No More Money Down the Drain... No More Cable Bundling

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When we moved we signed up for a bundle package from the local cable company. We got phone, Internet and cable for a mere $120 a month after taxes and other silly fees that get added on.

Over the past month I barely watched regular tv- I mostly used On Demand and have recently been watching Mad Men on DVD (I got seasons one and two for $5 each at Target awhile ago). Today while sitting at my desk at work I started to wonder why are we paying tons of money for things that I am not even utilizing? $120 a month is a lot of money, especially when we are doing some major belt tightening around here.

I did some research and found that we could cut the $120 a month almost in half with little pain involved. Here is what we did...

-We canceled our bundle and just signed up for Internet service. We got the mid level service (which is good for streaming movies) for $48.59 a month for 12 months which includes taxes, etc. and the router.
- We bought an  HDTV antenna for $38 from Amazon so that we can get the local channels on our television
- We bought the magicJack Plus for $67 from Amazon which includes one year of phone service and after that I believe it is $20 or $30 a year. With the plus version you do not need to hook it up to a computer (we are only using my laptop- the desktop is packed up because we have nowhere to put it). We actually are better off with the Magic Jack as the phone in the bundle we had did not include long distance calls.
- We signed up for Netflix for $7.99 a month (the first month is free) so that we can stream movies and tv shows; there is more than enough content to keep my husband, the kids and I entertained. If you sign up for a one month free trial through Swagbucks you get 675 Swagbucks which you can buy a $5 Amazon gift card with (450 Swagbucks) and have some leftover. Just go to the Earn tab and then Special Offers.

After crunching the numbers:

$48.59 per month Internet
    7.99 per month Netflix
  67.00 Magic Jack with one year of service
  38.00 HDTV antenna

The total is $64.66 a month for the next year (I spread out the costs of Magic Jack and the HD antenna over 12 months). Not too bad, and we still get everything we need/want.

Now I can breath a little sigh of relief because we have $55 more dollars to put towards paying down our debt and getting a little closer to buying a home. Every little bit helps and now I don't have to pee myself anymore when I open up the bill from the cable company!

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