When I started trying to trim down the amount my husband and I were spending monthly on food, I also started to look at other areas we were spending excess cash on that could be trimmed as well.
For me, that was my cell phone bill. I use my phone primarily for texting, and vary rarely use it for chatting. By switching my plan, I have gone from paying aound $65 a month, to now paying only $30. I still have some daytime minutes, but free evenings & weekends. Only perk I lost was having caller ID. And for an extra $7 a month, I was ok with it going.
Friends of mine have recently cut cable from their lives (don't drop your jaws... I know they are going to be OK). My girlfriends husband told me that for the cost of one month of their cable, they were able to buy an antenna to pick up HD stations (the antenna was $30, cable monthly was $42). They still will get 95% of the stations they watched - CTV, Global, CityTV, and CBC. Two more HD stations will be added to that list by the summer. All told, they will save close to $500 a year. Sarah was telling me that her boys watch more movies than TV, and they have been renting shows from the library. I have borrowed videos from the library before, and think that this is a great alternative. They have many of the shows that my kids already watch on Treehouse - Angelina, Thomas, The Wiggles, etc.
Are there ways your family is learning to cut corners and put a little extra coin in the bank?
Thanks for the reminder on this... I Just switched my cell phone to prepaid. I average less than 5 minutes a month, so even though I was on the cheapest plan, prepaid will still save at least $15/month. Next on to analyzing our cable options... I think ours is going to go too. We have recently joined Netflix ($8 a month) and between all the kids shows on there and the ones we get from the library, we really don't need cable. There's only 1 show I really love and it streams online after it airs.
ReplyDeleteWe were paying $30 for our landline, and when we went to move to Rogers, Telus suddenly had a package of landline with Caller ID for $23. That's what we have now.
ReplyDeleteAlso, we rent our videos, when we do, from the DVDPlay machines in Safeway. $1.79 each.
ReplyDeleteWe both have prepaid plans on Virgin Mobile and I think I only spend about $12.50 a month (I top up $25 roughly every 2 months). I guess I just don't use my cell phone much.
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