How We Saved Money By Creating Our Own Cable, Phone, & Internet Bundle

 

Does buying things in bundles really save you money or should you buy a la carte? I decided to show how we saved money and why I agree with Ramit’s a la carte ideas for cable, high speed Internet, and phone packages.

It’s not just seeing if we can save money with a package.  We need to ask ourselves do we use the cable, Internet, and phone bundle to justify buying the plan. Sometimes it’s cheaper to build your own package.

Here’s an example using our cable, Internet, and phone company as an example.  

Time Warner Cable offers a package for the three:

Standard Cable	$53.45 per month
Road Runner High Speed Online (up to 7 Mbps)	$47.95 per month
Digital Phone Unlimited Nationwide*	$39.95 per mont
Total	$141.35

 

Wow, this looks expensive, but the features look about right. Before we can figure out a plan let’s see what the cheap bundle look like.The very basic bundle is broken down like this:

Basic Cable	$12.25 per month
Road Runner Lite 768 (up to 768 Kbps)	$19.95 per month for 12 months
Digital Phone Local*	$19.95 per month for 12 months
Total	$52.15

*apparently voicemail is an extra $3.95/month

So we liked the price much better, but it didn’t have features we want like faster Internet and unlimited US calls.

My recommendation is to call the cable company to see if there are any specials you can get. If you live in an apartment complex, talk to the leasing office to see if they have any deals.

Believe it or not,with some planning  we created our own cable, high speed Internet, and TV package:

• TWC Basic Cable                                                                     $12.25/month
• Road Runner High Speed Online                                      $34.95/month
• Skype US/Canada                                                                   $5.95/month       

Total                                                                    $53.15/month

 

So, by picking and choosing a la carte we came out with a bundle that is a dollar more than the cheapest bundle and we have better features for phone and Internet (Skype, a voip phone company, includes voicemail with price).  

The beauty is that you can always upgrade later if you decide.

How did we save money on the bundle package?

• We realized that we don’t watch too much television and decide to go with basic cable.
• We asked the leasing office and our apartment complex has a special for the high speed internet and signed up.
• We decided that Skype had the feature we wanted from a landline at the fraction of the cost.

 So go look around and see if you can save a bundle by building your own bundle. 

Photo Credit:  Midnight-digital

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