Bobbi Rebell, financial expert and author of Launching Financial Grownups: Live Your Richest Life by Helping Your (Almost) Adult Kids Become Everyday Money Smart, gives some tips on how to negotiate your bills to save serious money. 

<div class="block">Bobbi Rebell, financial expert and author of <i>Launching Financial Grownups: Live Your Richest Life by Helping Your (Almost) Adult Kids Become Everyday Money Smart, </i>gives some tips on how to negotiate your bills to save serious money. </div>
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Wake Up With Cheddar

Stretching Your Dollar: Negotiate Your Bills to Save Serious Money 

And welcome back everyone to wake up. We chat our time now for stretching your dollar. This is our daily segment all about consumer finance and today we're gonna learn about negotiating your way to some big savings on your bills. So joining us is our friend Bobby Rell Ceo of Financial Wellness strategist. She's also the author of the book launching Financial Grown Ups and shows the podcast Wellness for Financial Grown Ups as well. Bobby. Good to see you as always. So people might think it's impossible to negotiate their gas or their electric bill. It's just the bill is the same no matter what. But there are some utility companies that might be a little flexible here. Yes. Well, the key thing to remember is is your bill something that is a secured loan or unsecured. So if it's secured something like your car payment or your mortgage, well, they've got collateral on you. So they're not going to be as open to it. But the truth is things like credit card bills, you mentioned utility bills, streaming services and such. They want to keep you as a customer. They don't want to start in with those collection agencies. So there's a lot more maneuverable with those kinds of bills. I've noticed I've done this with streaming services is a lot of places. If you say you will leave or cancel your subscription, they will do anything they can to keep you in even if it's a lower bill here. Talk about the lower bills. How much can you save by negotiating one of these bills? I'll give you a couple of statistics. So for example, um in terms of credit card bills, you can, you can negotiate the interest rate, you could also negotiate late fees, get them to waive them, especially if you've been a consistent good customer. Sometimes you can even negotiate the balance that gets a lot trickier. But credit cards dot com did a survey and they found that 56% of people that tried to negotiate those credit card bills, the uh I should say the interest rate were successful and the average savings 50. So you got good odds and the average savings was 5.5%. Wow, that is really, really worth trying. A lot of people don't even know that they can actually do that. So I think that's sort of the big thing here. So how do you start the negotiating process? What do you sort of say here? Well, first of all, you know, try to get to a human, which is the biggest challenge of all. So just be patient, work through the system. You can start often through texting. You can maybe you're gonna get a bot at first, but then you can work through to get to a human and then you know, be human back. So be nice, be polite. Maybe share some context to why you want the bill lowered. Maybe share, share that you've been a good customer, maybe share something about your life. If it's a medical bill, dental bill, those are often very not, I don't wanna say easy to negotiate, but there's a lot of flexible there because they are so inflated, right? So share some context, maybe why the bill is so high and then don't throw out the first numbers, see what they do and then go from there. Don't be afraid of the awkward silence, right? Don't give up so quickly. And then if you're not happy, don't be afraid to ask to speak to somebody else or even conclude the call and try again, you may get somebody else. I think you hit the nail and head kindness at the end of the day. A lot matters a lot. What about rent? I know, especially here in New York, a lot of people worry about that. Can you negotiate your rent? Well, you can always try. The reality is that you have to look at the context and you have to be realistic. You want to be aspirational, but the truth is you may may or may not, but it's worth trying, you can sometimes negotiate a free month, you may be able to negotiate other things, maybe other concessions, like, maybe they can include your utility bill, different things like that. But you also have to, unfortunately, and I'm thinking of New York be realistic about the market. You may have to make a change. Yeah. But the worst thing they say, you know, which is where you. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And I do want to point out though, if the rents are getting higher and you think they're gonna get even higher, if it's at a level that you can afford, now, maybe you want to negotiate a longer lease so that you can work in the current rate. So there are things that you can do. All right, Bobby Orbe, author of launching Financial Grown Ups and certified Financial Planner. Thank you so much.