Quick Money

Have you ever had one of those days that make you wonder why you got out of bed in the morning? I got up thinking it would be a wonderful day..........before long, I was questioning that.

When I came out for my first cup of coffee, hubby told me he'd already been in an online chat with our internet provider. When we contacted them about moving our service to the apartment, we were told that since we were “loyal customers” (i.e., we didn't dump them for someone else), they would reduce our bill by $15 a month for one year.......and there would be no installation fee. When hubby got our online bill this morning, we were charged almost three times what our normal monthly bill had been.

The good news is that they have people ready for chats at a moment's notice. By the time I got up, hubby had participated in a nice chat with someone from another part of the world, and $100 had been deducted from that bill. I'm sure hubby hadn't been happy about handling that so early in the morning, but he was successful.

Before I started lunch, I went down to the lobby to pick up our mail. We got our local utility bill for our last full month in the house. I expected it to be around $150.......it runs about $125 in a normal month, but between February 10 and March 10 we'd had several cold nights where we left our water dripping to avoid frozen water pipes and I knew the bill would be higher. I nearly had a heart attack before the elevator came back to pick me up – the utility bill was $745. All I could do was nervously chuckle as I kept reading it - $647 of that was electric.

For the past few years, we've had to pay what many people think are ridiculous sewer rates on our utility bills – because for years the local charge was less than what it should have been. When the city applied for a grant to help build a new sewer plant, they were told that wouldn't happen until the city got its sewer rates up to par. So our sewer rates have been rising dramatically over the past few years. So I've been used to seeing our bill with a sewer fee charge that's higher than our water usage charge. But $647 worth of electricity in a month??!!! For two people in a five-room house???

I came in and told hubby we got our bill – his face was kind of priceless when I told him the amount. I grabbed the phone and called – and they immediately sent someone to the house to re-read the meter. We got a call back and $600 was knocked off the total bill. We jumped in the car, went to the utility office and paid it before they could change their minds!

We both kept our cool while handling these issues, and everything was resolved satisfactorily. So I decided I would use the “glass half full” way of looking at this – before noon today, we saved $700. Not bad for half a day's work – that will fund a lot of purses and new shoes!