Budgeting

[markanthonygomez11]

Have a look at your utilities. Far too many of us have a cable or cellphone package that sounds good, but has channels or allowances which are far in excess of what we would actually use.

[Frugal]

I know. I really wish I could save money by getting rid of my smartphone. For two, we pay $134 a month (that's with an 8% employee discount, so normally, we would pay $150.

[artwest]

I agree. We pay about $150 for telephone, internet and cable.

I think we are going to explore the options of cutting our cable bill and maybe watching some tv shows through the internet via our wii. If we cut back to basic cable and can get some tv shows and sports off the internet for free, we could cut $20-$30 off of our bill.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by markanthonygomez11

Have a look at your utilities. Far too many of us have a cable or cellphone package

Cable and cell phone are NOT utilities. They are luxuries. The exception would be if the cell is your only phone and then basic service is needed but not all of the bells and whistles.

[project15]

For those of you that don't use a lot of minutes, but still want your smart phones, why not try a pay as you go monthly plan? I've been on Virgin Mobile's cheapest plan for the past few months and love it. I was lucky to get in when it was $25 for 300 minutes and unlimited text and data and I have an android phone. We're going to sign my wife up for pagepluscellular's 1200 minute, 3000 text, and 100 MB data plan ($29.99) when her contract expires next month. This brings our total cell phone bill to $55 plus tax for two smart phones that satisfy our exact usage characteristics.

[naomibatac]

You can find numerous websites on the Internet that give information on how to save electricity. Example, having big and wide windows can give you a lot of savings by not using lights and aircons. However, I consider our internet connection as a necessity because I do online business.

[Nightfly]

The pay-as-you-go cell plans are wonderful: you can cut your cell phone bill in half, and many of them use the networks that "name brand" carriers provide. I use StraightTalk from Wal-Mart. The reception is great and I pay less than half of what I used to pay to Verizon. I switched over a year ago and have had no problems. The only big difference is: you pay month-to-month in advance of your usage, rather than after your usage as you do with the big carriers.

As for cable, we realized that we were watching about 20% of all of the channels that we used to pay for. For movies, most cable channels provide movies that are 30 years old, that you've seen six times, and/or are mediocre anyway. Couple those traits with having to put up with 6 minutes of commercials every 15 minutes or so, and watching movies on cable is for the true masochist. We called our cable company and made a point to ask for local channels only (they don't provide this option in their ads or on their website). Between local channels for network programming and local news, Hulu, network websites, and Redbox - we have all of the TV options we need. Dump your premium cable channels and just pay for the local ones. Even better if you can get your local channels via an antenna (we can't).