Money Monday

Money Saving Tip of the Week:
Quit paying for cable. Really, stop it. Unless you have a pretty damn good reason why you HAVE to have it, why? As of last year, the average digital cable bill for a family was $75 a month and it keeps going up. $75 a month just to sit on your ass and get fat? Sit on your ass and get fat the cheap way!

If you were to cancel those hundred channels of nothing-to-watch and get Hulu-Plus or Netflix in it's place you could save around $800 a year. What would you do with an extra $800 a year? Buy yourself something nice? Take time off of work? Pay off debt? You could put that $800 in a savings account each year for five years. Then you would have $4000+interest. Sounds pretty nice to me.

HuluPlus - I'm not saying you should skip out on good entertainment. I love a good couch potato session as much as the next person. With HuluPlus, you can get entire seasons of 1000s of series plus all current episodes of many, many popular shows. Seven bucks a month gets you nearly the same content you were getting for $75. They even have cable network shows (Sorry folks, no Dexter or Weeds, no premium channels). HuluPlus is only $96 a year in comparison with $900 a year for cable.

Netflix - Okay, you wanna save money but you like your shows that appear on HBO and Showtime and you also like to watch full length feature films? Then Netflix may be the answer. You can get any show under the sun (that's on DVD, that is) through the mail. You can save $780 a year for 1 at a time or $660 a year with 3 at time. Unlimited instant streaming on many devices is also included in that. Plenty of tv and movies on there too.


Yes, there are pros and cons with whichever choice you make. HuluPlus is cheap and instant but may not carry your favorite show or be offered on your device. Netflix is affordable but you don't get to watch the current season that is on TV. You choose whatever you choose depending on what features are most important to your family. Maybe you just love your cable and don't mind renting a redbox movie from time to time. I just want to point out a few new popular choices that can give you comparable amounts of entertainment (if not more) for far less money.

Weekly Totals:

Publix - $70.64 OOP + $138.31 Saved = $208.95 (66%)
It was a 10 day ad this week. It was an awesome sale. We got alot of frozen items to have on hand for snacks. Frozen pizzas are hard to find under $4-$5 and we snagged them for $2.33. Free Heluva Good dip was also a good find for us along with Texas Toast and some pharmacy items. You have until Wednesday, May 4th if you don't want to miss it. 

CVS - $32.20 OOP+$76.07 Saved =108.27 (72%)
Yeah, I know. That's a pretty high total for CVS. You're probably thinking "Shouldn't that be something more like .05 out of pocket?". Well, I wish. I didn't plan on shopping CVS this week but unfortunately, when I went to check my ECB they were ALL going to expire. That's right, all $32 in ECB that I had stashed up. No one wants to throw away a hard earned $32 ECB. Instead, I went through the horrible ad (05/01/11) and purchased enough deals to use my ECB and replace them. I didn't want to just go in and buy $32 worth of stuff and not get any ECB back for the future. I like to roll 'em. So, I ended up spending $32 out of pocket but I got $30 in ECB back and I got a shitload of stuff (cascade, deodorant, shampoo, bodywash, laundry detergent, fabric softener). Things that we will use very quickly and definitely worth more than $32.