Save Money: Kill Cable and Phone (Auburn, Calais: coupons, to rent, appliances)

[woolwiTch]

A lot of us are looking to save money these days and I came across two interesting articles this week about replacing regular phone service with a device called Ooma and using the internet for TV.

Here's the article on Ooma: I Love Ooma*-*oneforthetable.com (http://www.oneforthetable.com/oftt/stories/i-love-ooma.html - broken link) It's a VoiceOverInternetProtocol device. You connect it between your modem and wireless router and you get free USA phone service. The device itself costs something like $200, so it's certainly not a money saver over your landline for several months, but if all goes well, it would save a lot of money over time. Mostly good comments on this thing over on amazon.com too. You can have them port over your current phone number, which is often not the case with Vonage in Maine. And, unlike magicJack, you don't have to have your PC up and running for it to work. I guess there's a risk they could change the free deal, but I'm thinking it might be worth a try. I get so annoyed with how much our phone bill is for how little we use it. Anybody tried this thing?

Then I came across another article about how much TV is available over the internet now, so you can watch it on your PC or, to watch it on TV, connect a device to your TV like your laptop, the Netflix Roku, the AppleTV, etc. And of course you can put up an antenna and get your local stations (in Maine not necessarily, of course). I knew about some of this stuff, but not all of it and I hadn't really thought about how it could replace cable. Watch your favorite cable shows using Hulu.com, Netflix and Itunes — CancelCable.com

I should also work on ways to cut down on our electricity usage. I know there's a lot we could do.

Anybody have good suggestions on how to cut down on those regular monthly expenses?

[BacktoNE]

We bundle everything together with Time Warner. We have unlimited long distance, high speed internet and cable for $125 a month, and we locked in for 2 years so they can't keep hiking up the rates on us. The unlimited long distance is huge for us since 99% of our phone calls are out-of-state.
Before the lock in, we were paying $147 a month due to a big rate increase. Our monitor is a 15" so there is no way both of us could comfortably watch it as a TV.

I have been able to knock $20 per quarter off our water bill by being smarter about laundry and dishes.

I also reduced our grocery bill by $150 per month by shopping with a very specific list every 2 weeks, instead of randomly buying "whatever" once a week. I had no idea I was doing so much impulse buying.

[woolwiTch]

It doesn't matter how small your computer monitor is. You can watch internet TV on your actual TV by connecting your laptop or a wireless device like Netflix Roku ($99) to the TV. That's what interests me, though I do actually watch a little TV on my laptop.

Interesting to hear you like your TWC bundle. My sister in Auburn says she loses her phone sometimes with her TWC bundle. We have Comcast down here and I just hate them so much I won't give them more of my money. Anyway, we switched to DirecTV a couple of years back, so we just have Comcast now for the internet. I hear gwi.net is a better deal for internet and phone, so I might check that out.

You are so right about saving money by being more disciplined with your shopping by using lists. I also carefully study the weekly grocery store circular to make my shopping list and I use coupons a lot.

[shadowfax1997]

Some other things I have done:

make my own lunch rather than buy it.

shopping list make a huge difference. Plus while i resent it, wally world does have better prices than the other two big food chains in maine.

I pay off the credit card in full - carry no balance.

We have vonage and it works well, although we lose the wireless internet while on the phone.

Proper maintenance on car - tire pressure, air filter, oil, etc. Does increase mileage some.

Turn off lights. I hate a dark house, but no sense in having every light on.

My name is on a list to get one of those devices from maine libraries to plug into your appliances to find out how efficient they are. I am looking forward to seeing how my 15 year old fridge will fare. PErhaps investing in some new equipment can save money in long run.

Make coffee at home and bring with me rather than buy.

And a method I am using to save for vacation: I carry only $5, $10 or $20 in my wallet. If I buy something and have change or $1 returned, they go into a seperate pocket and a piggy bank at home. Always. That money is vacation. It is adding up VERY fast. And amazing how often you will pass on something you don't really need if you know that $2 item will "cost" a $5 bill.

[Submariner]

We have no cable service in my township.

My Dw watches 'Law & Order", "NCIS', 'Quency' and others on the WWW using Netflix, on her PC.

Our eldest son and I have been watching: 'Heros', 'Office', 'Sarah Connors', and last night we watched '007 Quantum of Solace', all on his PC.

We also watch DVDs: we recently finished the 'Rome' series, and are now in the midst of the '4400' series, watching them as DVDs.

I try to turn on the TV once a night around 1800 [6pm] to catch the ABC evening news. Sometimes we get a clear signal, sometimes we don't. It is not a very good news broadcast but it is what we can get. Soon I anticipate that we will lose all broadcast TV signal. which will not be a huge lose at all.

$9.95 / month to Netflix is not much. It works for us.



I am not familiar with 'Ooma' I followed your link:

All I did is plug the Ooma VoIP box (which has an answering machine built in) into my Internet connection and then directly into the base of my Panasonic phone system.

You buy this box, you plug it into your phone line internet connection and then you can turn off your phone line?

I am comfuzzled. If you have no cable going into your house, and you have no phone line going into your house, then what does this expensive box connect into ?

[Casper1212]

All this stuff gets me tangled up too, forest. This week, I've been on the phone every day contacting service providers for our new house to see who has what service and for what price. We can't bundle here, but we can there, and that's going to save us some money. I use my cell phone for long distance calls. We've completely dropped long distance at home and have considered getting rid of the land line. Our phone company has circle calling. THAT saves us a fortune in overtime minutes. I have hubby pick up things we need from the store on his way home from work, which saves me time and gas. Newer appliances can save you enough to make it worth buying them because they are energy efficient. And, one last tip, my daughter told me about a website she uses called "Flylady.com." It has a lot of good tips on how to get your house organized, save money on groceries,etc., things like that. I've only gotten as far as using the first tip, which is to just take fifteen minutes at a time to do something toward organizing or cleaning every day and IT WORKS!

As for the confusion, just tell me who has the best service and the best price for bundling internet, tv and phone in Calais!

[BacktoNE]

The other thing we've done, which is saving us a ton of money, is to get rid of one car. I don't work outside the home anymore, but my DH is a road warrior. His vehicle costs are pretty much equivalent to 2 cars, all on his own.

Since he is usually working in the home office at least a half day per week, I plan my errands around that, and of course, there is always Saturday & Sunday if necessary. If for some reason, his car isn't available and I need a vehicle during the week, it is far cheaper to rent a car for 1 day than to own a car that sits in the garage 6 days a week.

Obviously this won't work for a lot of people, but it's saving us at least $300 a month right now.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by Casper1212

All this stuff gets me tangled up too, forest. This week, I've been on the phone every day contacting service providers for our new house to see who has what service and for what price. We can't bundle here, but we can there, and that's going to save us some money. I use my cell phone for long distance calls. We've completely dropped long distance at home and have considered getting rid of the land line. Our phone company has circle calling. THAT saves us a fortune in overtime minutes. I have hubby pick up things we need from the store on his way home from work, which saves me time and gas. Newer appliances can save you enough to make it worth buying them because they are energy efficient. And, one last tip, my daughter told me about a website she uses called "Flylady.com." It has a lot of good tips on how to get your house organized, save money on groceries,etc., things like that. I've only gotten as far as using the first tip, which is to just take fifteen minutes at a time to do something toward organizing or cleaning every day and IT WORKS!

As for the confusion, just tell me who has the best service and the best price for bundling internet, tv and phone in Calais!

I got into the habit long ago of carrying a cellphone. It was required by my employer.

We have a landline. Though commonly the audio is terrible, if anyone wants to speak with us and hear each other, than they call my cell. Our landline provides DSL. The DSL is great when it works. The landline goes down completely maybe twice a year. The DSL goes down maybe quarterly. but then they get it fixed and we are online again.

Our landline company is only 'reliable' for it's DSL.

My cellphone works great, though it is being bought out by Verizon, so it's quality is likely to change.

If we dropped the landline, we would lose WWW connectivity. And only be able to get online via my cellphone. Which woudl cost me more $ and would be very slow [no more watching moves online].

If I dropped my cellphone, then we would lose audio capability.

So for now, I think, that we are stuck keeping both the landline and a cellphone.

B has a cellphone [prepaid] though she keeps it turned off.

[woolwiTch]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

I am not familiar with 'Ooma' I followed your link:


You buy this box, you plug it into your phone line internet connection and then you can turn off your phone line?

I am comfuzzled. If you have no cable going into your house, and you have no phone line going into your house, then what does this expensive box connect into ?

As I understand it, you keep whatever you are using to access the internet, and that's what the Ooma plugs into. So if you have DSL for your internet and phone, you plug the Ooma into that and you keep paying for your internet service but you drop your phone service. I know that's not feasible for some people. You are right that if you have no cable coming into your house and no phone line coming into your house then this would not work.

We are Comcast for our internet and unFairPoint for phone, so I think we could do this and dump unFairPoint.

[Casper1212]

I've been looking at our options for bundling when we move to Maine. One of the things I have to consider is download speed. We can't get DSL at the house we're renting, so we either go back to the sat internet service have now (Ugh!) or we can go with an alternative company that offers an internet connection that is faster than DSL. It won't save us much money, which is what I was hoping to do, but at least we can get better service for the same price.
As for cutting back to one vehicle, hubby and I both waited too long to get what we each wanted. Yes, we're into cars and trucks. So, no cutting back to one vehicle, even though I work from home most of the time. Besides, after raising kids and finding myself at home with no transport and a sick child when we were a one car family, it just bothers me to be without a vehicle.
My cell phone--couldn't get by without it. Most of my work contacts are in there and everybody knows that's where you call if you want to reach me. With the plan we have, I can call my daughter and talk as much as we want. Put a price on that!