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How much do you spend annually to be connected?

Quote:

View: Dollars Flow Out as Data Flows In
Source: Nytimes
posted with the TFP thread generator

Dollars Flow Out as Data Flows In
February 9, 2010
Data and Games Flow In, and Dollars Flow Out
By JENNA WORTHAM

John Anderson and Sharon Rapoport estimate they spend $400 a month, or close to $5,000 a year, keeping their family of four entertained at home.

There are the $30-a-month data plans on their BlackBerry Tour cellphones. The Roanoke, Va., couple’s teenage sons, Seth and Isaac, each have $50 subscriptions for Xbox Live and send thousands of texts each month on their cellphones, requiring their own data plans.

DirecTV satellite service, high-speed Internet access and Netflix for movie nights add more.

“We try to be aware of it so it doesn’t get out of control,” said Mr. Anderson, who with his wife founded an advertising agency. “But, yeah, I would say we’re pretty wired.”

It used to be that a basic $25-a-month phone bill was your main telecommunications expense. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline.

And those government figures do not take into account movies, music and television shows bought through iTunes, or the data plans that are increasingly mandatory for more sophisticated smartphones.

For many people, the subscriptions and services for entertainment and communications, which are more often now one and the same, have become indispensable necessities of life, on par with electricity, water and groceries. And for every new device, there seems to be yet another fee. Buyers of the more advanced Apple iPad, to cite the latest example, can buy unlimited data access for $30 a month from AT&T even if they already have a data plan from the carrier.

“You don’t really lump these expenses into a discretionary category,” said Robert H. Frank, an economics professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. “As the expectation of connectedness increases, it’s what is expected for people to be functional in society.”

Americans are transforming their homes into entertainment hubs, which is driving up the amount of money they spend, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

“More people are creating experiences in their homes that are very similar to the kinds of public experiences they enjoy in movie theaters and concert halls,” he said. “Our homes are bristling with technology.”

Most people think home entertainment is cheaper. “Every time I want to go to Fenway Park or see the Killers in concert, I’m paying $50 to $100 each time. But once you build and install that home system, its basically pennies per minute of enjoyment,” said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research.

But they do not take into consideration the long-term economic effect — both in the maintenance and operational costs — of the devices they purchase. “A subscription model is the perfect drug,” Mr. McQuivey said. “People see $15 per month as a very low amount of money but it quickly adds up.”

Kate Goodall, for example, a 32-year-old director of fund-raising for museums, in Alexandria, Va., said the high costs of home cable and other subscriptions began to eat into her budget. “We saw the writing on the wall in terms of the cost,” she said. “It was getting ridiculous.”

She and her husband disconnected their cable and home phone line so they could more easily afford frequent dinners out and swimming, ballet and art lessons for their two small sons. Instead, they catch shows like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” free at Hulu.com and rely on their cellphones as their primary phone lines.

Her husband, Mike Hughes, 37, a project manager, has both an Xbox and a Wii game console, but, in an effort to keep their bills down, she would not let him sign up for any gaming subscription services.

Consumers will have to make tough choices like Ms. Goodall and her husband as the next generation of connected devices — TVs and various mobile devices — that have their own data plan or subscription service come to market. The cable TV companies battle the phone companies by bundling cable, landline phone and Internet services, but most wireless carriers do not yet have any programs to bundle the data plans and offer discounts for myriad mobile devices.

Ms. Goodall says she dreads the day when her sons, 1 and 4, get bitten by the texting craze, as her 12-year-old nephew has.

“We’ll probably have to sign our sons up for cellphones even sooner than we’d like because we don’t have a home phone,” she said. “I’m not looking forward to dealing with that set of issues.”

How much do you spend on your data communications? This should include your cellphones, data plans, internet, gaming (xbox live), and DLC etc. subscriptions to websites, and the like.

We spend $150/mo including taxes for cellphone family plan, no texting, no data. We have been thinking of getting blackberry service and that will up the price to $270, an additional $120. Not worth it in my opinion for the convenience of "right now." Plan resets in May, then we're month to month.

For internet, we're bundled with FIOS so we're at $120ish/mo with taxes for the next 2 years.

That's as much as I'm willing to spend. I even believe that I'm spending too much as it is because that's $3,240 for communications annually. That's a ridiculous amount of money.

$47 monthly for Comcast internet and $30 monthly for the cell phone.

That's all I pay for. That comes out to $924 annually. Dang.

Cell $85 mo (2 phones, no txt.)
Netflix $18 mo (3 dvd's)
Gamefly $18 mo (1 game)
Internet/Landline bundle $52 mo
DirecTv $99 mo
An occasional Xbox-Live DLC

Around $2244 annually.

Not as bad as I thought.

Cell is $20/m for me (wife's is pre-paid and is probably of the order of $100 per annum

Internet and home phone is $99 and includes most calls.

So around $1500 (oz dollars) annually.

I'm not worried, though, as work picks up all but my wife's cell.

Cell: $80 for 800 minutes unlumited tex, data
Internet: bundled with cable and phone $141.00

We just upped to iPhones for both of us and with his discount for his employer it runs about $180/month.
Internet is $35 with our FIOS system since we dropped cable.
I think there's a $10/month subscription to something related to a news server or such.
And actually $2700 a year for the both of us is a huge drop from previous years where there were netflix accounts, multiple newsthingies, internet bundled with Dish Network...
that was all another $180 a month, minimum.

I don't pay for my mobile phone, work covers it.

We pay around S$90/month for my wife and son's phones and S$47/month for broadband.

So somewhere around S$1,650/year (US$1,170)

10 bucks a month for interweb. no cell phone.

i'm a cheap bastard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SSJTWIZTA (Post 2758805)

10 bucks a month for interweb. no cell phone.

i'm a cheap bastard.

That is cheaper than me,

Per month:
$25 - Cell phone
$1.66 - Linux TV guide
$0 - Internet

$320 / year

Cable bundle - TV, phone (unlimited LD), internet - $200
Cell phones - $75

So, annually, $3300. Yikes.

I miss the 80s! Then it was $0. Well, okay - $25 for a land line. And a fistful of quarters for Asteroids & Frogger.

Zero dollars.

I don't pay to stay connected, nor does my work. I just am connected by good measures of generosity on the part of others, and then by great lengths of ingenious free fetching, on my part.

One other thing: if I wanted my cell service again, I'd only need to pay a one-time fee of $100 (for the year) to reinstate my account, and then any additional minutes (compounded unto the bundled 1,000) can be bought at a fee of $20 per every 500 minutes I'd want.

Taking 2007 into account, though, (my last year of full subscription) that one year I only spent about $80 (+tax) for my cellphone, and I was never devoid of any available minutes or service.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetée (Post 2758820)

I don't pay to stay connected, nor does my work. I just am connected by good measures of generosity on the part of others, and then by great lengths of ingenious free fetching, on my part.

So, you made a pringle's can antenna to steal unsecured wifi then?

I pay $44 a month for home internet, $70 a month for mobile internet on two phones ($35 each), and $60 a month for our family plan of minutes.

Too lazy to calculator...$1350ish annual?

I pay $45 for my cell phone. I pay nothing for the slow ass internet in here.

just 50$ for cell and 25$ for my half of the internet.

75 a month is no big deal to me.

$50/mo for internet right now.
$100/mo for our cell phones; 700 minutes a month and unlimited texting.

So $1800/year total.

We used to spend more--used to have Netflix, Gamefly, and World of Warcraft subscriptions. Lately we've been going to the public library instead.

$50/month in internets
$180/month in 2 phones (blackberry) unlimited everything.. text, data,minutes

$2760 annually.

$55 a month for internet/cable (Comcast is weird, $60 for internet or $55 or internet and cable; yeah, that makes sense)
$70 for 2 cell phone lines with data/texting
$9 Netflix if you count that

I had a Skype account, but canceled it for Google Voice (free.) Can't go without an internet connection anymore.

$1608 a year isn't too bad, but I'm about to upgrade our phone plans, and going from $70 a month to about $120 is going to hurt a little.

Quote:

Originally Posted by telekinetic (Post 2758832)

Try $2088 annually.

$2400 annually here. I'd love to ditch the cable subscription ($60/month), but without a reliable IPTV alternative Mags absolutely refuses.

The other $140 per month covers two cell phones (~$40 ea), and a landline and internet connection (~$60 once all of our long distance is added into it). I thought about removing one of the cell phones, but they're too damned useful in the end. Ditching the land line, conversely, would end up costing us more per month, between the jump in our internet price and the added features (minutes/voicemail/long distance) on the cell phones.

I think we can just call it the cost of doing business in today's world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by telekinetic (Post 2758832)

So, you made a pringle's can antenna to steal unsecured wifi then?

I'm not sure of the benefits of the structure above, nor exactly how it would work, but only about half of my online endeavors are via a wireless connection, and even less so from my own computer. They're is literally a ton of free wi-fi in certain areas of each city I make my stead in, and when I travel abroad, internet cafes essentially provide you with a plugged-into-the-wall-PC for the cost a blueberry tart.

Cantennas are quite simple from an engineering standpoint. It's a very simple directional waveguide antenna that results in high gain over a low arc.

Point it in the general direction of an unsecured access point and go.

If you prefer parabolic reflectors to waveguides, you can also build a wok fi.

Internets: $50 (it's 35 right now cause I bitched at the company and told them I was going to cable, they lowered it for 6 months, but I don't count that) x 12 = $600

Phone: Unlimited Data/Txt (I send around 2000 txts a month) w/ 450 anytime mintues = $100 a month x 12 = 1200.

so, $2000 for everything.

I don't pay for TV when I can steal it off the net.

Cell phone + wireless air card = $150/month

$1,800 a year. Ouch.

$79 TV + DVR
$45 fiber optic broadband
$5 cell (family plan ftw)

$1548 before taxes. Meh.

2 iphones add up to 160$ a month.
Internet, about 48$ a month.
Netflix, 9$ a month.
Skype/Google voice credits, maybe 80$ a year..
No cable

So it adds up to 2684$ a year. That's a lot of money.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetée (Post 2758962)

Really? I always found internet cafe prices to be really high? Although were talking biz districts and such.

For me....

Internet, cable, cellphone and home phone runs about 235 total per month. She has a pre-paid cellphone for about 10 bucks a month. Renting movies might be about 10 bucks a month.

I wish it was less, but I love my iphone, and high definition tv....discovery channel....national geographic and sports!

Less than half of what most of you spend.

Huh.

.

.

.

...nobody loves me.

$85/mo for our phones
$40/mo for DSL
$15/mo for Rhapsody
Nothing for cable - the condo complex provides it for free. When we move, I doubt we'll get cable again. We'll just wait and watch it online.

$1680 per year.

$210/mo for Cable/internets/land line
$128/mo for 2 cellphones
$20/mo netflix

$4,296 total

Wow, that's really bad.

Work pays for my cellphone, I have no TV and no landline. Only horrible farm internet.

$52 CAD a month = $624/year

$50/year x-box live
$192/year netflix
$220 /year for TIVO service
$720 for internet
$1008/year for ATT phone service

Grand total for a year: $2186

$110/month Internet & TV
$70/month landline
$10/mo for 2 Tracfones
$10/month Netflix
$200/month total or $2400/year

I spent $60/mo for Qwest Internet and $50/mo for iPhone. $1320 / yr.

I'd gladly pay $500/mo to stay connected.

We spend $50 per month for 2 cell phones (we never text - what's the point?)
$125 for a bundle: TV Basic, unlimited Telephone - which I use alot for long distance to California and Missouri & Florida, and our internet on computer.

Total Annual Cost: $2100. Yep, we are low maintenance here in Ohio. But I do spend a whopping $12.00 per month on 4-6 movies with netflix.

$110/month internet and tv
$35 / month phones
$1740 per year

Now what if you had a legitimate business and could write off all of these expenses?
The rich turn their expenses into profit centres by realizing the rules of money.

I spend over 3k a year in connectivity expenses, but added with all of life's daily routines that are business deductible. (legitimately) I save about 5k in taxes each year.

More & more I've been thinking about canceling the land line. I don't think my savings will add up to very much though - but perhaps it will end some of the stupid calls I get during dinner or at 9:30 at night from the police wanting funds for "this or that."

Those are such a pain in the butt! I always think it's gonna be something that's a big emergency (& luckily it isn't.)

Cell phone (data package) + Cable tv + Cable modem + Wireless router = $2,040 annually for me.

dammit. I made a mistake these past few days that ADDED another $200 to my monthly bill. Went over my allotted minutes instead of fave 5. That was expensive. The other was I lost my cellphone and I didn't report it right away but I did change SIM cards. Within 1 hour of losing it (I wasn't aware it was lost yet) they racked up $100+ in long distance calls.

Hah! Cyn, I just noticed you have Banker Cat as your avatar. Awesome. :D :D :D