Or more accurately, it never hurts to call and threaten cancellation of a service.

I called my cable television company today to get rid of HBO, since I never watch it. I only had it because at one point, it was cheaper for me to have it than not to have it*. That promotion ended, and every so often I’d call up asking if they had any new promotions to lower my price.

Well, today when I said I was getting rid of HBO, they said there’s a new promotion where they can offer me the same service and cut about $40 off the price of the monthly bill. Once again, it would be cheaper for me to have HBO than to have cable without HBO. So I signed up for the new 12 month promotion.

* Okay, I admit I used to watch the HBO program Real Sex On Demand with my girlfriend at the time once in a while.

Since July 2003, I have been paying my rent with my credit card. I do this because it allows me to “float” for about 20 days and, more importantly, because I get a one percent discount on all credit card purchases. As of next month, they are discontinuing the allowance of credit card payments. I don’t believe they take personal checks either.

This is a big, national corporation, not some dude who rents out his apartments. I don’t understand why they are trying to make things more difficult for their tenants.

I can understand not taking checks. Perhaps they are hit with too many bounces. But with a credit card, they get the money right away. It becomes the credit card company’s responsibility to track down payments and make money off interest rates and late fees from those people who carry balances month to month and pay bills late.

I want convenience. I want to pay rent via credit card online. It’s not too much to ask.

Jeanne Sahadi takes the simple question, “How do you define ‘living within your means?’” and turns it into some kind of poorly-dubbed martial arts movie or strange game show (if you judge by the title of the article). Nevertheless, I agree her with her analysis of the above phrase:

Ideally, I’d define living within your means as spending less than you earn, saving some of your income and having no debt. The exception being debt that lets you build net worth, such as buying a home, getting a degree or making a home improvement that builds equity.

The author outlines an example expense analysis of a $75,000 income household living with its means.

Figuring those numbers as a percentage to the total income, I am definitely paying too much in some areas. Take, for example, transportation. If a household with an income of $75,000 should only be paying $100 for parking, gas, and tolls, then I’m way “ahead” of the game. I spend about $250 on transportation a month just for work alone, including tolls and gas. The $250 doesn’t figure gass and tolls when traveling to visit friends or volunteering on weekends. That’s more than double the example, a household earning almost twice my salary.

Simple solution: I need a better paying, closer job.

The Motley Fool on the importance of short-term savings.

Having an easily accessible cash stash can prove to be one of the most important parts of your saving and investing strategy. Maintaining the liquidity of the equivalent of six-to-twelve months of your expenses means that if you run into an emergency, you don’t have to sell stock (incurring tax) or dip into retirement funds (incurring tax and/or withdrawal fees) in order to CYA.

Certificates of Deposit (CDs) usually give you good rates on your savings while maintaining liquidity. If you have to withdraw funds from your CDs before they mature you may be hit with a penalty, but depending on the CD you choose, the interest gaines will still be higher than what you might yield on a regular savings account.

Right now, I don’t have six months worth of expenses saved up in cash, although I used to. Once I have about $5,000 to put to the side for an emergency fund, I plan on laddering CDs with different terms of maturity.

This is how that works: Suppose there are five levels of maturity, one year, two years, three years, four years and five years. The longer the term, the higher interest yield. To ladder the CDs, I would spend $1,000 on each type.

At the end of the first year, the first CD will mature. I’ll take that $1,000 plus interest and buy a five-year CD. That CD will now expire at the end of year 6. At the end of each year, another CD will expire, and with that money I will purchase another five-year CD.

When I’m ready to start this, I’ll go with ING Direct because they offer great interest rates and I already have my savings account with them.

I may consider starting sooner with less than $5,000. It would be a good idea to start getting those rates, even if it is on a smaller amount of money.

Scott Burns from MSN Money preaches the benefits of TiVo. In this article he claims that a TiVo device pays for itself in the value of your time saved after 12.5 hours for the $100 price to buy the device and after an additional 6.5 hours for each monthly fee of $13.

His assumption is that you can put a value on your free time. For the purposes of the article, the author chose $8.00 per hour without any explanation.

From this, he calculates that you actually have a “return” on investment or a “profit” after shelling out the money each month for the device.

I don’t buy it (pun possibly intended). Sure, you do save time, but I believe that most people wouldn’t take that newly found free time and earn more money or even do anything useful. They would probably just watch more television. Maybe I’m just projecting what I believe I would do; if I had a TiVo or similar device, I would probably spend more time in front of the television.

How to ask your boss for more.

You may notice many of my links come from CNN/Money. It’s their fault for being good. In any case, this article presents raise-negotiating tips to help persuade your tight, wimpy, intimidating, and/or passive-aggressive boss to give you that money you deserve. Here are some of my own—Flexo’s tips on what not to say.

“Give me what I want or I’ll quit.” This can only lead to bad results, unless you have another offer on the table. When faced with an ultimatum like that, chances are the boss will choose the least expensive option.

“I should be making at least what you’re making.” I don’t think the boss would agree with you.

“If I don’t get more money, I’ll pass the company’s trade secrets to a competitor.” The threat of legal fees incurred by the company suing you might give your boss reason to consider your demand, but most likely, he or she will just fire you.

“If you give me a raise, I’ll get to the office on time.” The basic expectations of the job should probably be covered before negotiating a raise, in my humble opinion.

Below you’ll see the charts for the month. I still have one paycheck left to receive, so that should add to the month’s tally, but since I’ve done the last few months on the 23rd, I didn’t want to break that habit just yet. I guess it would make more sense to do this count on the first of each month for better consistency.

There’s really not much to say. I’d like to be making and saving more money, but it’s just not happening right now. With the winter coming, I’ll probably be spending $50 to $100 more a month for heating (electrical). I will be spending $50 less in rent for the next six months. Hopefully I can keep the rest of my spending down.

I’m currently putting 12% of my salary into the 401(k). Only the first 4% of my salary gets matched by company contributions; maybe I would be better off just putting in 4% to get the company match and saving more cash. Any suggestions from the readership?

Remember when I was happy to realize I would be receiving three paychecks in December? I miscalculated. However, I will be receiving three paychecks this month, with the third one coming in next Friday. It’s a good thing, too, since I’ve been feeling financially strained lately. It would have been nice to have that “surprise” income in December, too.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have purchased that additional 250 GB hard drive ($150) a few weeks ago.