and you started to negotiate with them. You shopped your rates around with different providers out there. You called an independent insurance agent. They helped you shop around those rates. And let's say you saved $350 in each $700 total on your insurance.

That would actually be low when you shop your insurance. But let's say you did it and you did this every single year and tried to find ways to save money on your insurance. Well, that is fantastic. That's another $700 on the line. And you called up your internet provider, you saved yourself another $500 per year with your internet and phone providers.

That's a huge deal. And let's say you had a medical bill or some other miscellaneous bills that you got negotiated down for another $500 per year. Well that's $3,500 in a single year just from doing that. Not extreme. This is completely realistic, and this is something I have seen time and time again and year in and year out.

I see people doing this over and over. We have seen people inside Master Money Academy negotiating their bills and saving money just by doing this every single year. And so I challenge you. Right now at the end of this episode, when this is done, after we go through this system here, I want you to negotiate just one bill after this episode.

And when you negotiate that bill, I want you to comment the savings down below. I want you to let us know how much did you save collectively as wealth builders out here. I want each and every single one of you, let's do this together. Let's feed off each other. Let's show each other how it can be done.

And this is what we do inside Master Money Academy. We make sure that we are helping each other and feeding off this stuff. And so I want you to negotiate one bill. That's it. Just one. And tell us how much you saved, and I want you to tell us how much you saved in a given year. So if you saved $50, guess what?

You just saved yourself $600 in a given year. That is huge. And so I want you to comment that down below as we go through this. Okay? So let's say in this example, someone saved $3,500 in a. Well, let's say that happened every year and we decided, okay, we're gonna negotiate your bills every single year and we're gonna get this savings going.

Well, if you took that extra $3,500 per year and you put that and invested it into a long-term index fund with an 8% rate of return, I'm not going 10% on this, I'm going 8%. Let's get a little conservative here. We looked at this at 8%. Over the course of 30 years, you would've saved yourself $396,000 in total if you invested that money and you let it grow and you let compound interest get to work.

But here's the crazy part. Over the course of 40 years, just 10 years longer, you're like, you just kept doing this. Even in a retirement, you were continuing to negotiate your bills. This is just something you do. You negotiate your bills and you invest the difference every single time. You'd have $907,000.

At an 8% rate of return, at a 10% rate of return. This is a multimillion dollar decision. It's a decision for you to negotiate your bills that you're gonna save over a million dollars just by negotiating your bills and taking the money and investing it instead, or just by negotiating your bills. You could take that money and you can go on your vacation, use it as your vacation fund.

If that's what motivates you to do this because you hate doing it, then go and do it that way. I want you to have more experiences. I want you to have more fun with your money. I want you to enjoy your money, and negotiation is one of the steps to get you there. But let's even look at smaller savings.

Let's say for example, someone only saves $1,800 per year. Is that still worth it? Is it worth my time to save $1,800? I mean, most of us know it, most likely is we can go make it rain on whatever we want to go love to do. Maybe you like to, you know, maybe you have a bunch of great hobbies and you wanna go buy something and or you wanna put it towards future you, I want you to put it towards future you, you know that.

But at the same time, if you're taking care of retirement and you just want to save some extra cash, this is a great way to do that. That's just $150 saved per month is $1,800 per year at an 8% rate of return. Over the course of 30 years, you're saving yourself $204,000. So here's the real lesson here.

This is not about frugality. This is about the true opportunity cost. These are real dollars that if you get them invested over the long run, you can make a huge impact on your retirement. In fact, if you got to a million dollars saved just by negotiating your bills, guess what? A million dollars is $40,000 per year that you could draw down in retirement, and in reality, you could probably draw down even a little bit more than that 45, $50,000 per year and still be a okay.

And this is where you really need to understand that you are building cash flow for yourself. Just by negotiating your bills, just by doing this simple task. And then just redirecting where those dollars are gonna go. And every time you do this, just automate a little bit more into your investment account.

Just automate a little bit more into that savings goal. Just automate a little bit more into that savings bucket. All of this is gonna really, really matter over the course of the long term. If you don't negotiate, there's a true opportunity cost here because if you don't learn how to negotiate, if you decide, eh, this is, I'm not gonna do this.

Why would I even do this? The true opportunity cost is you're losing out on a few thousand bucks every single year, and you're losing out on the value of those dollars, meaning the opportunity cost of compound interest if you invested them, or the opportunity cost of being able to achieve your financial goals.

That my friends, is a huge, huge deal. And I really, really want you to take advantage of this. Okay? So what we're gonna do next is I just showed you some of the bills that you can negotiate, and there's even more than that. And we don't wanna just go on forever on talking about the bills that you can negotiate, but I just showed you the bills that you can negotiate.

Next, what I'm going to do is I am going to give you step by step, step-by-step, exactly how to do this. Now, some specific bills, and the reason why I, I wanted to go through some of those bills is that there are things that you wanna throw in to make them worth your while You want to. The rent example. If they won't negotiate your rent down, you wanna make sure they don't increase it.

And if they don't increase it, you wanna throw in some extra stuff, get some extra free parking, get some storage, get some incentives in place, get something where you know, if you sign a longer lease, maybe they would reduce your rent that way. There's just things that you can throw in that I want you to think about your specific negotiation strategies and where you want this to go.

And if you have specific negotiation strategies that you absolutely love and you have done before, share it with wealth builders down below in the comment. Share them with each other. I wanna hear from you guys because this is gonna be something that I think is really, really important. So on Spotify or YouTube, you can comment, an Apple podcast is releasing video, by the way, which is gonna be fantastic.

So you'll be able to comment down below on Apple Podcast too, and other platforms. So this is great because now we get comments in place and we can share these wins with each other. So we can hear about this stuff. All right, so here's what we're gonna do. After this break, I'm gonna dive into the step-by-step system on exactly how you need to negotiate your bills and the process and the way that you need to think about this.

I'm gonna show you how to stay organized. I'm gonna give you some scripts on how you can do this, but we're gonna go through all of these steps in order so that you know what to do next, and you can take action right after this episode. So let's dive into that next, right after this break. So step one, and the first thing you need to do is you need to know your numbers.

This is the bill audit phase, meaning you need to understand how much you're currently paying. Now, this may sound obvious to some of you, but some of you need to make sure that you are educated before you make the phone call. You can't just call somebody up and they say, well, what? Lemme look up your current bill and you don't know what your bill already is.

And so we need to first pull the right statements. So I want you to go and pull the last three months of statements just to make sure there wasn't an adjustment, there wasn't a change that you weren't aware of. And instead, you can have those three bills right in front of you, the very first bill from when you signed up.

I also want you to have that in place because you're. Most likely, if you've been a long-term customer, these prices could have gone up and any recent sale or notice changes, if you need some of those notice changes, you can check your email. That's the easiest place to do this. Why? Because you wanna identify a couple of different things.

One, did a promo code expire? Well, if it is, is you want that promo back, I mean, that is gonna be a big deal overall. Two, when the price jumped, how long has it been since the price jumped? And three, which line items have changed on your specific. Bill, many people only look at the total. You wanna make sure that you look at all the components so that you're educated when you start to have this conversation.

Because components matter. Why? Because we can negotiate individual components. Sometimes it's harder to negotiate a bill as a whole, and instead we wanna make sure that we negotiate components two. Is I want you to break the bill into categories. Okay? So I want you to take one bill and write down the fixed base charge.

So what is the fixed base charge of what they're charging? So an internet plan is a big deal when it comes to this because internet plans typically will have a bunch of different charges in the bill, and it'll just have one total. But when you break it down and you look at this, you'll see, okay, well the internet base plan is $59 and 99 cents per month.

The modem rental is $15 a month. Well. Do I need to continue to rent this modem? And here's the thing about internet charges, by the way, and I'm gonna get on a, a tangent here, but here's the thing about internet charges is if you're renting a modem for $15 every single month, you just need to go out and buy one until that thing dies or, and or technology changes.

And you need to upgrade it. Why? Because if you are renting a modem for $15 a month, that means you're gonna be renting for the rest of your life. And so instead just going out and buying one, or you can find 'em on Marketplace left and right Now, pro tip, the same exact ones that these companies have. You can go find them on marketplace or find an improved version somewhere else, for example, and that's specifically for modems and routers.

Routers are more specific to what I'm talking about here, but this is something that you definitely can do. Then the router, let's say the router is 10 bucks and you get a DVR or like a lot of times they used to throw in Apple TVs with my providers and they would say, Hey, here's this Apple tv, and most people don't even realize they're paying 12 to $15 per month and all that other stuff.

Equipment fees are really easy targets for negotiation, and sometimes if they won't negotiate price, you can look at some of the equipment charges, and the same thing goes for medical bills. This is why we itemize those bills and all those different things. Then you wanna look at taxes and miscellaneous fees.

If there is like regulatory recovery fees, or for cable, maybe there's a broadcast TV surcharge, or an admin fee, or a service charge, all of those are gonna be very negotiables. Maybe they have add-ons, so let's keep using the example of your cable or tv. Maybe you have a streaming package. Or you have premium channels, or maybe with your insurance you have roadside assistance and you already have AAA or something else in place, or maybe you have identity monitoring with some of these.

These are gonna be things that you wanna make sure that you understand what you added on when you first got this service, because it could be that the introductory offer allowed you to have that service for free, but now you're getting charged for it and you don't really use that service anymore. So this is why we wanna look at these bills, break down exactly what we are doing, and break down exactly what we're trying to figure out.

I want you to identify on the bill when that trigger event happened, when did your bill price go up? If it did, and when did it happen? Did the promotional discount expire? Was there some sort of intro rate that ended? Was there an annual premium adjustment and why did that happen and was there a market rate change?

All of those are important to know, and all of those are things that we need to make sure that we are looking at now. Next, we wanna calculate the true monthly cost. So adding all these line items up that is gonna give you your true monthly cost. This is going to be exactly the number that you need to know because now what we wanna do is research competitors.

We wanna understand, okay, this is our true monthly cost. Now I want you to research competitors so you can build some real leverage because what you're trying to do here. Is you're trying to look for competitors that either have lower rates or have additional services or things that they're offering or providing that can help you build some real.

Leverage. Okay, so this is very important and this is a huge key, especially when you're negotiating with bills that have competitors in place. Okay? So go to your provider's website and you can go in incognito mode. In Incognito mode is going to show you offers that may not show up on your browser because you are currently a customer and you.

Automatically are signing in or something like that. And so making sure you go to your current provider first and look up the new customer pricing. You wanna look up intro promotions, you wanna look at some of the bundles they're offering, and you can even look at gift cards or incentives that they're offering as well, because sometimes you can just get a gift card thrown in and that would be a big deal for a lot of folks.

So. This is gonna help a lot. I want you to search two or three competitors if they exist. So for internet, this might be looking for fiber providers or looking for cable competitors, or 5G internet options. For insurance, this is getting at least three quotes. You always wanna get at least three quotes when it comes to insurance.

This is getting the same coverage or the same deductible, and making sure you're comparing apples to apples here for cell phones, maybe you're comparing unlimited plans or you're watching data caps. These are all gonna be things that you want to compare because number three is I want you to compare apples to apples, okay?

This is critical. If you look at an insurance policy that is very different from your current insurance policy, well, you may be looking at coverage that is way worse for you in your financial situation. And so you don't wanna just do that. You wanna make sure it's apples to apples, same coverage, or same provider, or same speeds, those types of things.

Now, if they are offering, this just happened to me with my internet provider, another provider that was a competitor in the area. Was offering way faster internet plus a $500 gift card for less than what I was currently paying and my current provider could offer. You know what I did? I ended up just switching because they don't even offer internet as fast as the other provider does.

So I switched over to the other provider and I could not be happier. It was one of the best things I ever did. And so this is the same thing, is identifying what that would be and identify what the switching cost is because this is another big deal. You need to understand that if you do switch over to another provider, you threaten it and they don't take the bait, and so you're gonna switch to another provider because you can save money that way instead of having to negotiate.

Well, if you do switch to another provider, what does the switching cost? A lot of times providers will say, okay, hey, I'm gonna send somebody out to your house, but it's gonna cost you $120 to have that technician come out. Well, what does that cost? You know, that is gonna be a big deal too. And then you wanna decide for each one of these bills, each bills that you're gonna negotiate, what is your walkaway number?

When are you gonna cancel? What is the number that you need to get to before you actually cancel? So these are the big keys, is I want you to just do some prep work upfront and then we're gonna dive now into step three. So step three is to get to the right person. We are trying to get typically to the retention department.

Okay? And so when we start to negotiate bills, this is where most people mess up. They call and they talk to the first rep, and they start to have this conversation and they hang up. But what you really wanna do is make sure that you are talking to a person who has authority to help you, someone who can go up to bat for you, someone who can actually reduce your price.

Why this matters is because there are frontline customer service reps who are just taking in calls and cannot apply loyalty pricing. They can't really help you in a certain situation, and so you wanna make sure that you are looking at retention reps because they can apply some of this pricing. They're gonna ask you a bunch of questions.

They're gonna have a conversation with you and they can help you match competitor offers. And so you wanna make sure you're getting to the right person. And so how do you get to those retention reps? Well, here's a script that you can use right here, and we'll put this on the screen as well, so you could check this out.

Hi, I'm reviewing my expenses and considering canceling service, could you help me with that? Canceling is the key word here. This is the word that you wanna make sure that you have in place because this almost always is going to route you to retention or loyalty or account specialists. Those are all different words for people who are just trying to help retain you as a customer.

The names differ, but what they actually do does not. Now, the tone that you want when you're doing these negotiations, by the way, is you're just calm, you're logical. And you're financially reviewing the entire time you do this process. This is a negotiation. This is something that you need to make sure.

You are just in negotiation, a back and forth. Now, retention reps, a lot of times they're trained to keep you, so let them do their job. This is gonna be really important. Now, when they ask why you're canceling, I'm gonna give you another script that you can state so that you can tell them exactly what you're saying.

Here's an example. My bill went from $59 to $93 after the promo expired. Competitors are offering $49 and I can't justify staying at this new rate. Be very specific. Okay? When we do this, be very specific as you do this, that you've already done your homework. You know exactly what's going on, and you know which numbers you want.

Use numbers and keep it short. Don't babble on, don't talk too much. Instead talk as little as you possibly can with getting the point across. Just say the sentence and then let them talk. Now, here's the lesson that I want you to learn. As you start this conversation, the first offer they give you is never, it's almost never the best offer they can give you.

They are taught to give you different tiers and ranges. A lot of times they'll offer you, Hey, 10 bucks off. A lot of people will just take that, and so they are saving some of their revenue by just giving you 10 bucks off, but don't accept it immediately. What I want you to do is when they give you an offer, pause, then say this, here's the exact script, right?

We're gonna put it on the screen. That's helpful, but it is still significantly higher than other options. Is there anything else available? Then go quiet. Let them check again. They're gonna check. You're gonna hear a little typing. Get a little free A SMR going on there, and then next you're gonna be able to decide or make a decision.

Now if they push back and they say, this is the best we can do, there's a couple of different things that you can say here. Ready? Alright. You can say, can you check if there are any loyalty promotions that I qualify for? If they say no, say, is there a supervisor who can review this account now if they still won't budge after these asks.

You can then accept or politely follow through and schedule cancellation. Now, it is very important that you are calm. It is very important that you are rational, polite, and prepared. Those are the four things. Calm, rational, polite, and prepared. People who yell at customer service reps really don't get very far, and I want you to make sure that you are calm.

I have seen people try to tactically yell at reps. That's not kind. That's not what wealth builders do. That's not what we do here. We don't want you doing that. We don't want you to be nasty or mean to anybody. And so really we want you to do this in a way. That makes sense. And in reality, when you are calm, you are going to win in that situation.

So lemme give you an example flow. Okay. Let me give an example flow of exactly how this could work. Okay. You say I'm reviewing my expenses and may need to cancel. They're gonna say they why? And then you say, my rate increase to $93, competitors are at $49, and I'd like to stay, but not at this price.

They're gonna say, well, we can offer $79. Here's an offer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, with this package here. And you could say that's closer. And I really appreciate you looking at the end of this. But is there anything else available? They can say, we can do $64 for 12 months, and that's how the dance works.

You're gonna go back and forth, back and forth until you get the number you want. Continue to keep asking. Let them reject you a couple times in a row, then you know that's as low as they can go. But keep asking, keep pushing and just keep saying, I just don't think that's low enough. Is there anything else you can do before I cancel?

I'm sorry I have to do this, but competitors have this number and the advanced way to do this is to try to get below the competitor's number. See if you can get there. If any of you get there, let me know. And then the comments below. Alright, now step four, let's talk about the script a little more. And I wanna dive into the script a little more because I, I think scripts are really helpful for people and they're really important for people.

If you're watching this on Spotify or YouTube, you can screenshot these scripts so that you can utilize them if you want to. Uh, but I want you to think through exactly how to handle objections too. So. The core structure of a call, and I wanna make sure that we talk about this, is that you establish and review, make sure that they review what, what your current plan is.

Okay? Then you present the numbers that you want, you request specific action, and then you handle the objections one at a time. That's what we're gonna try to do here. So the exact base script, and I, you can say this word for word. If you want to, you can put it down right in front of you as you start this.

Hey, thanks for taking the time. I'm reviewing my monthly expenses and my bill increased to $93 after the promo expired. I've seen competitors offering around $49. I'd prefer to stay, but I can't justify that price difference. What options are available now, this sentence does everything. Why? Because you're calm, you're financially logical.

It mentions a competitor. It indicates your willingness to leave and invites them to solve the problem for you. And so that's how you can start this off now. Objection handling. 'cause this is where most people lose. And I want you to get over some of these objections. I want you to learn how to, to get over these objections so it can help you overall.

Let's say they say that is the best we can do. Well here's a, a script that you can use. I understand. Are there any loyalty promotions, supervisor level discounts or bundled pricing options that haven't been applied yet? Then pause, objection two. Let's say you ask for new customer pricing and they say that is new customer pricing.

You could say, I understand, but I've been a loyal customer for X amount of years. I'd rather not switch, but it doesn't make sense for a new customer to pay less than I do. Objection Number three, and this is a very common one, is we can downgrade your service. And if you don't want your service downgraded, here's what you say, that's helpful if I can keep my current plan, but what's the lowest you can go?

Never accept a downgrade first unless you actually want it. Okay, objection. Four is you're in a contract. So what you can say is when does that end, and are there any account credits or adjustments available in the meantime? So each time there's a power in silence, and I want you to make sure that you are silent.

After you say some of these sentences, make sure the sentences are short, make sure they're quick, and then be quiet. Let them answer you. Let them look it up. Let them do most of the talking. Then you can take the things that they give you and you can utilize those as part of your negotiation. Okay? So every single time you could just keep saying, well, is there anything else available?

You can use that line over and over again because silence creates pressure and you wanna make sure that the pressure is on. So they offer you the best possible thing that you can get. Now, if they offer you a small offer, a couple of other things that you can do, let's say we can lower it by $10, you could say.

I appreciate that. If we could get closer to $60, I would stay today. Or let's say that you decide, okay, well now it's time to escalate this. And so if you feel stuck, if you feel like you're getting anywhere, then you can say, Hey, would it help if I scheduled cancellation and waited to see if a retention promotion becomes available?

'cause this shows you're about to cancel and you're gonna see if there is a retention promotion available to you if they're not gonna be willing to give it to you. Now, when do you truly actually cancel? When do you decide you're going to cancel? If there truly is a better option? That is number one.

Number two, if switching costs are very low, meaning it's not gonna cost you a lot to get a new provider, that's a great one. They refuse to budge on your number, but there are those lower options that's three. And if you are already prepared to leave anyway and you're just trying to see if you can get a better deal.

That is number four. And so really trying to strive to get some of that reduced is gonna be very, very important. Alright, now step five is we wanna automate bill negotiations for life. Because this is not a one-time event. We wanna make sure that we are doing this all the time. And so what I want you to do is twice per year I want you to create what we call bill audit day.

This is the day where you're gonna audit your subscriptions and you're gonna go through all your bills and decide I need to negotiate these bills. So twice a year, you can do this in January, and you can do this in June. That are the easiest months to do this. You probably don't wanna do this in the holiday season or during Christmas time, so you can do it right after the holidays and do it in January.

Start to negotiate then, and then you can do it in June. This is gonna help you keep track of this and understand when this stuff happens. So because this isn't a one-time event, a lot of promos are gonna expire. Rates are gonna creep up, fees are gonna creep in, and so you wanna make sure that you're looking at this all the time.

This is an active activity, so you don't have to do all the time, but it's better to just set up one day every six months that you can put into place. So I want you to put it in your calendar and block it out on your calendar on those specific days. Now, on that day, what I want you to do, and this is very tactical, but I want you to go and review all your recurring bills and like a tool like Monarch Money, for example, has a great option where you can go in and look at your recurring bills.

Then I want you to check for rate increases. If rates have increased, why have they increased? And that is gonna be very important. You can compare competitors and you can make calls if needed. So this should take you about 30 minutes twice per year to save you thousands of dollars. Really high ROI on your time.

Really great spot for your time, and I really want you to do this two track expiration dates. So if you get a new promo, like if you successfully negotiate, but the promo is only for 12 months or it's for six months or eight months. Track those expiration dates every time I put these in my calendar. And make sure I remember and set up a reminder maybe a couple weeks before this has always, always, always been very beneficial to me.

'cause every time I see that, then I go ahead and make sure that we go through the process again. 30 days before that promo expires is the minimum that I want you to put in your calendar, uh, to make sure that you know when this is going to happen. Never let a promo expire unnoticed again, just by doing this simple system, it doesn't take you much time at all guys.

It does not take much time at all. Now I want you to use the three category rule because I put every single bill into three separate types of categories. Number one is negotiate. So what should you negotiate? Your internet bill, your medical bills, your insurance bills. Those are the ones you wanna negotiate.

Number two is eliminate. So this is gonna be things like subscriptions or add-ons. Those would be the things you wanna eliminate. And number three is to automate lower. This could be refinancing or bundling or switching plans. Okay? And even with your loans, like automating lower is the refinance part.

Like you can look at your loans if you have some loans in place and you can look for places to refinance this, and every six months, run all your bills through all three of these lenses so that you know exactly where they need to land. Then automate where you can, because insurance comparison tools are gonna really, really help you.

Our insurance comparison tool that we have linked up down below is fantastic for car insurance. Cell phone plan. Comparison tools are great. They're subscription trackers. I use Monarch money to track my subscriptions, and then there are annual credit card a PR checks that you could also do. And then also the last thing I would say is decide on your minimum savings threshold.

Let's say for example, that a hundred bucks really isn't worth your time. You don't feel like calling 'em up for a hundred bucks. Well, okay then maybe if you save $10 a month, it's not worth your time. But anything above $10 a month, you feel as though it is worth your time. Just set those minimum thresholds and then start to stack those wins.

I want you to track these wins 'cause I think they're fun for a lot of people out there is if you save money, track them so you know, Hey, I need to automate this amount over to something else that I actually want these dollars to go to. People who are not wealth builders, they'll just let this money commingle in their checking, or they'll save money and they won't actually allocate where those dollars need to go next.

You need to automate where those dollars go next so that you can actually achieve the goals that you want to. So if you save $3,000, then you need to make sure that $300,000 gets automated. So you take 3000, divide it by 12, and that's how much you save every single month into wherever you want this money to go.

Maybe it's a Roth IRA. Maybe it's your 401k. Maybe it's going towards your savings bucket. Maybe it's your down payment fund for a home. Maybe it's your down payment fund for a car. Maybe it's going to your kids' college savings. Maybe it's going towards a wedding fund. It doesn't matter what it is. All of these savings is going to add up and every single time you do this, just remember that you are funding future youer.

You are funding the next thing that you want to pursue. That is where people are going to win. Okay. The overall lesson is knowing this is a six figure decision and could be a seven figure decision depending on how much you save. Number two is knowing that you have to continuously do this twice every single year.

Allocate someone in the household to do this so that they are in charge of this task. Number three is making sure. That you know your numbers and you're gonna get better and better at this. As time goes on, maybe the first time around you save yourself 1500 bucks, that's okay. You're gonna get better and better as time goes on.

And this is a skill that is going to translate into life because if you can negotiate your bills, you can negotiate your salary. And if you can negotiate your salary, you can negotiate a big business deal. And if you can negotiate a big business deal, then you can really. Really make a lot of money. And so there's a lot of different things in life where you're gonna have to negotiate, and so this skill is really, really powerful.

There's a book called Never Split. The Difference That I Love On Negotiation. You don't need it to negotiate your bills fully, but it is an advance. There's advanced tactics in there that are gonna help you when you think about this. Be willing to ask. It is someone else's job to say no. It is not your job to say no in your head, so be willing to ask and repeat this system forever because this is gonna save you so much money and if you invest those dollars, compound interest is going to take over.

And I really, really highly encourage you. To get in there and do that. Listen, if you wanna learn systems just like this, the one we just talked about, and you wanna learn how to reduce your stress and anxiety around money, you feel as though you are running around and you don't know what to do with your next dollar, and you don't know where your money's going every single month, and you're overspending and you just have all of this stress.

Then I want you to consider Master Money Academy. Master Money Academy is where we give people the step-by-step financial plan of what they need to do with their next dollar. But not only that, we give you peace of mind. We reduce your stress and anxiety around money. We make sure that you are confident and comfortable with what you are doing with your next.

If you ever get stuck, we have weekly coaching calls with me specifically where you can ask me questions every single week on your specific financial situation. No matter how small or big your question is, we answer 'em every single week in Master Money Academy. For example, this week we had questions from, Hey, how much do I keep in my checking account?

All the way up to advanced estate planning questions? And this is where we want you to know that Master Money Academy is one of the most powerful places that you can spend your time and energy because you're gonna be in a community of people. Who are all focusing on one goal, which is to build wealth.

If you are new to investing, we have a ton of new investors who are learning inside Master Money Academy and they are taking Index Fund Pro, and they're going through that process. If you're a high earner, but just feel like you're not saving enough, we have tons of high earners inside Master Money Academy who are struggling with the same thing and working through it.

If you get to the end of the month and you just don't know where your money goes, you know you're overspending and you don't know how to fix it, we can help you in Master Money Academy as well. Stop stressing, stop worrying, and decide to invest in yourself. So I'm gonna offer something special to podcast listeners.

We're gonna get a seven day free trial to see behind the curtain so you can see exactly what we're all about, because you don't really know until you actually see. And so I invite you to join Mastermind Academy. Can't wait to see you inside.