The Leak: A cell-phone plan that doesn’t match your needs.

The Fix: Too many minutes and you’re wasting money. Too few and the overages can send your cell-phone bill into the stratosphere. On average, according to the consumer research firm J.D. Power & Associates, cell-phone subscribers use only 64 percent of the minutes they pay for. If you’re still under contract, call your cell-phone company and ask it to analyze your usage. You may find that buying fewer monthly minutes but, say, getting unlimited evening and weekend minutes may work better than a more expensive plan—and you won’t pay a termination fee of $100 or more. If your contract is up and you’re thinking about switching carriers, shop for the best plan on myrateplan.com/wireless.

The Leak: Paying online shipping fees.

The Fix: Pool purchases with friends to qualify for free or flat-rate shipping offers. For example, several sites, such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Tower, offer free standard shipping on most orders of $25. For other deals, use a shopping search engine, like shopzilla.com or shop.com. Enter your ZIP code and compare retailers’ prices, including shipping and handling. You can even specify “Free Shipping” as an option in your search (on Shopzilla, search for “Special Offers” and then “Free Shipping Offers”).

The Leak: Taking your time to redeem gift cards.

The Fix: Read the fine print on the back of the card: Some cards expire as quickly as six months after their purchase, while others charge $1 to $2.50 for dormancy, maintenance, or inactivity fees if they’re not used within 6 to 24 months. The fees are deducted from the card’s balance, so a $45 gift card could disappear in two years. The worst culprits: shopping-mall gift cards good at any store in a given shopping center. A survey conducted by the office of U.S. senator Charles E. Schumer found that these cards often had the fastest expiration dates and the highest dormancy fees. Because of the bad publicity, these fees may be on their way out: Starbucks dropped its fee after the study was published; some states, including California and Rhode Island, have outlawed them; and new offerings, like McDonald’s Arch Card, tout their lack of an expiration date and extra fees.