In just a very short number of years I will be retiring. I already have my mortgage paid off and I have dropped what I owe to a minimum in preparation for that event. If you still have a mortgage when you get ready to retire, by definition you will not be able to retire unless you are making oodles of money. I am not that way. One of the things that I need to do is start cutting household expenses to a minimum. I am also planning to run for a couple of years on "retirement income" levels to see how I fare.
One of the larger household expenditures that I have is my cable bill. I have Verizon FIOS and I am spending over $2400 per year on that service. I have FIOS TV with one DVR and one STB, no premium movie channels, a telephone land line, and internet (25 up/25 down). I want to cut that expenditure in half. The issue is that I have been a Verizon customer for a good number of years but find myself ineligible to participate in ANY offer that Verizon FIOS has. Every single one of their offers to save money makes the blanket statement that only new customers are eligible. That means that I will have to quit Verizon and go somewhere else if I am to lower my monthly costs to the level that I need. My goal is to halve the cost for my cable bill; which means that the service cannot cost more than $100 per month.
So my choices are: (1) to go elsewhere for a period of time until the other service raises their rates and then come back to Verizon and get their offers, or (2) do a Cord Cutting measure and reduce my dependence on Verizon FIOS to internet only. I can get internet from other sources, but I would prefer to stick with Verizon FIOS internet.
First on the chopping block is the landline. I already pay AT&T a lot of money for keeping up three iPhones. I don't foresee that changing for a while although I could back off and go to flip phones which would reduce the bill to a minimum (my granddaughter would not be happy though). If I have internet service, I would be able to convert over to VOIP (which is what I get from Verizon anyway). I have an Obi110 in my bag of goodies which I can use to get the landline moved to something reasonable.
Next on the chopping block is the Verizon FIOS internet service. The service by itself is expensive. In my area, 25/25 by itself is $45 per month and 50/50 is $55 per month, which is half of the $100 per month in my budget. I am not sure at this point if I can get those prices if I drop my Verizon FIOS TV and Land Line since I am an existing customer. I have heard rumors that they will only drop the cost to $75 per month if you drop the rest of the services in an effort to keep you on the whole till. I will need to explore this
Next on the chopping block is the Verizon FIOS TV.
To be continued ...
This is a blog mostly about techie things, what I am doing to my apartment network on the cheap, IOT, 3D Printing, Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, ESP32, ESP8266, Home Automation, Personal Weather Stations, Things That Go Bump in the Night, and some side issues that need discussing. Remember, sometimes the journey to an end is as much fun as the goal achieved!
