I occasionally browse through FlyLady.net and really enjoyed the tips I get. The housekeeper is mostly there to pick up my 6 year old off the school bus and watch him in the afternoon/evening until I get home. However, since she’s there, I have her do minor shopping on her way in, stay at the house when repairmen are expected as well as the light housework and cooking for the boy. I don’t pay her by the hour, I pay her by the month. She knows how much money she can expect and can plan for it (she lives with and looks after her elderly mother) while I know that I can call her anytime since she is essentiall on-call for me when I am at work. For this reason, I probably will not change her to part-time hours.

I also have a radio that plays am/fm, CD’s, audio tapes (of which I have a couple hundred), and all my old records (I have about 150 30-50 y/o 33 rpm records. They are great, even after being stored for over 30 years stacked on top of each other. It will also play 45′s and 78′s, but you don’t want to listen to 78′s without a record changer.

I watch so little TV nowadays that I gave one of mine away-the newest one with it’s VHS player, recorder. I lowered my cable to basic.

But I got out of all debt when I retired, except for my cc, which I pay off in full each month.

We live in a small city(Waco, TX), too, in an apt. If you live in a big city or can put an antenna on your roof, you’ll do even better.

So those of you that are saying “It’s expensive to get even basic channels….” It’s NOT!

Also, when looking for an antenna, don’t be afraid to try several. We went through 3 or 4, always being careful to take care of the box and repack them carefully, so we could take them back.

I use both at work and love them. Nothing is better than shutting my door and rocking out to my Classic Rock station when something awesome comes on!

My least important bill would have to be magazine subscriptions. I used to subscribe to about 8 magazines, and then realized that was ridiculous for mostly throwaway reading! I cut that down to two (Saveur and The New Yorker, both of which I read cover-to-cover) but could get rid of those if I really needed to.

As someone who is self-employed, and works from a home office, I’m fascinated by how many people list “internet access” as unnecessary and rank it low on their lists of must-have, must pay for.

Broadband is essential for my business (a fact driven home by the times when it goes down)on a daily basis.

I guess a lot of people don’t pay for such access at home because it’s easier and/or cheaper to go online courtesy of their employers who are often subsidizing their access.

I also think you have to view costs for entertainment, for example, in the context of what you get for services such as Netflix versus what it would cost you elsewhere in your community.

I live in a major city. To just get the basic TV channels, it still costs a lot. (And, again, for biz, we need ongoing access to the media.)

We don’t do premium or pay per view.

Even when we factor in costs of broadband, TV cable, basic netflix, we’re still spending far less than most people we know who go out to the movies (Tickets are $11 a pop here. Only one cheap theater.)or even who rent DVDs locally.

It’s all usage and it’s all about how you calculate what you get for your money–and how you categorize. For us, there’s entertainment, information, edutainment and more in the $$ for cable, broadband and NetFlix.

Online downloading, for example, is NOT free. You have to pay for your broadband to get access. But when we factor in all that we have access to online (not to mention convenience), with TV shows, movies, documentaries, current news, etc. , broadband, for example, becomes a deal, depending on how much you avail yourself of what’s online.

We pay $9.74 for netflix a month and rent four to eight DVDs, plus watch four to six movies online. If we do 12 a month, that’s about $.81 to entertain our family and friends in an evening. A buy compared to the cost of regular rentals or going out to a movie. Or the library (see below).

Yea, it’s really easy to get carried away on “entertainment” spending, but depending on where you live, netflix and even some online music subs can save you a bundle–compared with what you get for your time and money elsewhere.

We also use the library, in person and online, for books, DVDs, music. Again, having broadband, we can access free TV shows, dvds, audiobooks and music online from the library. (But it’s NOT free, cause again, there is the broadband cost.)

To get to the library here, it’s a minimum of $4 per trip on public transportation. None are in walking distance. DVD rentals are for one week only. So in 7 days, we actually pay $8 to get a “free” DVD. It only works when we can “stock up” on a visit and given the unpredictable inventory, that’s usually not possible. (Yes, you can order some things, but they don’t all come in at the same time.)

When we realized how much we were paying for “free” library DVDrentals, we signed up for netflix.

And for our monthly netflix sub, we get the equivalent of 12 or more nites out at $11 per person. So, to us, this is a good return on the investment of our $$$.

So, yea. We could give up netflix. But it would cost us so much more to entertain ourselves and our friends.

I do wish we had more broadband options and cheaper ones. No matter how you buy (individually or a bundle), you are laying out a lot. But again, we need to be clear on just how much you get.

For a little over a $ a day, it’s huge access.

FYI: I do not work for any of these companies and I have my own share of gripes about our RoadRunner cable service, but all in all we see value for our choices.

And, yes, you could make a good case for us dropping TV cable and watching stuff online, including news. But unfortunately our business lives require daily monitoring.

There is a balance you must achieve: it may mean cutting that least important bill, or it may mean you can’t live without NetFlix. It’s up to everyone to be honest with themselves and find their own balance – I just wouldn’t recommend compromiseng your happiness.

I have bills for whatever I buy with the credit card that come via the credit card statement, but I’m not paying for the credit card itself, therefore I can’t really rank “credit card bill” on my list of monthly expenses.

After a while of paying per download, I decided to check out our local library. I can get CD’s from the entire state sent to my local library. I put the CD’s on the computer and then transfer them over to my MP3 player.

This is just an idea…even if you use it for half of the music you listen to throughout the day.

~M

No cable (We only watch DVDs from swapaDVD),
no cellphone,
no Netflix/Blockbuster (Swapadvd),
my telephone runs about $5/month,
no computer – I use the ones at work, library,
no iPod/MP3 so no downloads, I listen to old favorites in the car (cassettes) and home (CDs on the DVD player) and occasionally check out music from the library
One paid-for car; fill up about 1x/monthly (I’m close to work and to grocery stores)
No magazine subscriptions or new book purchases (library, paperbackswap)
No gym – I have a forested area a block behind my home as well as an active dog.
I don’t go out often – usually to a potluck and board games/cards evening; stay home watch DVDs with the boy or teach him to play board games.

Well, I could switch my housekeeper from full time to part time since my boy is now in school all day (I’m a single mom) but other than that . . .