Were there any unnecessary expenses we could cut down on? Perhaps. But before asking ourselves to sacrifice, why not ask the people that we were paying to sacrifice instead?

I’ve done this a few times in the past. Most of the time, simply calling up a service provider of yours and asking them for a discount on your monthly bill will work small wonders. The key is to be well prepared in order to make the discount seem as natural as possible to your provider.

I targeted my cable company and phone company.

Every few weeks, I would receive an offer in the mail for cable service that seemed, at face value, to be a better deal than the one I had. $74 per month for cable, phone, and internet. We were paying $60 for cable alone! In actuality, the deal wasn’t as good as it seemed after extra fees plus a lack of cable channels were factored in. This didn’t matter though. All I needed to do was convince the service rep that I believed the deal was better. I called up Time Warner cable and told them about the competitor’s deal.

Me: Hi, I’m calling about a competing deal I received in the mail. RCN is offering $74 per month for cable, phone, and internet. Their cable package alone is much cheaper than my current one. Can you guys make me a comparable offer on my cable bill?
Rep: It looks like you already have one of our best base packages, sir. If you had a higher package, we would be able to help, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.

I had to turn up the heat!

Me: Well, if you cannot give me a better deal, I’ll have no choice but to switch services to your competitor.
Rep: …Please hold for moment, sir.

That got the ball rolling. After being put on hold, I was offered $5 off my monthly bill plus a load of extra channels that we didn’t currently have. Not as good as I expected, but I took the offer, sensing it was all they would give me. The $5 amounts to almost 10% off of our $60 bill, not to mention the fact that I can watch Meerkat Manor all I want now.

After the cable company, I searched the Internet for offers from phone companies and played the same game with Verizon. When their rep sensed I had done a little work, he capitulated rather easily. $15 off of our $85 bill. I took the 17% discount and went on my way.

These figures may seems small, but as I wrote in another post, even small discounts can make a big difference in savings. We saved 9% of our after-tax income in February. If we were able to get, say, 10% discounts on all our expenses comparable to these two (a tall order to be sure), we’d be doubling the amount we could save every month.

As I mentioned when I wrote about getting $500 off of my rent, doing your homework will go a long way toward being taken seriously by the opposite party, and simply making it natural for them to capitulate to your requests. Now go get some discounts! If you like, you can even try to play the “bad economy card” in conjunction with doing your homework. “Times are tough and I don’t know if I’ll have my job for long.” This may give you some added leverage in getting that discount.

With all that said, there’s still one issue in favor of PC’s – they generally cost less. (In my mind, the increased cost for a Mac is well worth it, but let’s put that aside for now.) So, with cost in mind, here’s a few tips on how to get that Mac you want for as little cash as possible. We’ll take a 15″ MacBook Pro retailing for about $2,250 as an example.

1. Use educational or company discounts. Apple offers educational discounts for many schools in the US and around the world. Chances are, if you’re a student, teacher, or administrator working in a school, you will qualify for a discount somewhere in the range of 10%. Apple also has discount agreements with many companies, so that their employees can get a few bucks off of their computer purchases (or purchases of any Apple products). Typically, these discounts are a little less than the ones in the educational store.
Discount: 10%, or $225

2. Get a free printer and sell it. Apple also has a standing offer for buyers purchasing a new computer. They offer $100 toward the purchase of a new printer. If you already have a printer, all the better. Take the offer and buy a printer that costs $100 from Apple. They will refund the purchase price for you, and you can take your free printer and sell it somewhere like eBay, effectively taking your purchase price down even further. In my experience, I’ve found sales on eBay will net me about 75% of my purchase price after fees.
Effective Discount: $75

3. Wait until the summer, get a free iPod, and sell it. Historically, Apple run its Back-to-School promotion every year from June to September, whereby it offers a free iPod to students purchasing a new computer. A buyer could take the iPod and sell it on eBay along with the printer to net even more of an effective discount. Last year, Apple offered students a free 8GB iPod Touch, which retails for $299.
Effective Discount: $225

Let’s tally up our savings!

Original purchase price: $2,250
- Educational/corporate discount: $225
- Printer sold: $75
- iPod sold: $225
= $1,725

That’s a total of $525 in savings, or 23% or the original purchase price! Quite a deal!

I’ll note here that some of the steps above require the buyer to be a student (or for a student to at least “help” you with your purchase). For to who can’t take advantage of those, Apple sells refurbished computers for a discount of roughly 15%, another great way to save some cash.

Here’s how it works. You sign up for an account at rewardsnetwork.com, and place a credit card on record. Every time you eat at a restaurant that’s part of the network, you’ll get a certain percentage of your bill back as cash. That’s it. There is no coupon clipping or codes to remember. Rewards Network tracks credit card usage at each of its participating restaurants, and when it sees your card used, it credits your card with the reported amount of cash back.

You can search for participating restaurants on the Rewards Network website and see how much cash back each place is offering. The majority of eateries in my neighborhood are offering 10% back, but there are others offering 20% and even 40%! The list of restaurants on the site also comes complete with a description of each place and reviews by users, so you can decide on a great place to eat in addition to one that will also pay you a little cash.

Savvy savers will also realize that you can double or even triple up on the savings by using Rewards Network in combination with restaurant coupons (from Entertainment for instance) and after reserving a table at a place like OpenTable.

Very savvy savers will realize that you can even use these discounts to get a free meal or more if you dine in groups. If you and four friends went to a bar with a 20% Rewards Network discount and each of your friends paid cash for their share of the bill, you could put the entire bill on your credit card and collect the cash from them. You’d effectively be paying your 20% of the bill, but you’d get that money back! Some might find this deceitful, so another approach is to simply share the wealth and tell your friends that everyone gets 20% off. Not bad.

Rewards Network has mobile device applications too, so you can search for cash back restaurants on-the-go, on your iPhone or Blackberry. You can also register up to five credit or debit cards on your account, and the percentage of money that you get back includes tax and your tip!

Bottom line: If you dine out (ever), the Rewards Network program is the best around for receiving valuable cash back discounts. And it’s effortless to do so.