As part of the plan to retire to LCNM as soon as possible, there is the idea of living more within our means with less debt, less bills to pay. If we are going to retire soon, we are going to have to live on about 70% of the income we have now. And I need to have funds for Caliches! This fact led to several discussions between Mrsfabp and I about how we could cut living expenses. Not surprisingly this discussion led us to look at Charter Communications (CC) as a culprit in our unchecked spending.
Let’s take a look at our CC bill. On an average it totals about $140. That seems reasonable for all the services we use but the question that begs to be answered is “How much do we use each of the services?” My own breakdown:
High Speed Internet: Obviously the most used. Mrsfabp 90 minutes a day, me, 120 minutes a day, MillieJupiter 180 minutes a day, CollegeBoy when home, 24 hours a day. Besides the email and facebook and twitter to keep in touch, there are blogs to read, blogs to write, entertainment to download and podcasts to create and listen too. Cost is approximately $30 a month
Landline telephone: Generally we used our telephone at home less than 30 minutes a day. Less than half on calls out. Cost $30 a month.
Cable TV: It is used a lot for background noise, with very few shows being of the “MUST WATCH” variety. There is Big Bang Theory, The Office and Yankee Baseball in the warm months and Giant Football in the cold. MSNBC and the Food Network take up some time too. My guess is we are talking single digit hours of TV watching weekly although the ON time is probably triple that. Cost for our 2 tier system – basic and one tier up, about 120 channels, is $80 a month. BINGO!
One does not need to be a rocket surgeon (Thanks Maqz!) to see the money being poured down the drain. Well, the solution is obvious. We are going to become a cable-less household very soon. Phase one has been in discussion with current household members and with CollegeBoy who is only home about 35% of the days each year. All seem to be in agreement. We have Netflix. We have DVDs. We have internet. Cable should go. We just need to figure on downloading our entertainment and figure out how to best make it available to all. By this I mean making it simple so that even the lesser technologically savant here can figure out how to watch something. That is the point we are working on now and I expect the cable cancellation of CC in less than a month.
Cell Phones: I add this here because it is phase two of the financial drill down. We have a family cell plan with some data and text added and spend about $100 a month for that. The “youngins” use it constantly and the DW and me much less so but like the convenience and safety factor of remaining in touch with everyone. CollegeBoy is touting the Google Voice application, using VOIP (voice over internet protocol) aka Skype with a hand held phone connected into our wireless internet. Cost to do so might be $25 initially for the phone but we would expect to save $40 a month. Not a bad tradeoff.
So I expect that CC will be getting a call in a few weeks with a cancellation order. We will save $120 a month and I am happy to report that financially we are making a good choice. Entertainment wise we are making a good choice. It keeps us on the path to LCNM.
3 comments:
Good luck with that. Two people at work cancelled their cable. Maqz did too. Johnny9k and the Padre are both happy with their choices. Padre put all of his movies on a drive and they pick and choose as well as pull from the interwebtubes. Johnny has the tubes too, and Netflix and a digital recorder, maybe Tivo, which I don't know how that would be effective without cable.
Me on the other hand, has no fancy recording devices, doesn't pay for Netflix but rather supports my local video store and has no library of movies.
The morning tv on basic cable was unacceptable. I went back to my +1 tier of cable. Couldn't stand it.
The interweb tubes and netflix may get another shot, but I'd miss my morning Mike and Mike and Mika.
I cancelled my land line years ago and never looked back. No sweat. Haven't paid for HBO and Skinimax in forever. Interweb + cable is $120/month.
Want to know why government should do more against business? Cable companies are provided local monopolies. That's bad regulation. Competition in cable should create at least one provider who would sell you just the channels you want and nothing else. I mostly watch a handful of channels.
Cable might go again!
I think this might be a movement! I just read about a similar decision on another blog, Life on a Southern Farm. The post was titled Time to Go Back to the Antenna TV for Us.
We've been talking for some time about doing the same thing, especially since we are paying a LOT for 2 houses-worth.
It is especially easy when you can watch almost everything in one form or another on the computer. In the last week I have watched Jon Stewart and Colbert, Avatar, Big Bang Theory, and several Yankee Baseball games - (yes, you could watch the Red sox too but why?) so I don't think we are missing much. Mrsfabp has watched Weeds and United States of tara also...
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