4 ways to cut red tape and save money

>>> good morning. on "today's" money, cutting the red tape . and there's a lot of it and dealing with cable providers and mortgage lenders. how can you make these less painful? kim, good morning.

>> thanks for having me.

>> a lot to get to. let's start with your cable plan. is this something to negotiate with your cable provider?

>> it is true. and now is a great time. there's so many ways to download movies and tv shows right now. cable companies are really having tough competition. so they're all trying to keep your business if they already have you. so, first of all, if a promotional deal has ended or if your rates are creeping up, call your cable company and see if you can get a better deal or get that promotional rate extended. and you'd be surprised because they want to keep you. and you could save maybe $30 a month, which $360 a year on just negotiating to a lower rate. now, if the company doesn't lower your rate, it's worthwhile to look around, see what else you can get, but be very careful about fees. you may have a transfer fee , you may have a service ending fee, you may have all kinds of installation fees. just make sure it's worthwhile to change to that new company before you sign up for it.

>> and if you take a close look at your cable bill, there's probably a lot of stuff you could pick off. now, you've come with actual money and a fish bowl .

>> actual money. and if you were to save that $30 a month, that would be $360 a year and that's just another way to cut costs and have more money for everything else.

>> let's get that in the fish bowl .

>>> let's move on to my mobile phone plan. how do you cut costs there?

>> well, one thing a lot of people don't realize is you can bring your own phone with you. and so many people have cell phones they've had for a while and are off contract from their other provider or go on ebay, amazon, some of the other services and buy a cell phone that can be used on many of the services. now, the key thing you need to know is whether it's compatible. t-mobile and at&t are compatible with each other. verizon and sprint, it's a little more complicated. t-mobile has a special deal right now trying to get people with old iphones who have been on at&t for a while to switch over to them. with that deal, you can save $50 a month. but if you were to do it to save $30 a month, another $360 a year.

>> put it in the fish bowl .

>> this one's a good one, stolen wallet and identity theft. take some of the stuff you don't need with you every day out of your wallet.

>> that's exactly right. and we wanted to do things that were going to save people money but also save people hassles and prevent problems in the future. i get so many questions from readers about stolen wallets. they're worried about what could happen. few key things, don't keep your spare keys in your wallet. that makes it much more complicated to figure out what was there. and if you just have the wallet stolen but still have your purse, you don't have to worry about that. also, make sure you don't have anything with your social security number on it. which can be very difficult sometimes, especially military, families, a lot of times their medical i.d. has that. but one thing you can do -- and we can go through, you can go through and you can xerox copies of every credit card that you have ahead of time. if your wallet is stolen, it's really easy for you to know who to call, what to replace, or there's a few services discover and american express will make the call for you.

>> good tips. you can fill up a fish bowl full