The Routine Library
Twenty copy-paste routines that save you money and time. New routines are added here as companies change their playbooks.
The Subscription Autopsy
You ran the Subscription Sweep from the intro and killed the obvious zombies. Good. Now comes the quarterly sequel, because subscriptions don't just hide, they mutate: prices creep...
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The Deadline Watch
A reader's free trial converted at $89 for the year. Not per month, for the year, charged in one silent thump eleven months after signup. The warning email...
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The Polite Shakedown
A reader spent 20 minutes in an internet provider's chat window, armed with a competitor's price and a script. Result: $35 a month off for 12 months. That's...
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Your Phone Plan Is Probably Wrong
A family of four was paying for premium unlimited on every line. Two of those lines used under 4 GB a month, mostly on Wi-Fi. Meanwhile the bill...
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Every Dollar Sits Somewhere
A reader put everything on a flat 1% card out of simplicity. Meanwhile a 3% grocery card sat in a drawer, untouched, for a year. Rerouting $900 a...
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The Annual Insurance Bake-Off
Loyalty is a pricing strategy, and you're the target. A reader's auto premium had crept up $380 a year with zero claims and zero changes. One afternoon, three...
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Buy It, Then Buy It Cheaper
A reader booked a flight, then watched the price drop $86 two weeks later. Because the fare allowed free changes, rebooking took five minutes and the difference came...
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Extend the Trip, Not the Bill
A reader booked four nights and wanted a fifth, but it wasn't originally available. Rebooking the whole stay at current prices would have cost $120 more than the...
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The $190 That Almost Got Away
A reader returned rented equipment, missed the credit window, and got the official answer: the $190 fee stands, nothing we can do. So they kept asking. Not angrily,...
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Find the Charge That Shouldn’t Be There
Credit card statements are where money goes to hide. The duplicate charge from a hotel that billed you twice. The refund the store promised "in 3 to 5...
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Free Money, Legally
People leave billions of class action settlement payments on the table each year. Not because they're ineligible, but because they never heard about it or the deadline slipped...
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Your Name Is on a Check Somewhere
Every state runs an unclaimed-property program holding forgotten money: utility deposits, uncashed paychecks, dormant bank accounts, insurance payouts. It sits there for years, sometimes decades, waiting for the...
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Use It or Lose It
Flexible spending accounts have a cruel design feature: unspent money can evaporate at year end. The forfeiture has a polite name ("use-it-or-lose-it"), but let's call it what it...
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The Reimbursement Paper Trail
Many employers offer benefits that pay you back for things you're already buying: wellness stipends, fitness reimbursements, massage or mental-health allowances, professional development funds. The money is real,...
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The Bill Your Doctor Can’t See
Medical billing is the only industry where the invoice, the insurance statement, and the provider's own ledger can all disagree, and you're expected to sort it out while...
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Keep Score or It Didn’t Happen
A reader ran six routines from this book and guessed they'd found "a few hundred bucks." Then they built the ledger. The real number was $1,940, realized in...
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Your Closet Pays Rent
A reader spent one Saturday photographing everything unused for six months: a bike, a camera lens, a barely worn jacket, a stack of unopened kitchen gadgets. Eleven listings,...
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Get Paid Without the Awkward
An invoice sat for 45 days while its freelancer rehearsed the perfect "just checking in" email and never sent it. Then the AI assistant wrote a three-message sequence:...
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Price Like You Mean It
Imagine you are a freelancer who hasn't raised rates in four years, terrified of losing clients. Your assistant can model what the market will pay. A 20% increase,...
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Thirty Minutes, Four Times a Year
Imagine you're a small landscaping business that has never offered holiday lighting. It simply isn't on your menu. One quarterly scan of three local competitors shows two of...
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