Eileen Wilbur, a 74 year-old blind woman living by herself, recently got a nasty shock when her daughter was helping her go through her mail. Apparently, Ms. Wilbur had failed to pay part of a water bill from the preceding year, and the city was now threatening her with a lien against her home. The bill, which Attleboro officials noted was among 2,000 that went out, was for one cent.

The letter went on to inform Ms. Wilbur that, unless she paid by December 10, she could face a $48 penalty, in addition to court proceedings. As her daughter, Rose Brederson, noted, Ms. Wilbur has lived in the house for almost 50 years and would most certainly pay the penny. However, given that the bill cost 42 cents to mail, one wonders how the City of Attleboro hopes to make its money back. What's more, while Ms. Wilbur is undoubtedly an outlier, it's reasonable to ask how many of the 2,000 bills, which cost $840 to mail, were worth less than the price of postage.

When confronted with this situation, City Collector Debra Marcoccio responded by pointing out that Attleboro's billing is completely automated, and is not audited by human beings. She went on to defensively ask why Ms. Wilbur didn't pay the one cent the year before, when it was first due. Like anyone else who's ever been through this sort of mess, I have a pretty good idea about what happened: the 1¢ bill is either unannounced interest on the water bill, or represents fractions of pennies that have accrued on Ms. Wilbur's account, which the billing software decided to add to her latest bill. Regardless, this is the sort of thing that any human being (or even a bureaucrat) with a fully-functioning cerebral cortex could probably have handled with a minimum of fuss.

According to some estimates, the average American household carries nearly $10,000 in credit card debt alone. If you're only able to make the minimum payments each month, you'll have a hard time keeping up with accumulating interest, and you may never make a real dent in that balance.

One of the easiest things you can do to alleviate your personal credit crisis is to simply call your credit card company and ask for a lower rate.

Sometimes you'll get lucky, spend two minutes on the phone, and the customer service agent will gladly slash your interest rates right then and there. Others play hardball and say that they can't do it. That's when you ask for a supervisor, and explain to the supervisor that if they can't reduce your rates, you'll be forced to transfer your balance to another credit card. If they want to keep your business (and they do), they'll help you out. A US PIRG study found that 56% of consumers who called their credit card company were granted lower rates within five minutes. On average, those rates dropped by 5.5 percentage points.

While you're on the phone, it can't hurt to fish for other bargains as well. True story -- when a friend called his credit card company to activate a new card, he finished the activation process and the customer service agent asked "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" He replied, "I don't know -- is there?" To his surprise and delight, she answered, "Well, I can give you a $25 credit on your account." Hey, you never know unless you ask!

Many is the time I've been tempted to show up at a particularly annoying dentist's office or cable company with buckets of pennies to pay my bill and say sayonara. Hey, I may just be dropping off my last deposit at Bank of America this Friday...

Bravo to Charlie Sheen (setting aside, for the moment, his relationship skills and sobriety) for protesting a bill he didn't care to pay -- the $380 his children's pediatrician charged for vaccinations -- by paying in nickels. Sheen was peeved with the doctor for proceeding with immunizing his kids at the behest of ex-wife Denise Richards, and against Sheen's wishes. (The doctor says he'll donate the money to charity, which somehow makes me angry, it's co-opting Sheen's PR stunt.)

As a statement of protest, I think paying in small change is a fantastic way to thumb your nose at the bill while still avoiding collections charges, especially if the person responsible for handling said change has something to do with having stuck you with the bill in the first place. (Showing up at a Verizon store in the mall with 2,000 dimes may not be the best way to protest those exorbitant extra-minute fees.) And if you can get some TV crew or newspaper reporter willing to commit the act to photos? Hey, all the better.

Have you ever paid a bill in small change? Would you?

Brian Dean was a private, reclusive man, one who went to and from his Lancashire, England home by the dark of night, one who paid his bills on time, and one who obviously had a quite substantial amount of money in his bank account. Because when he died in his bed about two years ago, the automatic withdrawals kept occurring to fund his utilities and other expenses, and no one thought to knock on the door.

Police officers broke the door down and discovered his body and a huge pile of unopened mail inside his door. It wasn't reported how they were inspired to check on the 70-year-old Dean.

While this is surely an extreme example of the blind efficiency of modern conveniences -- and is an argument for being connected to one's community -- it makes me wonder if setting up automatic bill pay from an account large enough to pay bills for years isn't ultimately a bad idea. Today I discovered that my Fidelity 401(k) account could be configured to pay my bills; and it seems a little too convenient to think that I could sell some stock to pay my water bill. I've always thought that keeping investments and savings less accessible and definitely separate from your checking account was the prevailing wisdom. Are we sacrificing too much for ease-of-use? [Thanks to Stacy Westbrook for the link!]

T-Mobile is rolling out a new feature in the next few weeks called "Family Allowances" which lets parents control just about every aspect of phone usage. The plan starts out at $2 a month and covers up to 5 lines on your account. The new feature comes on the heels of feedback from 30% of parents who identified their primary concern was getting a surprise bill.

The Family Allowances program will let parents set the number of texts, downloads and minutes on their children's phones using an online tool, as well as limiting the times of the day that the phone will work. Parents can put their minds at ease with the ability to set up always-allowed numbers which will permit their children to reach them at any time.

While the "Family Allowances" feature is aimed at helping parents curb kid's desires and their inability to follow the phone usage limits imposed at the dinner table, there is also a cool way that "adults" with less self control can use the feature to manage their own usage as well. We've all heard of freezing your own credit card to ward off the temptation of overspending. Well, if you can't stop your urge to download ringtones or curb your text messaging, you can set up an allowance for yourself so that you don't go over your plan amounts. Since you'll have to wait until you're in front of a computer to bump up your limit, you'll have likely overcome the urge to purchase the new "I Kissed a Girl" ringtone you thought was sooo sweet last night.

After the cell phone plan I share with my sister and parents went over in both minutes and text messages for the second month in a row, I decided to look into the new plans our carrier has come out with in order to save on overages. After I started looking, I found that I could pay the same base price as I am now, but get unlimited text messaging to any carrier instead of the limited version the family had been on.

Cell phone carriers are constantly revising plans and changing prices in order to stay competitive. The only way for current customers to reap the benefits of these changes is to call and ask for the new price. If you are investigating new plans make sure you read the fine print and check over all of the changes. In our case the new plan charges for the data used to download ringtones, but this additional cost is far outweighed by the savings. You should also check with your carrier to make sure these changes won't extend your contract out past retirement.

If changing your whole plan isn't an option or won't save you any money, then check out the additional features on your account. If you haven't changed your text messaging or data plan since you first signed up, reevaluating the options available from your carrier could save you even more cash. My carrier, Verizon, has changed text messaging plans every few months for the past year. Verizon also dropped the price of their data package for many smart phones by $15, savings you won't get without taking action.

After I suggested a few low-cost ways to lower utility bills, I was hit with quite a bunch of suggestions. I researched them, and found that most were quite viable and very reasonably priced. Therefore, without further ado, here are a few (more) low-cost ways to drop your utility bill:

Ceiling Fans

The ever-ingenious Carol noted that ceiling fans are not only useful in the summer; if you reverse the direction of the fan during the winter, it actually pushes warm air back toward the ground, reducing wasted heat. In the process, it keeps the air moving, which maximizes the effect of your other heaters and baseboard heat. Having installed a few ceiling fans, I have to admit that it's a fairly involved task (set aside a couple of hours), but they are surprisingly cheap and really help keep your home liveable. Just don't put them in low-ceilinged rooms!

Many people get uptight when they think about the process of creating a home budget. They see dark visions of three column ledgers filled with six digit numbers and lots of black and red ink. Home budgeting doesn't need to be like that at all. In fact, home budgeting can be quite easy. Most often, just getting a system started is the single hardest part.

You can start by looking at it this way, your budget will only have four main parts. Part one is income, which is the total of all funds you receive each month. The second part is expenses, which are all the things you need to pay out every month. The third part is disposable income, that's the money which is left over after you subtract your expenses from your income. Part four is savings, that's the part you get if the other three parts play nice together.