*All prices in Canadian dollars.
So, after speculating about it for a few months, I finally went ahead and cut my home Internet about three weeks ago (cable, 25 Mbps download / 2 Mbps upload, 400 GB usage limit) and am now banking an extra $60.00 per month.
After analyzing my average usage, which is around 15 GBs per month, I realized that it was ludicrous to be paying full price for 400 GB of usage. I also calculated that the overwhelming majority of that 15 GB per month usage was in fact mindlessly streaming YouTube videos and the occasional show on Netflix. I have been wanting to be more productive at home and focus on reading my massive collection of books (almost all acquired pre-MMM conversion), so cutting out my ability to stream YouTube is not exactly a hardship and is actually improving my life by forcing me to reach for a book instead of my laptop when my brain requires a little stimulation.
I have not gone entirely off the grid though. I currently have a 5 GB per month LTE phone plan ($56.50 per month) that allows me to handle email, read the news, banking, and set-up a Wi-Fi hotspot to deal with business matters (generally uploading Word and .pdf files or legal research), etc. I can double this capacity to 10 GB per month for an extra $5.00 per month, but thus far it has proven unnecessary as I am more deliberate with my Internet usage now and I am only at 2.5 GB on my phone this month. I also have Internet at the office and the small business that I own, so if I am ever required to deal with with large files, I can stop by there. And free Wi-Fi is becoming more and more common.
All of this to say, thus far, this has been a great lifestyle optimization. I find that when I go home now, my apartment is an oasis of calm and I truly unplug when I leave the office for the day or on the weekend. Instead of scrolling through YouTube looking for my next dopamine hit, I spent Sunday afternoon listening to the CBC on traditional FM radio and kicking back with a good book.
This article from the Minimalists was what got me thinking about getting rid of home Internet:
https://www.theminimalists.com/internet/PS: I wrote and posted this at my office while taking a coffee break.