I received a press release in the inbox today from BillShrink. It had some tips about saving gas this summer, including:
- Use overdrive gears--those gears slow your car's engine, conserving gas.
- Don't drive aggressively--braking and accellerating rapidly is very inefficient.
- Use cruise control--driving a consistent speed saves gas.
Those tips are decent enough (albeit a bit obvious), but the press release made me look up BillShrink at billshrink.com, because I was not familiar with the name.
Turns out that BillShrink is a great free site that helps you maximize your money. We've profiled budgeting tools before in the Modern Money Managers blog series, but BillShrink takes it to the next level. Rather than serving as an aggregator to help you see where your money is being spent, BillShrink helps you find the best deals on cell phones, gas, credit cards and savings accounts. For each category, BillShrink asks a series of general questions that tailor the results to meet your needs.
For example, I wanted to see if I could save money on my cell phone plan. Here's how the process went down--BillShrink's questions and my answers in parenthesis:
- Average bill ($95)
- Number of anytime minutes (600)
- Number of lines (2)
- Line 1 Texts (Unlimited)
- Line 2 Texts (Unlimited)
- Line 1 Data (None)
- Current Carrier (AT&T Wireless)
- Carrier Contract (2 year)
- Plan Features (free nights & weekends - 9pm)
- Time remaining on contract (3 months)
- Home Address (this doesn't need to be published on a blog)
I found out that if I want to keep unlimited text, then I have the best plan available for my circumstances. To avoid all the questions, I could have allowed BillShrink to access my cell phone bill directly by inputting my cell phone number and wireless account password.
I also quickly found the cheapest place to buy gas near where I live. BillShrink showed all the rates in the area and calculated the cost per gallon to drive the mileage to each one, in order to give me the most savings.
BillShrink seems like a great tool, and they also have BillShrink for Business. There's no excuse to keep spending more money than you have too.
--Jens
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