saving money

We've been doing a bit of bill reduction in the past few months, not necessarily on purpose, but as we have looked at where our money is going, we are realizing that we could be using it more efficiently. At this same time as last year, January 2010, we are saving $88.34 per month, which breaks out to over $1,000 per year. By this time next year, we will be saving $115.84 per month over what we were paying in January 2010. Even with inflation, that is pretty good!

In case anyone else is interested, here is the breakdown (sorry there's so much space between -- not sure how to fix it):

Category	Were Paying (per month)	Now Paying	Start Up Cost	Savings
water	$65.24	$14.92	$0.00	$50.32
cell phone	$56.56	$27.44	$150.00	$29.12
cable	$47.19	$10.79	$180.00	$36.40
Totals				$115.84/per month after Jan 2012
				$103.34 after Sept 2011
				$88.34/per month, currently

By way of explanation -- the start up cost for the cell phone includes the cost of my new phone that I got in September, and the start up cost for getting rid of cable, which included the hardware that we purchased this month, which I will explain later. Both start up costs are amortized over 12 months, which I subtracted from our total cost savings.

#1. The biggest cost savings that we were able to realize was with our water and sewage bill. We were being charged almost $800 per year for water and sewage, with the amount going up every year. We received a flyer this summer with the water bill advertising that we should have our water metered instead of zoned (which is where they assume that you're using a certain amount of water based on how your property is zoned). So we signed up for the free program, two guys from the Water Dept came out and put a meter on and we even got a free rain barrel! I've been shocked at how much our water bill has come down because of this! We were paying on a semi-annual basis, but because we are using way less water than they were charging us for, we probably are paid up through the rest of this year just on what we paid last year.

#2. We were also able to save through replacing my cell phone service through AT&T with Virgin Wireless. I don't use that many minutes on my cell and we have a land line at home, so even the 450 minutes I was getting through AT&T were too many, plus a $5 texting plan. I switched to the 300 minute option through Virgin, which includes unlimited text and data for $25/month and I could not be happier with it! I haven't really noticed a drop off in coverage and the places where we travel the most (southeastern Michigan and the Cincinnati area) have fine coverage. Plus, Chris still has AT&T (through work), so if we're in an area where I don't get coverage, he will have it and we seldom travel without the other.

#3. As of today, we are a cable-free family. As we were examining what we actually watch on cable, it is fairly limited to ESPN and occasionally the Food Network. We mostly watch PBS when we do watch TV (which isn't that often, to be honest). The kids like the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, but that's not a great reason to continue paying almost $50/month. Plus, with the rise of programming on the internet, and a subscription to Netflix (plus their instant access on many programs), there isn't much that we can't watch. The only catch (and it's a doozy) is that my husband has the expertise and know-how to set up the TV through the internet, as well as the resources through his work to be able to borrow a good computer that was not being used. We had to buy other things to make it work as well, which accounts for the $180 start up cost. But, there are distinct advantages to not having cable either -- I had been sad to not have access to WTTW Prime, which has a lot of shows that I enjoy watching (Masterpiece Theater, documentaries, etc.), and we now have an application called Boxee where we can download different apps like Pandora, Netflix, etc. I can also have my iTunes in the living room instead of connecting my iPod and having it drain the batteries.

These 3 things have been pretty painless switches to make and we will reap some significant savings from them!