Man Shares How His 'Cheap Parents' Taught Him To Save Money On Things Like Internet & Medical Bills—'Your Bills Are Usually Negotiable'
You might be surprised what happens when you push back on bills.
fizkes | Shutterstock In today's economy, most of us are looking to save a buck in any way we can. But knowing how to go about it can be difficult if you're new to penny-pinching.
This is where the benefits of having been raised by cheapskates come in handy! Content creator Sean Lans is one of these people. He's garnered all kinds of money-saving tips from his frugal parents that might help you save a buck or two.
The TikToker shared how his 'cheap parents' taught him these money-saving tips on negotiating bills.
Many of us—or probably most—take each bill at face value, even though everything seems to be a price gouge nowadays. Even when it looks ridiculous, we generally take a "you can't fight city hall" attitude and pay up.
Not TikToker Sean Lans. "I have cheap parents who taught me a lot about saving money," he said in a recent video. And not just cheap like everyone's parents tend to be to some degree — Lans says his mom bordered on "an extreme couponer" when he was a kid.
"So I'm gonna share my favorite money-saving tips because I realized that not everyone was lucky/unlucky enough to have cheap parents," he continued.
It turns out that having annoyingly penny-pinching parents really pays off because saving money often just comes down to being willing to fight for a better price.
Lans' parents taught him that medical bills are almost always negotiable if you're persistent.
"They may say they're not negotiable, but they are," Lans said in his video. "You need to be persistent."
He then explained a familiar situation. He recently visited the dermatologist, and since he hadn't hit his deductible yet, he was hit with a bill for "several hundred dollars."
He immediately did what his parents would do — he called the doctor's office, asked for a discount, and offered to pay in full if there was one. He was flatly told no, and this is where the story would end for most of us.
But Lans instead called back the following day and asked again, and the answer changed to an "I don't know." He was directed to call back the next day and speak to a manager. When he did, he was quickly given a 10% discount.
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Granted, that's not much, but Lans says he's gotten 20% off before using the same method. As he mentioned, the internet is full of stories of people getting huge medical bills slashed in half or even more simply by pushing back on the bills they received.
Lans added that "no matter what, you always wanna request an itemized bill," step experts recommend because medical bill errors are extremely common. But more importantly, many medical charges are essentially made up — we've all heard about hospitals charging $100 for an Advil. Pushing back on these absurd charges often results in them being drastically reduced or eliminated.
Lans' cheap parents also taught him how to get discounts on utilities like internet service simply by threatening to cancel service.
Regarding utilities, there's pretty much nothing more infuriating than internet service. Often, you have zero options for providers, and the service is frequently unreliable despite providers charging exorbitant and constantly rising rates.
But it turns out only chumps face this problem! "This one is something I use several times a year because it just keeps popping up," he said of his parents' method for combating this issue. "It's like a disease that you can't get rid of."
Every time his internet bill increases — and as a customer of the notoriously terrible Spectrum, that tends to happen every few months — he does what his parents taught him and threatens to cancel the service. The key, though, is to call the right representative.
"If you just call and speak to a regular customer service rep, they're not gonna do anything to fix your charge," he said. "So what you wanna do instead is … select all the prompts to cancel your service" when dialing into your provider's customer service number.
This will place you in the company's customer retention department — "the last line of defense," as Lans put it. "They'll do anything to keep you from canceling," he said, including lowering your rate.
"They may push back," he added, but here again, persistence is key. If they claim they notified you that a price change would come, say you never received the notification. You can also add that the provider's competitors have better prices or that you can even use your phone as a hotspot.
"Every time I've done this, I've had my charge returned to what it was before," Lans said, and he's even gotten it discounted below that price a time or two. "Don't bother with the regular customer service people," he reiterated. Just go right to retention."
Lans has several more tips on his cheap parents' profile, from the benefits of credit card points to getting rid of all those myriad fees we're constantly charged on everything nowadays simply by asking to remove them. It turns out it does pay to be the squeaky wheel, and in today's economy, we all need all the help we can get!
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.