Benefits of Balancing Your Checkbook

Yesterday I was balancing my checkbook and there was an item that was too much. We were charged $43.99 for our internet after I had called and changed to RoadRunner Lite so that our bill would stay at our promotional rate of $34.99 that we'd been paying for the past year. I really hoped that by changing to "Lite" our bill would go down but at least I found out it wouldn't go up.

Anyway, while I was balancing my checkbook I noticed that we had been charged $43.99 so I called TimeWarner. The first guy I talked to was no help at all and couldn't tell me why I was charged more and said that from what he saw that our bill should be around $54 (what???). I told him that Damon, who I'd talked to on 2/7 (yay for keeping records) told me that my bill should be $34.99. He told me that it was a billing issue and he couldn't help me. I asked to talk to billing.

Marcia, who I talked to in billing, explained that the bill had already been put through before I had called previously and that my next bill (that I haven't received yet) will be $26 to make up for it. Then she held me on the line to see if she could find a better deal for me. She asked if, with my permission, she could bump us back up to high speed internet for $29.99/mo. "$5 less for faster internet? Um, yes, thank you!!" We get to have the cheaper rate for a year (provided that it transfers with us to Lowville). Yay! So glad I called!

I have been using a couple of excel spreadsheets that I found and modified to make it easy to keep track of our spending and I love it. Yesterday, besides time on the phone with Time Warner, I was able to balance our check book and close out February, complete with pretty graphs of how we spent our money in less than 10 minutes. The spreadsheets have made my life so much easier to see how off track of our budget we are and the nerd in me is very happy. If you'd like copies of my spreadsheets (based loosely on Dave Ramsey's categories) let me know.

Thanks God for cheaper internet and a quick, easy way to keep track of our finances :)