Recurring Monthly Costs: Which Are Worth It? Which Are Not?
Published on - October 17th, 2007 (by J.D. Roth) I met some friends at a local restaurant Monday night. While chatting, we found ourselves bopping to the music playing on the radio. For more than hour, great song followed great song: U2, Eurythmics, The Police, Elvis Costello, The Clash, New Order. But the ambient noise made it impossible to know what station we were hearing. “I have to know what this is,” I said at last. “This could be my new favorite radio station.”
I tracked down the manager. He told me we were listening to Fred on 44, a channel on XM Satellite Radio. I’d heard of satellite radio, but didn’t know much about it. When I got home, I did some research.
As expected, there’s an upfront cost to obtain a receiver that can de-scramble the satellite signal. Unfortunately, that’s not the only cost. There’s also a subscription fee of around $10/month.
Alas — a subscription fee. They’re not deal-breakers for me, but they turn otherwise sure things into financial dilemmas. I don’t mind one-time costs, but subscriptions make me wary.
I would love to purchase an iPhone, for example. The initial hardware cost is fine. I can justify that. But I can’t justify a $60/month, two-year contract. That’s nearly $1500 for a device I don’t actually need. I stopped playing World of Warcraft because of the subscription fee. I loved the game, but in order to get my money’s worth, I felt like I needed to play more than is healthy.
I view recurring expenses as potential money sinks. Too often I don’t get value for what I spend. For three years I carried an $70/month deluxe digital cable package so that I could watch high-definition television. But at most, I was watching an hour or two of television per month! Besides, who needs to see Antiques Roadshow in high-def?
Over the past year, I’ve cut the number of magazines to which I subscribe, dropped to basic cable, and cancelled my Audible account. These moves have freed over $100/month. Eliminating recurring expenses has made a significant difference to my cash flow. Most of the time, I don’t even miss the things I’ve eliminated!
Of course, we each probably have a few recurring expenses that are easy to justify due to the pleasure or utility they bring us. I’m willing to shell out for The New Yorker because even though I only read about one issue per month, when I do read it, I love it. And if I find the time to listen to audiobooks again, I’ll re-subscribe to Audible — it’s a good deal when I actually use it.
I can’t decide whether paying for satellite radio would be smart or not. I’ve signed up for the free three-day trial of XM’s web service. So far, I like it. I’d probably subscribe:
- If NPR were available,
- If there were some sort of device that allowed me to receive XM on my iPod, or
- If it cost less.
As it stands, am I willing to spend $10/month for XM, and then pay for a receiver? How about $8/month for the streaming web version? I don’t know. For now, I’m just going to dig through my iTunes library to create some new playlists. I can probably duplicate the sound of Fred on 44. Maybe that will be enough…
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I have sirius, and love it. NPR is available with a lot of other news feeds. I started subscribing in january, i got in on a good deal and picked it up at far less than the normal subscription price. One option might be for you to find a friend who has it and piggy back their account. You can add additional receivers to an account for about 30-40% of the normal monthly subscription cost. I’m not certain of these #’s for xm (or sirius) b/c i have not investigated it recently.
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You can get XM Radio for FREE!!! GO thru AOL.com (AOL Radio), I think the only thing you need is an AOL IM account (which is also free). You can then listen thru the internet. Go to XM site for details.
I love XM esp BPM & FRED.
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I am with Carrie on using your existing library to create the “Fred 44 channel”. Otherwise you are just renting your music from XM/Sirius. Why not set aside $10 a month for a CD you really want then you can build up a library of music that you actually own and have the rights to?
I would bet that most months you would never even spend that $10.
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You might find this guy’s blog interesting:
http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com/
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There are things I buy that make me feel good and make my life easier such as:
New York
New York Times
Gym membership
Bus pass
Magazines
But some of these purchases I feel guilty about. I could view all serials online (save the environment and save $$), but I like to have the paper in my hand and read it on the couch. Because I ride the bus just 4x a week, I could probably spend less $ on the fare if I paid in cash, but I don’t want to have to find $1.50 in exact change every morning. In my household, that is next to impossible. So the pass provides ease at an expense I’m willing to take.
Recurring expenses have emotional and lifestyle components that for me sometimes override the cost factor.
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The one thing I’ve noticed with many of these stations is that after a month or two the novelty wears off. Just like on good ol’ FM, XM and Sirius are going to play mostly “the hits” of whatever era or genre the station is designed for.
Only rarely do you ever hear a, “WOW! I haven’t heard this in forever. I love this song!” after the first few months of listening. This usually occurs in the wee dark hours of morning. Even more rare is to hear a song you’ve never heard before.
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I had Sirius satellite radio for a while, and it was nice because, as someone else mentioned, you are able to listen to a whole genre of music without having to listen to just one artist. But I haven’t subscribed to it in a long time and now my satellite radio sits unused in a desk draw…very sad.
I have also been trying to cut down on things I subscribe to monthly. So far, no more cable bill or gym membership. I do subscribe to Netflix, but I gotta be able to watch something, and also pay monthly for internet. I have a couple of magazines but probably will not renew them. I think thats it for subscriptions so thats not bad at all.
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Stick with free.
Several people have mentioned Pandora.com. Totally. Go with it. It, like, reads your mind! It is YOUR perfect music. I don’t think I will ever purchase music again, itunes or otherwise. No need. I have Pandora. Also check out radioparadise.com. Again, free, and I think you’ll like it. Don’t pay for what you can get for free (though they do deserve donations).
Um, can’t you also listen to NPR for free through their web site? We subscribe to the free podcasts for our favorite NPR programs and listen to them when we feel like it.
Free, dude.
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Recurring expenses can be a budget buster, especially when they aren’t necessities. The recurring expenses I don’t begrudge are these: gas, electric, telephone, internet, property tax, insurance, water & sewer (I don’t think I’ve missed any). I do subscribe to some magazines (SciAm, Discovery, Fast Company, and Popular Woodworking). These are luxuries that I’ve decided I enjoy but they could be cut at any time, and every year I reassess.
Recurring expenses become invisible if we let them. It’s important to look very carefully at these costs and eliminate them whenever possible: if you can eliminate 10 recurring $10 expenses, that’s $100. If they are all monthly, you’ve saved $1200 over the course of the year.
As part of this constant re-examiniation, last month I did away with long distance on my land line, since I’ve committed to keeping a cell phone. This will save about $10-12 per month, because we can’t accidentally make long distance calls on the land line any more.
Speaking of cell phones: the power of recurring service charges is the reason why signing a two-year contract gets massive discounts on the phone itself: the profit to the phone company is almost all in the recurring fee.
Several people have mentioned XM and Netflix:
I’ve determined that NetFlix is not worthwhile in our house: I put up with a smaller selection and rent from the Public Library at $1/week (it becomes very difficult to watch enough movies to recoup the NetFlix subscription at that rate). And I would never pay for radio.
With an iPod loaded with all my CDs, I have more music than I could listen to in several days of continuous play. And another listener recommended Pandora: this is a great way to hear new music that you enjoy. I’ve found that after a handful of feedback, Pandora plays on target. It’s great and free.
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It’s definitely a dilemna I’ve run into as well. It depends on if these are new luxuries you’re bringing on or if they will be a cheaper substitute for something else. Will you stay home and watch a Netflix movie just once a month if you have a subscription? Will you download 10 less songs to Itunes because you have sirius/XM radio?
That’s typically how I run through decisions about recurring monthly fees.
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Just as items purchased by subscription may have hidden fees, they may also have hidden savings–and sometimes those aren’t obvious on first glance.
For example, my husband and I pay nineteen dollars per month for our Blockbuster subscription. One could argue that we could get movies for free from the library, thus this subscription is an unnecessary expense.
However, we’ve enjoyed receiving movies in the mail so much that we’ve stopped attending new releases. This means that we’re no longer paying sixteen dollars to enter the theater, five dollars for popcorn, fifty dollars on bar food afterwards, and all the gas for the entire excursion.
It also means that we no longer feel the need to purchase movies or television shows we love, because we can order and re-order them at any time without having to store them.
It also means that I have access to a massive amount of hour-long television shows, which with commercials removed are just the right amount of time for my daily cardio routine. I no longer feel the need to rent or purchase exercise DVDs, and I’ve also eliminated my monthly subscription to the local YMCA.
Thus, thanks to nineteen dollars per month, we’ve cut our monthly entertainment budget to one-third of what it was previously.
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NPR is free and offer better quality programing than any other radio. If you’re near a computer then services like Pandora and LaunchCast are free and offer you the music you like. (Note, I think LaunchCast does charge for their premium service which removes the ads).
I have no clue why people would pay for these satellite stations. Seems like a complete waste of money.
Gal
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great topic.. this makes me think about the recurring bills i have and which ones i actually do need
- dsl/phone bill (are there cheaper and better deals out there?)
- pre-paid legal member $16 a month (i’ve been paying for this for 2 years and have never actually used it)
- netflix $15 a month (rarely watch movies but i do every once in a blue moon)
- world of warcraft acct. $15 a month (only reason i haven’t cancelled yet is because my brother still plays)
- iphone (extra $20 for data plan).. yeah i must admit it’s NOT a neccessity.. but it does come in handy when i’m out of town or on vacation.. i was able to check my email for flight confirmation last week.. get directions to certain places i wanted to go.. and i was able to surf the net while sipping on a mocha in seattle =D
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I spend hardly any time in the car so for me, satellite radio isn’t very tempting. My problem is magazines. I’m a serial subscriber. I love to read, but don’t seem to have time to invest in books, so magazines are a good alternative. But, before I subscribe, I always check the magazine in question out and make sure that about 75-80% of the content will be useful or interesting to me. Then I look at the price. I’m willing to pay $1 an issue for the convenience of having something I will read delivered to my door. Upwards of that, it better be something I will not only read but keep and use as a reference – home repair magazines fall into that category, as do knitting magazines, two passions of mine. I know I could go to the library but my library won’t allow magazines to be checked out, and copying costs .35 per page, so that seems about a wash in the end for something I will refer to heavily. And, instead of discarding magazines once I’ve read them, I donate them by boxing them up and taking them to hospital chemo rooms. In the end, I’m talking about 10 magazines I subscribe to and read per month, 4 of which I will keep and 6 that I will give away. I don’t feel too bad about that, but only because I feel like I have made my choices carefully.
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Reoccurring fees are definitely a sink-hole. It’s important to examine your contract before signing up for them. Often times, there are hidden fees you can incur by canceling your membership/subscription, or you may have to extend your contract for any changes (as with cell phones).
I had a membership at a Golds gym for $30/mo…it was supposed to be for a year. So after a year, I went to cancel my membership (as I didn’t use it often enough to justify the cost)and I found out the trainer put down 2yrs…I didn’t inspect my contract to make sure it was the terms we discussed! Being a college student I was very broke, and this was an expensive lesson to learn.
Now I thoroughly inspect all my contracts!
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Subscription services are a brilliant marketing gimmick. They provide the company with a steady stream of revenue (a guaranteed stream if they make you sign a contract and commit to a set amount of time.) And they provide the customer with the needed rationalization to convince themselves to buy in. How many of us look at something like this and say “It’s just 10 dollars a month, that’s not that bad.”
The problem is that 10 dollars here and 5 dollars there add up very fast. It’s very similar to the problem I have in the grocery store. I tell myself that it’s only a dollar or two. Then I’m looking at the receipt and I’m wondering why I spent more that I budgeted.
For me, when I look at a subscription, I ask myself two questions.
1. Will I use this a lot beyond the first month or so? (Usually no.)
2. Would this seem like a lot of money if I had to pay for it all up front?
If I can answer yes to both of them then I go for it and I pay it up front.
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J.D.,
When I bought my last car, it came with XM and one year free subscription. I love it, but I hated to think I was “marketed” into buying the subscription. I waited before renewing, and they offered me a one-year deal for $70/yr. I took it. Now I pay my subscription annually and get a reasonable discount.
I listen whenever I’m in the car and when I’m on the computer (free with your subscription). The best is car trips into remote areas – so far no dead XM spots! So far it is WELL worth the cost.
Cheers,
Lisa
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A point related to yours about recurring costs is that it’s not necessarily a good thing to put one’s bills on a credit card or set to deduct automatically from a bank account. That does make certain they’re paid on time, true, but it also enables you not to have to think about them. That gym membership charge, for example, may continue long after you’ve stopped going, if payment of the fees is not required to be a deliberate thing. Writing a check or having deliberately to make the effort of paying it online keeps you conscious of your expenditures.
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J.D.,
Just discovered your site last week (thank goodness!)
The one recurring cost I jettisoned 3 years ago with no regrets was the cable bill. I have three kids and they’d come home from being at their dad’s for the week (we divorced three years ago – guess who signed us up for the $189.00 cable service in the first place!) and bee-line straight for the T.V. When I realized I could recite the lines of the Sponge Bob Squarepants episode they were watching it hit me that I was PAYING for my kids to watch RERUNS!
Now I don’t know how we ever found the time to watch T.V. in the first place. We eat together, we sit around the table and goof off while they’re doing homework, I read stories at night before they go to bed…all of this we “never had time for” before.
We have a $4.99 Blockbuster online subscription for one movie at a time. $4.99 beats $180.00 (plus the taxes and fees, etc.) that I was paying before. Now if I can just stay strong against their overpowering, all-consuming desire for cell phones….
Penelope
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One other aspect not considered is most* satellite radio stations are commercial-free.
(* – I have XM and only a handful have actual commercials – then only the news/talk/comedy stations do, none of the music stations do).
While I gather you are fairly resistant to marketing, there might be some money saved it not having to listen to how the local car dealer is offering… NO LESS THAN $3000 FOR YOUR TRADE-IN!!! Push it! Pull it! Shove it in today!
Not listening to that is worth the price of admission to me. Also, I’d echo earlier comments – some due diligence can get the monthly price down significantly.
BTW – I must be a bit younger, since the stuff on Lucy is more along the lines of what I grew up on. In the stream of alternative on XM, it starts at Fred, then Lucy, Ethel, and finally probably XMU.
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I understand your point about the subscription cost…Much like your cable and WoW I guess it comes down to how much you use it. Both my wife and I have had XM for about two years and we absolutely love it. I listen online, in the truck, and on the go (streaming to my Treo) IMHO, we use it more than enough to justify the costs.
Oh, and XM has “XM Public Radio” featuring Bob Edwards and others, but I do not listen to NPR so I am not sure how they compare.
http://www.xmradio.com/onxm/channelpage.xmc?ch=xm_public_radio
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Monthly bills add up fast. Here’s what we have done to limit the monthly bills:
- TV — we dropped to basic service, and get the HD channels over the air. For free.
- Netflix — to compensate for the basic cable, we get the $5 2 movie per month plan for Netflix. It’s the amount we manage to watch anyway, so I don’t need unlimited.
- Phone (land line) — we dropped long distance entirely (it was two times the taxes) and use calling cards. Now we have switched from unlimited local calls to a lower monthly fee, but paying 10 cents per outgoing local call. Turns out to be a $9 monthly savings because we rarely use the phone.
- Cell phone — we have one that we got at Sams Club for $30. It included $10 of airtime and is a simple pay-as-you-go phone service. Works out to be $8 a month.
- Gym membership — we do use the gym regularly, but were able to negotiate 3 months free if we prepaid a year.
- We called Comcast and got our internet down almost $20 a month by explaining to them that we would switch to Verizon’s FIOS service since it was cheaper. This lower rate lasts a year.
Sometimes, it just takes a quarterly review of those monthly expenses to find places to cut back without even noticing the difference. And make you appreciate the extras you decide to keep (like the Washington Post and various magazines I subscribe to).
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I am like you with not wanting to pay subscription fees and I resisted the urge to get XM for a long time. But when I was given a receiver for xmas, I decided to try it.
Mine is a portable unit that also records up to 25 hours of XM. I love having it in the car because I can always pick up stations i want to listen to if I’m in town, on my way to another town or visiting a place where I know nothing about local stations. My commute is 20 miles and the XM reception is nice to have all over.
Since my device records (a function I highly recommend), when a song comes on that I think I’d like to hear again, I hit “record” and it magically records from the beginning if I catch it soon enough – so, I can grab the device out of the cradle and have a fully loaded player without ever having to deal with hooking it up to my PC, copying CD’s to my hard drive or buying stuff from iTunes or whatever. I also have the home cradle so I can set it up to record particular shows/events that come on at night.
I would like NPR to be there, too, but I enjoy the variety of music that I could never manage with my own CD collection or on a local radio market. I could probably do better stuff with the subscription fee, but I don’t subscribe to cable T.V. and I feel I get more enjoyment out of the XM anyway.
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For me it is cell phones, I have thus far managed to live life without one. There have been numerous times it would have been nice to have, but I just can’t justify the outrageous fees for basic service. I already think that home phone and internet is ridiculous where I live (only one real provider and you have to buy one of their package deals) I end up paying about $80 a month for basic phone service and the slowest DSL they offer adding another $70 a month to that just seems too much. A previous comment talked about prepaid working out to less than $10 a month, maybe I’ll have to check that out.
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Recurring monthly costs are something that I strive to avoid. I was given a Palm Treo 650 in April as a gift (the speakerphone stopped working, and my trucker father needed that feature, so he gave the 650 to me and bought himself a 700 – great for me!) I am not locked into any kind of contract, and so I could get phone service without paying for the data — but even the $10-$15 a month I would spend on that has led me to carefully consider how much I need a cell phone. (So many people look at a cell phone as an absolute necessity — I have seen occasional need for it, but mostly it would be a convenience. How much money is convenience worth?)
I’ve also been thinking lately about web hosting. I spent $10 a month for web space that I originally purchased for my mother, to use as a family photo album. We’ve been far too busy for either of us to keep it updated, but I keep paying for it because I think it is too useful to give up on (especially email — 80% of my family members use email addresses from this domain). I also have been asking myself why I continue to pay $10 a month when I could pay a year at a time for about a 15% discount.
So why don’t I switch to the annual payment schedule? Well, mostly because I’m lazy. Inertia is such a huge threat when it comes to recurring expenses. It is easiest to leave things alone, as mentioned by My Road To Wealth @9; that’s why businesses love the subscription model.
Well, one good thing has come from this preponderance of pondering: I am adding to my GTD action list two items: Switch the web space payments to an annual basis, and look through my finances to see if there are any other recurring costs that I should be reviewing. (I’m going to focus especially on annual costs for the second item — I think a lot about monthly things but annual stuff flies under the radar!)
One final note: I apologize for the phrase “preponderance of pondering”. It popped into my head and made me chuckle, so I had to use it.
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The prepaid cell phone plan through T-Mobile is the cheapest in our area. No monthly fee. The minutes expire in 3 months, but if you buy more minutes, all the minutes roll over to the new expiration date. And once you have spent $100 on the minutes (not all at once, it is cumulative), then all the minutes expire in 1 year, not 3 months.
It is geared for people with credit problems, but it also works for cheap people like me!
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I really, Really, REALLY want a Blackberry. Everyone I do buisiness with has one. (Lame reasoning, I know.) I’ve wanted one ever since I set eyes on it BUT, I just can’t financially justify it. Buying the gadget would be OK, but the montly data fees! Yikes! Maybe someday I will become so indispensible that the cost would be justified, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Oh, well. I’ll just go pout in my corner.
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I was amazed at how much money I freed up by systematically going through all of my credit card charges and debit card charges and deciding whether I should continue the service or not. It is the invisible ones that are charged that added up for me.
After looking at them all I decided to keep:
Sunday only NYT (after they gave me a 50% off special. I pay $13/month for it.)
The $2.99 cable sports package that shows local and odd sports on 4 channels.
$11.99 credit aware service offered by American Express.
That’s it. I cancelled all my magazines when I began spending more consciously. And I justified the cable sports package by signing up for another 2 years with sprint and they gave me 10% off my basic cell phone service. That was a savings of $3.25 so my budget didn’t feel it at all. My logic is if I have good sports on at home I won’t go out to watch games and spend money on food or beverages.
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Drat. I *should* have signed that:
“I do whatever my quicken tells me to.”
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A fun thing to do with the cable company… About every 6 months I call and start whining and asking if there are any cheaper packages available. I almost always get them to give me the “special of the week” with no reduction in my subscription. Sweet!
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J.D. –
We have XM in our house via a portable player I bought for my wife a few years ago when she spent a lot of time on the road. Her mother also has XM, and I think there is a family deal that reduces the rate for both households. The best part is that my wife’s annual XM subscription has become a recurring gift (can’t remember if it is Christmas or birthday as they are close together), so we don’t worry about the cost.
Put it on your wishlist!
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Sarah @ 55 -
At the moment, my bus pass *IS* my gym membership.
The most convenient busses start .2 from the house & drops me off .6 mi from the office. It also includes a couple hills. Toss in morning crunches, yoga, squats, and such, and I’m getting into better shape.
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Cable is so expensive these days. My semi monthly (Comcast has a very strange billing cycle) bill is $150 a month that gets split three ways between my roomates and I. My parents pay close to $200 a month and they get everything!
I was just looking at my cell phone bill and realizing I never come close to using my allotted minutes, so i made the plunge and downgraded my plan. T-Mobile makes this a breeze by going to your online account and merely checking the new plan you want. I only save $10 a month, but that is $120 a year with no side effect to my service at all.
Recurring bill payments can also contribute to the money trap. Sure, you will never forget to pay your bill on time, but you will most likely lose track of the bill over the months. I always go over all of my bills looking for ways to trim them down to keep more money in my pocket.
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Oh yea, I forgot to mention that if you want to listen to some great music check out Pandora.com or Finetune.com which let you make free streaming playlists. There is also the slightly less legal Seeqpod.com where you can stream and download your own playlists without any restrictions!
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I have to give kudos to Pandora and internet radio in general. It’s free, and can be a great way to find obscure new music along with your favorite classics.
My roommate has the portable Pioneer XM receiver…which gets almost no reception/battery life when off of its cradle/ext antenna…making it barely “portable” away from the home/car…wouldn’t recommend it.
Also I’ve listened heavily to both XM/Sirius to find that after a while it just seems like a repeating playlist. (Sometimes searching for something satisfying has ended up with me just turning it off, and looking elsewhere.
I’d advise to “go the online route”…might take a little more effort to find what you want, but when you do, its free, and usually more diverse. Then you can build your portable-player collection around your findings.
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I have found that moving abroad for a year allowed me to “reset” all my subscriptions and recurring costs to zero. Because I had to take an active role in adding back those expenses when I returned to the USA (signing up for netflix, etc), I got to be very conscious of where I was choosing to spend money and not have any issue of inertia that kept me spending money. For me, basic cable TV is totally worth it, as is internet, but most other things I can live without. One “hack” that I’ve been using since I got back to keep me on top of money-sucking subscriptions: my credit card lets me create new numbers for online shopping (the program is called ShopSafe, but I’m sure a lot of cards have a similar thing). Basically you enter the maximum amount that can be spent on the card, and when you want the card’s expiration date to be, and the bank produces a temporary card number with the limit and expiration date you choose. I do this for all my subscriptions, so that when the card expires the company gets in touch with me and I have to actively choose whether to renew again. (As people say, the company always gets in touch with you to update your payment info – you never just get cut off without warning.) I’ve been setting it to reset my subscriptions every 6 months, but you could do longer or shorter if it works for you.
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i second the pandora.com suggestion for terrific music. put in the list of music that played at the restaurant, and see what it gives you in return. you can always refine from there to create YOUR ideal “station”.
and secondly, although this may not be completely legal, find a friend that has XM, and offer to pay him $2 per month to use only the web stream portion of the service. I know a few friends of mine would take you up on that in an instant!
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live365.com is another website that streams music for free. It takes a little time initially to find the stations you like, but once you do you’re set.
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Monthly subscription fees are awful, aren’t they? I think the cable companies must be rolling in the money. Not only do they charge per month, but their rates continue to go up and up.
One thing to look for when a new service starts up that you may be interested in is a permanent or lifetime membership. My husband has a lifetime membership for his Tivo, so we don’t have to pay any monthly rate. I have a permanent LiveJournal account so I don’t have to pay the annual fee. After four years, it has paid for itself.
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The lack of value for us in a monthly fee was what kept my wife and I from getting cell phones for the longest time. We’d periodically look into the plans but even the cheapest ones were about $15 which wasn’t worth it based on the minutes we’d use.
Eventually my wife got a cellphone from work that she can use for the occasional personal call. Also, a friend of mine who was upgrading his phone gave me his old one in exchange for a pint of beer. I signed up for a prepaid account and have been using maybe $7-8 per month, even with the higher per-minute rates.
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“As it stands, am I willing to spend $10/month for XM, and then pay for a receiver? How about $8/month for the streaming web version? I don’t know.”
I have this argument with my friends when they’re tempted to get satellite radio– Why not buy 1 or 2 albums a month instead of a radio subscription? At the end of 1 year, you’ll have a well started music collection to show for your money rather than NOTHING. For the same amount of money, the pros/cons of buying albums far outweighs any satellite radio subscriptions, in my opinion.
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I have to agree how frustrating those monthly expenses are…. but XM radio? unless you spend a significant amount of time in your car, I think that one is tough to justify, especially with internet radio….
my only existing monthly bills are the YMCA ($41), which I use a few times a week… and I consider a very reasonable “investment” into my standard of living as far as health and stress reduction… I sure feel great after my wednesday night Ashtanga yoga class…
and the other bill is Verizon ($50)… I do not have a home phone, so the cell phone is necessary to communicate. I have magazine subscriptions that amount to about $7 a month if you break it down…. that’s roughly a dollar a magazine… I cut drop those, but I get so much out of the magazines, and usually pass them along to friends and coworkers once I’m done….
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Okay — I’m trying Pandora now. (The “A Fine Frenzy” channel, actually, since that matches my mood right now, instead of the “fake Fred” channel.) After seeing this, I realize I tried Pandora two or three years ago. I’m not sure why it’s never occurred to me to try it again…
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I’m surprised XM is still in business–i beleive there is a merger in the works w/sirius–my bet is XM wont last much longer either–there are some great free streaming radion on the web–i say dump it!
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My monthly fees are: the newspaper, 24Hour Fitness membership, and Blockbuster Online.
The newspaper costs me $11 a month. That comes out to $132 a year. It’s definitely worth it for me. I use coupons and the amount I save with coupons is more than I spend on the paper. I could just get the Sunday paper delivered for $9 a month, or drive to the store and pick up a double edition (twice the coupons!) for $2 each, but I read four sections of the paper everday, and more on Sunday.
The gym. For me, again, it’s worth it. 24Hour Fitness has a corporate membership which I’m available for, so I get a discounted rate, and I didn’t pay sign-up fees. I did opt for the “multiple gyms” membership instead of the “single gym” membership. I use two of the gyms near me, two by my parent’s home, and another in Northern California whenever I travel. I attend the yoga classes regularly, and some of the other classes. I currently pay $35 a month ($420 a year.) It’s pretty steep, but I use the gym often. When I signed up, I opted for the monthly plan because I wanted to make sure I would continue to use the gym. Now that I have, I’ll be paying a $600 lump sum for three years ($16.67 a month) and if I’m still with the gym after that, my month rate goes to $5 a month. The $600 plan is now an excellent deal for me.
Blockbuster. Oh, dear. This is where it’s dangerous. I chose Blockbuster over Netflix because of the “Return to Store” option, plus there was a special offer. I’m on the three movies at a time plan, at $19.38 a month, and can end up with seven or eight movies in a week. I calculated that I’ve spent $1.36 per movie. BUT I gotta look at the big number: $155.04. Ouch. Yeah, the per unit cost is cheap, but the overall cost is not. My schedule is going to get busy again in the next few months, so I may not be able to keep up my movie watching pace. I’m thinking I’m gonna cancel my Blockbuster Online account – I can always sign up again later.
The key thing for me when it to comes to monthly costs: how much is it costing overall?
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I agree that limiting recurring monthly expenses is key. One of our expenses we have recently cut is our subscription to the NY Times. Previously, we received it 7 times/week for over $50/month (after an attractive intro price). I’ve been wanting to cancel it for a while, but my husband devours the editorial section which one could not access on the internet without a subsription. However, recently they’ve opened up their entire website for free, so we have been able to cut the subscription so the times just comes on Saturday and Sunday (you can’t cancel the Sunday times!).
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I have cut down on reoccuring expenses. We now rent movies from the library, we cut down cell phone bills. ( btw instead if calling 411, on cell phines dial 1800-FREE 411. FREE 411 service! You do have to listen to a quick commercial but it says lots of cash. I use to spend $25 a month on just 411!
we have cut ALL magazine subscriptions! It would just clutter my home and made me feel inadequate as a mother, wife and decorator! I even quit my starbuck habit! sniff sniff. The things we do for retirement savings. Sigh
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Everyone that’s suggested Pandora is a genius. How could I not have found this before?
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your point about cable costs is valid. I find there are only 2 shows a week that I actually enjoy watching and watch regularly. And for that I have to pay upwards of 60$ a month!? Seems stupid to me. I could probably get these shows on itunes or similar web based services for a lot less! And since most computers come with a tv-out connection .. could easily watch these in normal living room situation with little setup.
heck a lot of shows are available for free on the networks website the day after airing anyway.
let see 60*12=720$ that’s enough for a plane ticket a year. i’ll take that instead.
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For free music you can’t beat yahoo music. I love it and it’s free. There are some small downsides to the free service, after about 15-20 mins it cuts out (unless you’ve rated a song) and you have to listen to the odd comerical (usually the same one) but no DJ and best of all even in the free service you can rate your songs and skip the ones you don’t like.
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