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Location: Born in L.A. - NYC is Second Home - Rustbelt is Home Base
1,607 posts, read 1,086,651 times
Reputation: 1372
I have a Tracfone, I don't make much $, so no smart phone. Tracfone cost about $100 a year but you don't get much minutes with the yearly fee. I seldom use the phone but like one if I need it.
Had basic cable for about $75 a month. Dropped it due to finances. I just bought a new, expensive $99 antenna and can get about 10 stations now. Prior antenna got me 3 to 4 stations.
I share internet / land phone which is $82 a month. They need the landline phone for fax. I think internet with no landline phone is about $45 a month. If they stop splitting the bill I will use the library for internet. Library said I can park in their parking lot and use the internet for free.
$57 a month for cell & Internet. It's a weird concept stateside, so I'll elaborate. Other countries have awesome cell service and have cell plans where you get
10GB 4G a month
once you use that up you get 2 GB 4G a day
once you use that up you get unlimited 3G
they don't care if you tether, hence it's also your Internet
I will miss this cell company something fierce when I leave here. Their 4G rivals basic broandband Internet stateside, and even once I drop to 3G I still get 10 - 12 Mbps, plenty for streaming. Obviously I don't have cable or satellite TV here, but I don't stateside either. I grew up without TV, and then early on in my adult life was spoiled by Netflix to where I now expect TV to be on demand and commercial free. To me traditional TV is a poor substitute.
I have a bundle contract with DirecTV/internet/phone and the total bill this month was $195.00! It went up $15 on the part of DirecTV. Evidently, when I got my new flat screen TV they gave me some sort of 'introductory' price for 18 months, even though my first contract had been satisfied for years already and it was month to month. Anyway, I asked why it went up and that's what they told me. Separately my TV cost is $80 month, internet and phone are $114 combined. Ridiculous. After this contract has been satisfied I'm dumping all of it. I can get all of them cheaper and go back to my Straight Talk flip phone. I do have a 'smart phone' but I hate it and never use it. The cost just goes up and up. A couple of years ago it cost me $145 mo. for all three. This is my biggest expense every month after my mortgage payment.
For what it's worth, I think asking about "cable" alone is a bit off. More and more people have combined cable/internet bill, and sure, I could get rid of cable, but somehow my internet as a standalone package just seems to get more expensive. Amazing- how that works, it's almost like they want you to realize it's not worth it.
Right now, combo for FIOS is $140. We've got the upgraded internet, HBO, Showtime, and probably something else. Honestly I don't care that much about the TV channels... but happy wife = happy life, so here we are.
Cell phone, I'm on a family plan that my mom pays for($200 for 4 people). Yeah, I'm 32 and on my mom's plan, because it's much cheaper to be on a family plan and pay her back than go solo considering what we get for it.
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