Downsize your digital load
Ready to simplify your life, cut the cord on cable, and downsize your digital life?
Have you been cursing your service providers for big bills, rotten customer service, and indentured servitude while doing nothing about it? Well, that was me – for years. I knew I had a problem, was being overcharged and under”heard” – but wasn’t willing to bite the bullet and suffer through the painful process of breaking up with AT&T and starting over with someone new.
Although I counsel my organizing & productivity clients that their Return on Investment (ROI) when they make time to streamline, organize and systematize their lives can be measured within minutes, and multiplied daily for the foreseeable future, this was the one area of my life where I confess, I did not practice what I preach. But one day, one $300+ a month bill (all 18 pages of it!) too many, I reached my tipping point and finally said – “Never again!” I vowed before my next bill came due I would be done with AT&T. I wanted to reduce my digital overhead – cut out the fat, and get down to the bone of what I really needed and figure out how to pay for just the essentials.
My goal was to CUT MY TECH BUDGET IN HALF, and liberate myself from an unhealthy relationship with AT&T.
I was enabling them. I let them take advantage of me by not focusing on what I actually wanted and needed from my technology, and then determining the most affordable, reliable, and hassle-free way to obtain it!
Just like your clothes are secretly counting on you being so overwhelmed you won’t review each item and discard the ones you no longer want, need or love – AT&T is banking on your not having enough mental or emotional gigabytes to audit them and perform a cost/benefit analysis of their service. So, there is something energizing and empowering when you decide to take control. I knew it would not be easy, not be fun, not be quick. But I was ready to take them on.
Here is what I did, step-by-step:
1. I made a list of what services I needed for my home and work life. 1) Mobile phone for me. 2) Mobile phone for my 16-year old. 3) iPad for me, mostly work-related. 4) Internet at home with Wi-Fi for my laptop and daughter’s notebook. 5) Ability to watch minimal TV, stream Netflix, get CNN and cable news.
2. I started with mobile plans. I was paying about $147.00 for 2 phones and Internet on my iPad. I researched the other major providers, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile. I found a new offer through T-Mobile: 55+ plan offered two lines for just $60, unlimited data, taxes and fees included – and a trade in credit of $300 per line. SOLD! I learned I could STOP paying for a designated line on my iPad and just use Wi-Fi (duh, why didn’t I think of that) – and if that ended up being a problem, I could add a Hot Spot to my mobile for $25 month. P.S. Only one of the two people has to be 55+. How nice of them! I already love T-Mobile. (Of course, this is the honeymoon period.) I literally cut my mobile device bill IN HALF, down to $60 for phones and $12.00 to insure my new iPhone 8. Oh yeah!
3. Next, I tried really hard to wrap my head around the whole TV/Internet/Wi-Fi and streaming thing. Ugh. Is my TV Smart? How should I know. Am I? What is a Roku? What is my Apple ID? I don’t HULU, do YU? You know this rabbit hole. I kept telling myself that THIS is why I had grudgingly given AT&T all my discretionary income all these years. It was just too painful to break up. Then, I would remember that THIS was precisely why I HAD TO RENEGOTIATE OR TERMINATE my relationship with them. This relationship was completely out of whack and I wanted OUT.
4. My first criteria was that I was not going to jump from frying pan to fire which meant absolutely NO MORE CABLE, no more BUNDLES, no more CONTRACTS! I did give AT&T the opportunity to convince me to stay, and then gave Time Warner the chance to woo me. No good offers. That meant I had to learn about “streaming” services – a la Netflix, Hulu, Sling, so that we could watch some TV but not pay for a plethora of worthless channels. I signed up for the free trial of Hulu and Sling while I still had my Internet through AT&T – (streaming is dependent on Internet access). The only thing I really cared about was still being able to see all the familiar faces on CNN, my go-to source for background noise and “fake” news (not!).
5. I actually FIGURED IT ALL OUT! My TV is smart. That being said, it requires a streaming device to enable it to receive programming via Internet (vs cable or over-the-air broadcast). I researched the options: Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku – even a modern version of rabbit ears! Yes, it is still possible to get free, over-the-air local and national channels, in HD no less! I decided to try out ROKU, and purchased a basic streaming stick for $30.00. This enables you to choose what services you want to purchase to get the content you actually WANT! Genius. And it is so simple and user-friendly to set up even I could do it in about 5 minutes. I swear. Couldn’t believe it!
6. Then I had to figure out how to use ROKU to receive the programming (aka content) that I selected from many good options. I moved my Netflix account over to ROKU (also easy as pie!), signed up for HULU for $25 month (their mid-level service), and to get cable news in real time, I am trying out Sling (their tag line is a la carte TV), for $35 plus an add-on of $5.00 month for 50 hours of cloud- based DVR. HULU gives you regular TV with a day’s delay. It also has original programming like the Emmy-winning “Handmaid’s Tale.” So far, so good. I haven’t delved into the best way to exploit and organize all the respective features yet, but I have been able to watch what I want, when I want, with no problems – technological or intellectual. And what is even better (again, SIMPLE and LEAN) is that you can opt in to a special service (i.e. HBO) whenever you want, and cancel whenever you want, all on line, no phone calls. Even the ROKU remote is intuitive and easy to figure out. Ha! All of which has had me kicking myself for having delayed doing this for YEARS!!!
7. That just left figuring out the GLUE – the invisible but all-powerful element that holds this fragile ecosystem together: the Internet. Despite the ubiquity of the Internet, there is virtually NO CHOICE of Internet providers –much less access at a reasonable price! The folks at T-Mobile said that by paying for a Hot Spot (either on my mobile phone or on a separate device) I could get unlimited Internet/data for $25 month, and that it would likely be sufficient for streaming. While I still had AT&T I tried this scenario out and it worked, but not well enough to maintain connectivity 100% of the time or even close to it. I may try again using a separate device (costs just $30) to see if that makes a difference.
8. So, this still left me with the question of how to get Internet services in the house. I tried Century Link; they didn’t service my neighborhood. Google Fiber is not here yet. Stand-alone Internet service with AT&T or Time Warner was $60 a month! (They try to get you by “bundling” phone, internet, TV.) Wasn’t gonna bite. It also turned out that my Internet contract with AT&T is not up until March, 2018. With an actual human on the other end of the line, I was able to downgrade to “basic” cable for just $34 a month (down from $) which then allowed me to keep my Internet bundle rate for $30 month. I also shut off my iPad line, and reduced my monthly U-Verse TV and Internet payment of $140 + taxes and fees down to a combined cost of $65 to AT&T for basic cable, Internet, and HD receivers. Add to that HULU for premium programs ($10.00), $25 to Sling for cable programming for a total of $100.00 versus $140 and surcharges, restrictive contracts. Readers note: when trying to lower your bills, ALWAYS request the “customer loyalty” or retention line.
Where did I end up? My combined services now cost about $160.00 total, versus an average monthly cost of $320.00, for a savings of $160 month – a full 50% reduction! That is a lot of disposable income wasted – $2,000 a year to be exact. This makes me ill. That is real money, folks. A trip to Paris for two! Credit card debt erased. Marketing for my new business. Truly, why did I put this off for so long? I was afraid to deal with the stress of the mess I had to fix to reach my goal. Never again.
What did I gain? 1) Freedom from AT&T and personal pride in slaying the dragon (or at least taming it!). 2) More modern, customized, and cutting edge access to programming with maximum flexibility, more choice, and more fun built in. 3) Confidence that I could figure this out and look out for my own interests. 4) More money in my pocket each month. 5) A powerful object lesson in NOT PUTTING OFF UNPLEASANT TASKS.
What did I lose? Absolutely NOTHING. I was paying tons for things that I didn’t even know I had, much less used. Unacceptable. I wouldn’t do this in any other part of my life. I was just afraid of slogging through the muck to get to the end. All I did was stay stuck and lose out. Never again.
Was it worth it? Absolutely. Now, I won’t say that I enjoyed putting in a combined 8 hours at a T-mobile storefront, or breaking out in hives as I am wont to do every time I enter Best Buy, or being on hold for 45 minutes with AT&T. But I did it. And next time, I won’t wait so long.
It reinforced my belief, again, that less is truly more. I select my content with conscious intent. I don’t have media clutter in my universe. I feel lighter, more in control, and proud that I did the hard work of simplifying my life and saving real money in the process. If I could do it, anybody can!