Harbus

Issue date: 11/23/09 Section: News

Holiday gift-giving season and extravagant J-Term vacations are fast approaching. With all the expenditures you're incurring, it's probably no surprise that your wallet is hurting. While you may not have the time now to reevaluate your budget and to make minor and major cuts in your spending habits, one site I highly recommend you check out before you make any money-saving New Year's resolutions is www.BillShrink.com. I had the pleasure of interviewing Schwark Satyavolu, one of the co-founders and visionaries behind this money saving and comparing website. Below he shares with me how to shrink your bills for good.

SAINI: What is the concept of BillShrink?

SATYAVOLU: We spend $100 every month. For the vast part of America, a significant proportion of our income is paying for regular services. Everything from our cell phone, bank account, mortgages, etc. Often times there is no real way to raise issues about the services if you are frustrated. So sometimes, as consumers, we end up remaining unsatisfied. We are convinced we are being ripped off, but we don't know what to do about it. And this consumer frustration is what we were looking to address with BillShrink.

The reason it is complicated is because these services are not the same among providers. For example, depending on your cell phone plan, "600 anytime minutes" can vary. What does "anytime" mean exactly? "Anytime" varies from one plan to the next. Depending on which phone provider you call, the number of "anytime" minutes varies for the same flat rate. Plans are hard to compare. The real way to compare the plans is if you, the consumer, tells us how you really view these services.

BillShrink is a platform that helps this. It asks you to provide the answer to questions and it will tell you what the right plan is for you. It's effectively a personalized decision engine that helps you understand what the impact is of your usage and what it's going to cost and what all the options are in the marketplace. We also do an analysis on performance, which is very helpful when looking at cell phone plans. If you live in Massachusetts you could get very different coverage than if you live in New Hampshire but still have the same phone. In short, BillShrink answers the "it depends" question.
 
SAINI: How exactly does BillShrink save people money?

SATYAVOLU: BillShrink analyzes the way YOU use a variety of everyday services (like cell phone plans, credit cards, savings accounts, and even gasoline) and finds out exactly how much that specific pattern of usage would cost on EVERY product in the marketplace. We also take into account the plethora of optional add-ons where applicable to find the lowest possible cost for that pattern of usage.

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