Towards the end of last year, I advised comparing prices between the benefits offered by your company and those available directly from providers. In my case, the cost of life insurance was significantly cheaper when buying it directly from an insurer. Now that I’ve finished setting up my insurance, I thought I’d describe the process to everyone.

It started out by getting a quote online. You can use one of many different websites, but I chose to compare prices with Accuquote. By filling out one form, the site showed me the prices offered by many different insurers. Since term life insurance is basically the same product regardless of where you buy it, it’s easy to compare prices. Once I decided on the best quote, my formal application was submitted.

The next business day I received a phone call confirming that my application had been received, verifying some critical information, and trying to up-sell me for more coverage. I didn’t bite on that last issue and my application was sent to me by mail.

While I was waiting for the application to arrive, I received a call from a mobile medical service provider to schedule an appointment. The representative offered to come to my home or office. I signed the paperwork when it arrived and gave it to the nurse who came to my house. She administered a simple blood test and checked my blood pressure, which were also part of the application process. Even for someone who usually gets a little lightheaded at the doctor’s office, having the blood drawn in my home was as pleasant an experience as possible. The nurse reviewed the questions in the application, took my credit card information (I used a temporary Shopsafe account number), and left. The entire process took about 30 minutes.

That was it. It would have been marginally easier to continue my life insurance coverage through my employer, since my company didn’t require any type of medical examination, but the process was so simple that I’m glad I went through with it. The fact that the coverage is significantly less expensive also made the decision easy.

Often we pay more for the convenience of the known, even though the unknown ends up being just as simple. For me, life insurance fit this description, but you may find other instances in your life that also fit. You owe it to yourself to look into these cases to ensure you never overpay.

Have you found better prices for benefits from sources other than your employer?

Regardless of the security of your financial plan, shoring up the weakest links will make it even safer. Many of us feel safe, despite our finances having multiple areas with single points of failure. Identifying and eliminating (or reducing) failure points will help to strengthen our finances.

A single point of failure is just that: it’s a situation where only one thing has to go wrong for failure to result. An example, typical in most households, is having income solely from your job. If you lose your job, all of your income disappears as well, leaving you vulnerable to financial ruin. To combat this possibility, you could diversify your income through alternative income streams, such as investment income through a P2P loan portfolio with Lending Club.

Many other single points of failure can exist that cause financial troubles. Having all of your bills paid automatically out of your checking account simplifies your finances, but a short-term cash flow problem in that account could disrupt payments and generate many different fees. It may be easier to have this single account and watch it very closely, but if your diligence fades, your troubles could quickly rise.

When some of these types of failures occur, you’re forced to take a more expensive route. Suppose you pay a neighborhood kid to mow your lawn while you are away on a month-long vacation. If you find out that the kid is unable to do the work, and you don’t have a backup plan in place, you may have to pay exorbitant rates to get a local landscape company to do the work.

In attempting to avoid single points of failure, you are constantly balancing low-cost redundancy and double coverage. The overhead to manage too many options may devalue the added protection, but having no alternatives could end up costing a whole lot more. Take a close look at your finances and imagine the results of any one aspect going awry. If significant damage would occur, this is likely a single point of failure that you should try to eliminate.

What single points of failure have you identified?

With the financial crisis looming and unemployment on the rise, everyone is trying to save as much money as they possibly can. Surprisingly, however, there have been a few positive side effects from the crisis. One of these is the strong US dollar. Just 6 months ago, the dollar was extremely weak, which I experienced as I lived in Italy. However, the dollar has gained a lot more power since then.

How strong is strong?

If you are wondering how strong the dollar is today, let me give you some points of reference. When I lived in Italy, until August of 2008, one Euro equaled 1.6 dollars. One British pound was two dollars. A single dollar was worth 1.5 Brazilian reals and 3.1 Argentine pesos. (I mention these currencies because these are the countries I have lived in since 2008.) Additionally, one Canadian dollar was about equal to the American dollar, and one dollar was worth about 10 Mexican pesos.

However, today the numbers are different. Check out the current exchange rates:

Check that out. The dollar is stronger by at least 20% in each country, and even 50% stronger in a few.

What does this mean to me?

If you have a steady job and can afford to take a vacation, today is the perfect time. Prices are cheaper. Because no one is traveling right now, countries are offering great discounts. For example, I'm writing this article from Norway, where I bought round trip tickets from NYC for only $400. That's $400 to get to Europe, round trip. Incredible.

Many people are currently becoming unemployed, and I've noticed a lot of people are moving out of their apartments to cheaper locations. Are you about to move to a different apartment because you have no job? Do what I do---move to a different country instead and ride out the storm. I live in Brazil, which is 50% cheaper than it used to be, which means that I live like a king on less than $1,100 a month. That's only $13,000 a year! Try to live on $13,000 a year in New York City!

How can I just get up and move?

If you are interested in moving to another country, to save money or just to see what it's like, keep watching. In a future article, I will discuss how you can take advantage of currency conversions and live extremely cheaply in another country, even if only for a month or so.

Where would you live if you could? Have you ever traveled for an extended period of time?

I recently listened to an interesting radio show discussing ways to handle special diets when trying to stick to a budget. The show, hosted by Frugal Coast to Coast, featured guests who blog about diabetic and gluten-free cooking. I was particularly interested in the gluten-free discussion because my wife has gluten intolerance. Their insight and surprising conclusion was that special diets often end up costing less.

Anyone who has ever shopped at a health food store, and endured their high prices, probably finds this conclusion hard to believe. The reason it holds true is that a restrictive diet often forces you to move from prepackaged convenience foods to those that you make yourself. Though people with special dietary needs do this out of necessity, everyone could learn from this valuable lesson.

Consider trying the following tip, provided by the show: stick to the perimeter of your grocery store. Doing so will allow you to focus on raw and natural ingredients and stay away from the processed, prepared, and convenience foods that tend to be less healthy and cost more.

Convenience foods do exist for restrictive diets as well, but there tend to be fewer offerings and the prices are prohibitively high. Turning to homemade foods allows for a much wider selection and much more reasonable prices. For those interested in the sites of the guests on the show, they are Mrs. W’s Kitchen for diabetics and Ginger Lemon Girl for those on gluten-free diets.

Obviously someone who already practices frugal habits and makes much of their food from scratch could see their costs increase if they needed to start cooking with special ingredients for a medical condition. But the rest of us, who are spending more for the sake of convenience, can use the lessons learned from this discussion to start spending less on healthier food.

What are your experiences with the costs of a medically necessary diet?

Telemarketing calls are nothing new, but receiving them on your cell phone seems to be a growing occurrence. Since most of these calls are illegitimate scams, placing your cell phone number on the Do Not Call registry will generally not stop them.

I’ve been receiving these types of calls more regularly in the past few weeks. The most common one claims that my car warranty is expiring soon and offers to sell me an extension. These offers are mass-marketed to consumers regardless of their actual warranty status. Stories of children and people who don’t own cars receiving these calls are widely discussed on the Internet.

Despite popular belief, telemarketers are not permitted to call your cell phone. The basic reason is that unsolicited calls cost most people money, since they have a limited number of incoming cell phone minutes each month. Forwarded emails warning of an impending deadline to add your cell phone to the Do Not Call registry before telemarketing calls begin have repeatedly been shown to be false. Still, adding your cell phone to the Do Not Call registry can’t hurt.

The nature of cell phone telemarketing calls and the reported variety of caller IDs used for similar advertisements makes two things clear: Numbers called are most likely chosen at random and those behind the calls are trying to hide their identity. Both of those facts should make you leery of any such call received.

If you do receive such a call, you can file a complaint with the FCC by completing a user-friendly form on the FCC website. You simply provide information like when the call was received, what someone was trying to sell you, and the reported caller ID. Since the caller ID numbers reported are often found to be fraudulent, the FCC may not be able to put a stop to these calls on the basis of a single complaint. But collective action by all consumers receiving these calls will make it much more likely that those responsible are held accountable for their actions.

Have you received one of these calls?