“Money matters, because the more money you have the more choices you have.”
I had an insurance premium come in last week, they’re rising all around the world but this one was 25% higher than it was last year. I thought ‘this is ridiculous’ so instead of just paying it, I called them.
I pointed out that it was a lot higher than last year and asked them if they could reduce it. And the answer was, surprisingly, ‘yes!’… in fact they knocked off 10% just because I picked up the phone and asked them.
My insurance company was faced with the burden that if they don’t reduce my premiums they know I’m going to go to my second step; which is to compare them to their competitors in the market. And when you start to compare, you’ll see that companies will usually have a lower entry price to get new people on-board. Then they start jacking-up their prices to pay for the discounts offered to new members.
Rather than rewarding customer loyalty many have growth targets that rely on winning new customers to replace those they lose to their competitors: which is called ‘customer churn’.
But if you ask them, you may get a cheaper price because those businesses know that it is usually better (and cheaper) to keep a good existing customer than to win a new one. And they are in a position to respond if you do ask because they know if they don’t discount you’ll start to compare, and you may well find out you’d be better off as a new customer somewhere else.
The next thing to ask yourself is ‘do I really need it?’ This subscription, this purchase, this thing that I just keep doing every month… this gym membership that I don’t use in summer… it is really easy to get into new habits of paying as you go instead of having lazy subscriptions, so just stop them. Also ask yourself whether you could maybe just reduce some because across all your costs, those reductions can really start to bring in the savings.
Start to ask questions, start to compare products, start to question what you really need.
And start having conversations with your suppliers because if you don’t ask, you won’t get.