By Melanie Bishop

When trying to balance classes, work and a social life, what college students have time to figure out if they’re getting the best deals on their everyday services?

“Bills are unnecessarily high,” says Becca Heimlich, a freshman media communications major. “Anything to help lower them would be cool.”

Paying bills is a large concern for college students, yet the time, energy and frustration spent on trying to research the best deals are put to use elsewhere. So, what to do?

This was the question Matthew R. Coffin, founder and CEO of Lowermy bills.com, set out to answer. Lowermybills.com is an interactive Web site that provides users quick and easy access to information on a variety of services. It includes 14 categories of inquiry and will soon be updating to include four more. The service is fast and incredibly easy to use. Simply type in a zip code and Lowermybills.com composes a list of companies who provide services and specialty offers in the area.

Certain sections, such as “Insurance” and “Loans,” ask for extra information, sometimes including addresses, so as to further facilitate the customer in locating the best plan, but privacy is guaranteed. No customer information is given out without prior permission from the client nor does the site interact with companies that do not have customer security measures in place.

Since the site earns its money by getting commissions from purchases made by its users, Lowermybills.com is free. The site will offer information on a wide variety of well known companies without the customer paying a higher fee on services or products. No subscriptions or memberships are necessary.

Lowermybills.com offers a message of hope to suffering college students trying to pay their bills.

“It would probably be really good for students living off campus who have to pay phone bills, Internet services, cable TV and everything else,” said Benjamin Ricci, a middler music industry major.

The categories on Lowermy bills.com include sections for cell phones, student loans, credit cards, insurance and debt relief, all of which are useful to students tired of their mailboxes being full of bills.

There are a few set backs. Lowermybills.com only offers information to people within a certain geographical area which includes the continental United States and Hawaii, but not parts of Alaska or other countries. Plus, while many well known providers such as General Electric and Sprint are featured on the Web site, there is a small selection of companies that do not appear for various reasons. For example, if a company is not registered under a certain zip code, it will not show up even if it does offer services for that area.

Despite these drawbacks, Lowermybills.com has helped numerous people find plans that fit their way of living. It has slowly created a name for itself and has been recently highlighted in magazines and newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Newsweek. With the variety of information provided and its easy access, Lowermybills.com has the capacity to be incredibly useful to people everywhere, especially college students, who are always looking for the best ways to save money.