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Tips to saving moolah - #002

Ditch your pay TV subscription (or lower it)
More and more middle class homes have pay TV subscriptions nowadays, with hundreds of channels at your fingertips, compared to the days of old when there was only two or three channels to choose from and having a television set was a real big thing. I got along just fine in my childhood with three terrestrial channels to watch and the only time cartoons were on were the weekends. Then came pay TV - in my case, the now defunct MegaTV and later Astro. We signed up for pay TV against the mild protests of my mum, which was pacified with the introduction of Hong Kong movie/serial channels. As always, it took a pay increase by the service provider (Astro) to wake us up.

Ever the voice of prudence, my mum suggested that we ditch it completely. I protested. We reached a happy (for now) compromise by dropping the Asian, news, cartoon and movie packages but retaining the basic package together with the sports and learning packages. That cut our monthly bill by around 40% immediately. And we found that we really didn’t need all those other channels after all. We might go ahead and cut down even more packages if I can find a cheap alternative for watching all of my favorite series.

Cost of switch? Nil. I just had to place a call in to the service provider and the change was effected instantly.
Savings? RM105 - RM60 = RM45
In the long run? Assuming 1 year duration on average = RM540

I used to think that I could not possibly find a single sen more from where I was already spending it. I was wrong. Heh. All I needed to do was look at it from a different angle. (Now as always, I’m not the type to go and give you advice that I myself have not done before.)