How I lowered my cable bill by $50 a month

I’ve been on something of subscription cancellation spree lately when it comes to my monthly bills.

Last week, I cancelled my gym membership — and it was so easy. I didn't even have to send a certified letter!

Then just yesterday, I cancelled a Netflix subscription that was still in its free trial period. I wanted to be sure I got out before they started billing me, so I marked it on my calendar as a to-do item!

Now, just today, I called Xfinity — the monopoly cable and Internet provider formerly known as Comcast — to downgrade my TV package and keep the savings going.

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Don’t let monthly subscriptions run (or ruin) your financial life

Downgrading your pay TV package doesn’t exactly fall under the category of canceling a subscription. But it can have the same effect by helping to keep more money in your pocket every month.

Waterstone Management Group recently released a highly publicized study that found the average American spends $237 per month on mobile service, pay TV and a variety of subscriptions to services like Netflix, Spotify, Match, Amazon Prime and more.

So I decided to figure out what I was paying for the monthly subscriptions in my life:

I don’t find any value in Amazon Prime, so I don’t subscribe that. I don’t have a streaming music subscription of any kind. I don’t pay for cloud storage, beauty subscription boxes, premium dating apps, meal-kit services or digital newspaper subscriptions. Heck, I’m not even a Costco member!

So $180 for subscriptions was my starting point. I wanted to get that a lot lower.

As I mentioned, I cancelled Netflix before the free trial ended and gave my gym membership the boot. Those two moves added $27 back to my life each month.

But that $113 going to Xfinity (Comcast) really got my goat!

In my house, we don’t watch anything beyond two channels — one is a classic TV channel (think Laugh-In and I Love Lucy!) and the other is a PBS affiliate with DIY craft/arts/cooking/travel shows.

So when I noticed Xfinity had a “Limited Basic” package of channels that was two tiers below the package I currently have, I knew I had to downgrade and save some money. (I had already made my up mind not to downgrade my existing home Internet speed.)

I tried downgrading via online chat at the Xfinity website, but ended up being told I would have to call in. In just a few minutes on the phone, I dropped the price of my TV/Internet bundle down from $113.49 to $60.04 (including a $5/month discount for paperless billing, which I signed up for.)

So now my monthly subscription expenses look like this…

New monthly subscription expenses

That’s $80/month less than what I’d previously been paying.

Now, I know it's easy to stay put doing what you're already doing with the monthly subscriptions in your life. Until I read the Waterstone Management Group report about monthly subscription costs, I wanted to stay put doing what I was doing, too.

But I recently figured out the "Big Why" of my financial life. I want to pay off my mortgage in 36 months. And every extra dollar — or every extra $80 — helps me get closer to that goal.

My next move will be to take a closer look at Xfinity's $12/month mobile service that's only available to customers. I potentially have the opportunity to lower the forty bucks I pay now to Cricket Wireless down to just a dozen bucks.

Remember, as I once heard somebody say on The Clark Howard Show, “If your outflow exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall!”

More personal finance stories on Clark.com:

• Does paying off your mortgage make sense under the new tax law?
• Why you shouldn't cash out your 401(k) when changing jobs
• This is the age when Clark Howard plans to start collecting Social Security

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