Low hanging fruit in November.

[growingstaches]

This was low hanging fruit that I was able to grab this month.

1. Reduced my internet service to 3 Mbps package.    Savings $22 / month
2. Reduced my cellular plan to 500 shared minutes.   Savings $11 / month
3. Increased my homeowners deductible to $5000.    Savings $14 / month
4. Removed collision and comprehensive 1 vehicle.     Savings $20 / month

Total monthly savings achieved $67.

1. Our household internet usage is 2 laptops, 2 smart phones, and occasional Netflix streaming on a Roku.   I was worried that switching from 25 Mbps to 3 Mbps would significantly degrade the performance.  My worries were unfounded.   There has been no noticeable difference with the laptop and smart phone usage.   Netflix appears to take a little longer to buffer before playing, but playback speed has been fine.   I've been very happy with the switch to 3 Mbps.

2. I'm stuck in contract until 2015 before I can implement big cellular changes, but reviewing our usage it was easy to see getting by on 500 minutes would be plenty.

3.  I've never submitted a homeowners claim in my life.   I have a large enough stash that I feel comfortable moving to $5000 deductible.   I'm giving thoughts of going even higher.   

4. Vehicle is 2007 and valued at less than $8000.   I feel removing now might be a little aggressive, but I'm ok rolling the dice considering the stash size.

I'll be digging deeper for more monthly savings, but just wanted to share this low hanging fruit that I implemented this month.

- growingstaches

[Greg]

Nice job!

[uspsfanalan]

As long as you're messing with your cable, you may want to see if they're charging you a fee for "renting" their POS modem. I paid $5 a month to TWC for about 5 years for a terrible modem that only costs $10 when you buy it online. It was real dumb.

I got a new modem and wifi router and even though I dropped my speed down to 3 Mbps all of everything loaded faster on all of my devices. This is similar to what I bought but I thought I only paid $50 for it.

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-SB6120-SURFboard-eXtreme-Broadband/dp/B001UI2FPE/ref=sr_1_16?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1385580103&sr=1-16&keywords=wireless+modem

So I usually don't advocate spending money to save money, it might be worth it to take a look at your set up to optimize the speed that you're paying for. With the new set up I also had far fewer internet disconnections.

[aglassman]

May want to weigh your cell plan cancellation fee with savings.  You may be surprised on how fast you make up for the fee.

[schimt]

An FYI on netflix, to the best of my knowledge, it will determine the speed of your internet connection and stream at the appropriate quality that your speed can handle. For instance on a smart phone over 3G as appose to 4G you can see the difference in quality (and data usage) I did this pre-mustache days while traveling for business and the hotel internet was so slow that i just used my data to watch a movie and went way over my 2 Gb limit at the end of that week.

But i beleive the same is for your home internet, so i believe none of us will have a problem streaming netflix with any broadband connection.

Congrats on the savings.

[Charlotte]

Great job! I've been making similar small changes over the last couple of months and while they seem like a drop in the bucket, the overall satisfaction is fantastic! (As is the financial savings in my budget!)

[Osprey]

Awesome, well done! I make a point of rethinking and reducing contracts and "automatic" expenses about twice a year. It's great because unlike food expenses, for example, reducing these things can be done in a n hour or two, the savings really add up, and most of the time you don't even notice. I've already made up the full amount of the deductible on my car insurance :)