Finding the cheapest cell phone provider or credit card isn’t easy. You can spend days pouring over paperwork, trying to figure out what fees actually mean. But BillShrink makes all of that easier.

BillShrink will go out and find you the best credit card for your purposes. By answering a few questions about your typical spending habits — such as where you shop the most often — BillShrink will find the card that maximizes rewards, minimizes fees and generally meets your needs. The site can help you narrow down your search by limiting rewards and other factors: if you know that you want to save up points for a vacation some time soon, maybe you specifically want a card that will get you miles you can trade for plane tickets.

This site can do the same thing with your cell phone bill. You have the option of allowing BillShrink to access your actual bill by providing your cell phone number and password. If you’re uncomfortable with that option, you can also estimate your bill. From there, you can answer a few questions about how often you use your phone, where and details like text messaging and the number of lines. If you have a particular phone that you simply have to have (like a Blackberry to handle work calls), you can actually set the phone type as a search limit.

So far, BillShrink only offers comparison services for credit cards and cell phones, although it looks likely that they’ll expand to other services in the future. I’ve got my fingers crossed that they’ll check out internet service providers next. In the meanwhile, BillShrink is a pretty useful tool. It provides an easy way to compare credit cards — one of the most difficult categories of bills simply because of the thousands of options available.

You can even set up a standing request with the BillShrink website to be notified anytime a better credit card offer becomes available — the same goes for cell phone plans. Simply submit your email address along with your search criteria, and the site will automatically email you if it finds a better deal.

There are a number of personal finance tools available on the web these days, and most take a broader view than BillShrink. But that narrow focus makes BillShrink particularly useful. Don’t expect to spend days, or even hours, on BillShrink. Instead, you’ll spend only a few minutes getting results on BillShrink, even if you take the time to set up notifications. You might spend a little longer changing your credit card account, but that’s about it. Using BillShrink is a simple step you can take this afternoon and not have to worry about for a while. Consider taking five minutes sometime today and see if you’re really getting the best deal on your cell phone and credit card.

Despite the bad news in the business section, many of us are still doing okay financially. It’s hard to tell if things are going to stay that way, so a lot of people are looking at ways to ensure that — if something does happen to them — they’ll still be okay. There are two pieces of advice in particular that seem to be going around: first, keep as much liquid cash as you can, or second, pay off as much debt as you can. The two tactics are mutually exclusive and it can be hard to decide whether these pieces of advice can really help you.

Your Mortgage

The liquidity argument pops up just about every time someone mentions a mortgage. In most situations, if you can pay your mortgage down ahead of time, it’s a good idea to do so. You cut the interest you’ll pay in the long run and you build a little extra equity. But in tough times, some people think that wisdom doesn’t hold true. The argument is that it’s better to keep those extra payments as cash and put them into savings — if something happens, you can’t just pull money back out of your mortgage, after all.

It’s a tough decision to make. Owing less money seems like a good idea, but if the future seems even a little bit shaky cash can be important. It would be nice to pay off the mortgage ahead of time, but for now, I’d make building up an emergency fund a higher priority. And as for all those suggestions to open HELOC and other lines of credit to have cash available ‘just in case,’ I think that may be one of the worst pieces of personal finance advice I’ve ever heard. Taking on debt on the off chance that you’ll have trouble paying a bill or two is just poor financial planning.

Your Credit Card

Liquidity is much less of an issue with a credit card. After all, if you can pay down your balance, you’ll have more credit available if you need it. I don’t like the idea of using a credit card as an emergency fund. Honestly, though, I can picture a lot of situations where it would be necessary. Depending on the interest rate on your balance, paying more than your required monthly payment can be a good bet: if you can improve your credit even a little bit, you may be able to get your credit card company to lower your interest rate. Paying down your balance can be worth the risk of not having a lot of cash on hand.

Looking Ahead

Right now, I’d recommend making an effort to eliminate consumer debt and build an emergency fund over paying off your mortgage early. Both approaches will put you on more steady financial ground if there are problems down the line, and provide a few more options for handling future expenses you might not be able to take care of otherwise. Paying more on your mortgage just doesn’t offer the same sort of security net.

It’s surprisingly easy to get a lower interest rate on your credit card. My husband had an American Express card with a fairly high interest rate and, last week, he decided to ask for a lower rate. Yep, all he had to do was ask and American Express gave him a better deal.

There were a few small complications in the matter: he had a credit card with rewards points and there simply wasn’t a lower interest rate that American Express could give him on that card. But the company was more than happy to switch my husband over to another card with a much lower interest rate if he was willing to give up his rewards points. He thought it over and, yes, it was definitely a better proposition.

Credit card companies don’t ever offer to lower your interest rate out of the blue. Even if you improve your credit significantly, they’ll leave your interest rate alone because they make more money if that interest rate is higher. But that doesn’t mean that American Express, Visa and all the rest aren’t willing to make you a better deal. You just have to step up and ask.

It is easier if you have a little bit of leverage, of course. The best leverage is being able to tell your card’s representative that you’ve been on time with every payment. Being able to tell your credit card company about a great deal you’ve just received from one of their competitors doesn’t hurt, either. If you’re considering taking your business elsewhere, most credit card companies will do what it takes to keep your account. Occasionally, they might call your bluff though — but there are plenty of offers out there with zero-interest transfers if you decide to go through with changing cards.

The important thing to do is call up your credit card company and ask. Ask for a lower interest rate, ask to have a fee refunded, ask for a better deal. After all, the worse they can do is say, ‘no.’ The best they can do is significantly reduce the money you’ll end up paying them. This tactic can be applied (with varying degrees of success) to other credit situations. Your mortgage lender may not be willing to negotiate on the amount you pay but if you’re having trouble, as so many people are, they might be able to find some sort of solution. But if you don’t ask, all you have to look forward to is struggling quietly; if you don’t talk to the representative in charge of your account, you can’t take advantage of policies that afford companies a little leniency when it comes to good customers.

Classic advice for handling any amount of debt — mortgages, credit cards, etc. — is to pay more each month than is actually required. For instance, if I had a monthly credit card bill of $100, but I had an outstanding balance of $10,000, with 10% interest, it would take me 213 months (or 17 years and 9 months to pay off that card). But if I could make payments of $200 each month, the length of time I’d be making payments drops to 65 months (or 5 years and 5 months), and if I could kick it up to $500, I would be out of debt in 22 months — less than 2 years. While the numbers for the credit card balance and payments are made up, the math isn’t. You can use BankRate’s credit card calculator to figure the numbers for your own situation.

A lot of people suggest handling a mortgage in exactly the same way. Any payment you make beyond your monthly required payment goes directly towards the principal amount of the mortgage — meaning that you’re not paying off extra interest, and will, in the long run, save you money.

But there are some drawbacks to prepaying a mortgage in this fashion, and even to paying off debt quickly, depending on your interest rates. There’s no question that you should at least make the minimum payments each month, but there may be ways to take better advantage of other money.

Do you have a 401(k)? Depending on the interest on your debt, you may actually come out ahead in the long run if you can invest your money in a retirement account. You’ll have to run the numbers for yourself, but if your employer matches the money you invest in your 401(k), there is almost no reason that should convince you to not invest up to the matching limit. While prepaying your mortgage can save you money on interest, your employer is essentially offering you free money that you cannot get any other way if one of your benefits is a 401(k) matching program! And who wants to turn down free money?

You might also decide against making extra payments on any debt if those extra payments could put you in danger of building up more debt. If you have no cushion of cash, no emergency savings, you can put yourself in danger of racking up more debt if something unexpected happens. Having the money to deal with emergencies should take precedence over paying off debt quickly. However, if you can place the money you were planning to direct towards your mortgage or credit cards into savings and build up a decent emergency fund, there is no reason that you can’t start up those extra payments after you’ve built up a healthy cushion.