moneyreallymatters.com

It’s New year.I know many people try to start new resolutions like work out every day, save more money or lose weight etc., But how far they go to resolve their resolutions is a big question. As per a survey, I was surprised to hear that 40-45% people who start a New year resolutions are actually able to keep it up. That’s really a good news.

Anyway, I don’t believe in resolutions. Because I feel its just a smart way to trick your mind that you are doing something good at the beginning of the year to make yourself feel good about it. After few weeks when things doesn’t go the way you expect, you will lose focus and forget about your resolution and move on with your usual life. I am not that type of a guy as many of you know. I am more goal focused. Put a goal in paper, plan for it and take action. That’s my strategy whether it comes to saving money for vacation or trying to keep fit. Whether its rain or shine, new year or not a new year, it doesn’t matter. Just continue with your plan. When it comes specifically to money, just continue to adapt the smart money management skills, Earn wisely and Save Smartly.

Continuing with the save smartly, I take time during the begining of the New year to try to look for ways to save few dollars monthly in utilities bills and any other expenditures. You all know the cable companies and TV companies are trying to make money to charging rental fees for their devices. Dish/DirecTV charges for using their DVR for recording and similarly comcast charges for renting their cable modem. I thought they were only charging $2-$3 until I found its now $7. But I never knew that you can buy your own cable modem and use it instead of their modem. If you do that, you can avoid their rent fee. I was told my coworker last week and I was really surprised. How couldn’t I missed that for all these years? How many of you knew about it? I been paying them monthly all these years.

After hearing about it, I immediately jumped on it and tried to do the research. My coworker already did some research and shared about the modem he is planning to purchase. But I still went and chatted with Comcast guys over the chat and confirmed about it and got information about modem which can be purchased outside and approved by Comcast. You can find the list of approved modems here. I went to Amazon, my favorite shopping site and found few good modems. Motorola SurfBoard Docsis 2.0 and Docsis 3.0 are the finalists. After talking to my coworker, I finalized and went with Docsis 3.0 since 2.0 is in end of life and Comcast might not support at last point.

I paid $76 for this modem which came in 2 days and I had to call Comcast to set up my new modem. Got it working and took their modem and returned it. I will $7/month going forward every month and after 11 months modem is paid off fully. After that, $7 saving from monthly bill that’s like $84 per year or may be more if they increase it later point. I don’t have to worry about it. Now I am looking to find whether this is any way to save on the DVR charges. Does anyone know the way to get rid of this DVR monthly rental charges?

Start looking at your expenditures and find ways to save. One dollar saved is Two dollars earned!!