This is a different post for me because I am actually trying to educate myself on keeping a more stringent family budget. Yes the Childresses budget. I believe keeping a family budget is vital in the finance management portion of your life. Too often we might make more money and therefore we spend more money. We get used to a certain salary or time of year when commissions arrive and that comes to a halt. Then what? You have to completely alter your lifestyle or get in serious debt. Now we budget for our necessities and that's a given. These are items like daycare, gas, household needs (food, clothes, medical etc.), insurance, mortgage, utilities, and the most important tithe. These are staples in a budget, must haves that we require to get through our month. My question, and what I am seeking feedback on and looking to figure out are the luxuries. What I'm going to focus on is our AT&T & Directv plans. I'm going to let you look at what we spend on this and see where cuts can be made. If its a great deal of savings then adjustments might need to be made, if its not then we'll let the math speak for itself. Regardless this is an interactive post and I would really like your feedback on this matter and what works/doesn't work for your family.
Now at one time Shannon and I had an AT&T land line home phones, DSL Internet, Cell phone plans, and Directv. Being the frugal spender I am when it comes to bills we ended up dropping our land line phones, and bundling all of our AT&T products as well as rolling in our Directv bill into our AT&T bill allowing us to save an additional $5 there. $5, I told you I was tight. My AT&T bill is still outrageous in my opinion and I can't help but think what else can we be doing with this money? So lets break down my August 2011 bill shall we?
DSL Internet Service: $37.95
AT&T Wireless Service: $200.73
Directv Service: $93.37
AT&T Total Bill : $332.05
We have Bell south Fast Access which is now AT&T DSL Fast Access. We recently upgraded this DSL service to Direct Ultra because we were expereiencing some serious internet drag. The difference between the standard DSL and DSL Ultra is about $10 a month. Now AT&T's pushing their U-Verse product which I really don't know that much about but might be worth looking into. Regardless there is not a great deal of savings on Internet.
The biggie, and the one I need the most convincing about, AT&T Wireless Service. Shannon and I are currently set up on the iPhone Family data plan. We have 700 minutes to use, unlimited texting (this is a must if you know Shannon Childress), my phone is on the 4GB plan and Shannon's is on the 200MG plan.
Instead of breaking down everything in taxes, fees, etc, $200 a month is pretty standard for our cell phone bill. Now the big scary question, can we live without our iPhone and data plans AAHHHHH!!!!
Lets first look at what we use our iPhone's for and see if it justifies $200 a month. Calls, Email, tether my 4GB to my iPad, Facebook/Twitter, iPod Music, Internet Radio, News updates, and other productive apps. Now we recently got the wonderful iPad 2 which does all of this stuff and more which begs the questions, do we really need the iPhones?
Lets explore a simple AT&T cell phone plan with simple cell phones. Keeping to the 700 minute family plan AT&T's option would be $69.99 + $30 unlimited family texting so roughly $100 a month in savings. Now this does not include any kind of Internet that I know of.
Last lets look at Directv. I've noticed that we watch less and less TV now that we have kids, agendas, and basically our lives are go go go. There are a few TV must haves though. One being local channels, two being Nick Jr & Disney, and three being ESPN. We are currently on the CHOICE plan which runs us $60.99 a month. Throw in DVR for $7.00, HD service for $10.00 and Ins for $6.00. We're already up to $84.00. Throw in taxes and the occasional PPV movie then we end up with $93.37 in service.
The cheapest package they offer is the Family Package for $29.99 a month. Out of the must haves I only lose ESPN but I can always watch these on the iPad. If I were to switch my new savings would be $48.00 giving me a $45 savings.
So in conclusion if I were to downgrade everything my new monthly AT&T bill would be roughly $175 a month compared to $332 a month giving me a $157 savings.
So I leave you with this question, Is there a better way of making these savings or did I just get it as skinny as possible? I would really like your feedback here!
-Steve
www.stevechildressmusic.com
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