Need Financial Help With Paying Your Utility Bill Before It Get Shut Off?

I just posted on my Grants Basic 101 Blog about how you can get help if your utility company is going to shut off your power.

If you have received a shut-off notice then that means that the situation has gone very bad because there are some things that can be done BEFORE you get to this point.

First of all you should call your utility company to see if there are any type of payment arrangement plans that you can make to pay your utility bill. A lot of these utility companies will give you an extension in order to help give you more time to pay your bill. If you are still having problems some of the utility companies will send you information about grant programs that may be able to help you financially with your bill.

There is also another option that will at least help delay your bill for about three months. You still are liable to pay the bill but at least you will have some time to get the money together. This is often an overlooked and not known tactic that can be done if you need more time to pay your utility bill.

Paying Your Bills - Loopholes?

".......Well when you do the kind of work that I do you become "privy" to certain types of information. First of all hopefully your bank is one of those banks that can only charge this fee for a certain # of days - like for one bank it's $6 per day for 5 days for a total of $30 and you have 30 days from the overdraft to get your account back above $0


Now like I said above there are just some things that go on as far as one's utility bills are concerned that the utility companies don't want you to know about. Now your case may be too late but for those who have been threatened with a shut off notice there is at least one thing that you can do to delay your shutoff. Mind you I say DELAY - you are still responsible for paying the balance owed but you won't get shut off for at least 3 months. Hopefully that will give you enough time to either find a way to make a payment arrangement, get some money to pay the back balance owed or to find a grant program to help you with the utility bill.


Of course "rich" people use this method and it is one of those "loophole" things that the utility companies are trying to get rid of but until they do this "loophole" sometimes turns out to be a person's last resort. Ironically enough this information comes in the bill for your utility bill but people don't read it (or they don't notice it).

I don't even think that its ethical for the social services agencies to suggest it but its not illegal and like I said before its usually a person's last hope - but at least it does provide them with some (temporary) time.................

10 tricks for reducing your heating bill

Here is a helpful article from msnbc's website

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16176373/

It shows you some good tips that you can try to help reduce your heating bill.