Skip to main content

Marking a Milestone; Saving on Internet

I just noticed this is post number 100. Whoo hooo!

I found an even cheaper solution to my home Internet. Currently, we pay $110 a month to the phone company for our home phone and Internet service and $28 a month to the cable company for basic cable. My plan was to switch our Internet to the cable company, which would cost about $65 a month for the level of Internet speed I'd like to get, then cut out TV cable service and the home phone. That would eliminate the $110 phone bill all together, but what we pay to the cable company would a little more than double.

To get TV service, I bought this:



I love the Roku, which streams TV shows and movies to the TV. It doesn't require a subscription to a service to stream -- there are quite a few free options -- but to increase variety and to have access to new TV shows, I sprang for subscriptions to Netflix and HuluPlus. (Until my membership to Amazon Prime expires this coming December, I also have a whole additional set of shows available though Amazon, but I have no plans to renew it. It doesn't cost much, and it works wonderfully, but I think we get enough TV with the other two options. I might even cut out Netflix eventually, too.)

The Netflix and HuluPlus subscriptions cost $16 a month for both. Overall savings with this option -- I still have yet to make any changes with the Internet, home phone and cable, so we haven't realized any of the savings yet -- is $57.

However, for the first time the other day, I considered that it might be cheaper to just upgrade the Internet service with the phone company. Turns out, it is. The Internet portion of our phone bill is $30. The fastest Internet speed the phone company offers is $43. Since we don't notice too many problems with the Internet streaming as-is, I feel pretty confident that just a short boost in speed is all we really need. Therefore, the cheapest option is to leave the Internet where it is but upgrade its speed. Once all the taxes are added in, it will probably cost us $50 a month. We still cut out the landline and the cable. Therefore, what we spend for Internet and cable every month would be just $66, once the cost of Netflix and HuluPlus are added in. Savings with this method: $72 a month.

What holds me back from making the change is that I'm a chicken. Every time I've ever called to have something disconnected, I've gotten a hard-sell from the person on the other end of the phone as they tell me why I really need their service. But, if I want to make my goal, I need to get some backbone and just do it.

Wish me luck.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trimming the Grocery List

This week is another grocery shopping week, and I'm dreading it. I had at one point managed to get my grocery spending under $175 every two weeks, the last few trips have not gone that well. They've all totaled more than $200, not including any supplementary trips I needed to make later. I'm not really sure what I can do to cut it more at this point beyond rethink what we've been eating. Over the past few months, the price of ground beef has gone up quite a bit, and much of what we eat has ground beef in it. I had been buying the leanest beef available, but on my last grocery trip, I bought 90/10 meat. Perhaps we'll need to eat more chicken.
Post a Comment
Read more

Finding a use for gifts you don't use

( Stuart Miles / FreeRangeStock.com ) Question: Someone gives you a present. You open it, give the gifter a sincere smile, and say, "Thank you," but you know that gift is something you'll never use. Not once. What do you do with it later? Me? I keep them. I just can't shake the feeling of guilt that goes along with regifting or selling them. As a result, my family and I have lots of items we either haven't used in years or have never used at all: An electric knife, electric griddle, a big mixer, something called Yonanas. The list goes on and on. But the bottom line is, Yonanas and electric knives don't fit my family's lifestyle. They never have, and I doubt they ever will. So I think I might need to get over feeling like it would be ungrateful to get rid of them and post them in places like Craigslist or some of those online sales sites on Facebook for sale. That way, at least we can have the cash to pay toward part of our debt. Wouldn't...
Post a Comment
Read more

Making Money

Last year, I participated in a local consignment sale that sells all kids items . I made $37 for the work I put into it, which is more than I could've hoped for given how little I had to start off with. A few weeks ago, I signed up to participate again. I have a few weeks to go through everything, get it all tagged and ready to go. I can also take some items that got left behind last time. Hopefully, I do at least as well as last time. Speaking of Consignments ... Our local newspaper ran an article a couple of months ago about local consignment stores I found really interesting. One of the store owners featured in the story said she had a consigner who shops local garage sales for cheap finds, then sells the items at the consignment store, receiving a check from the consignment store that averages about $800 a month. Of course, that doesn't account for the money she spends at the garage sales buying the items to begin with, but even a net income of $400 a month on consignm...
Post a Comment
Read more