Saving Money by Downgradingby Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger 10 Dec 2008 06:23 AM
Downgrading can come in many different areas and many different levels. You might be comfortable living in a smaller house but could never give up expensive vacations. That is okay, being frugal means being flexible. You can choose the areas to downgrade one at a time, but you may find that you enjoy your new life so much that you look forward to finding new areas to downgrade. Here is one example of the many levels of downgrading. Let's take a look at television entertainment. Find the level that you are currently in and see if you would be comfortable going down a level or two. Television service from lowest to highest. These numbers are approximate for service in my particular area per month. None (free) Broadcast antenna (Free with free digital converter) Basic Cable (Anywhere from $10 to $30) Basic Digital Cable ($99 to $120) Premium Cable or Satellite that may include high definition and special channels ($130 to $190) Super-sized Cable or Satellite ($200 to $350) Beside the obvious cost for the monthly service, there are other expenses that you may avoid by downgrading. For example, if have digital high definition television service then it may prompt you to buy a high definition television and premium home theater sounds system. While I used television in this example, you can apply downgrading almost anywhere. Any easy way to see this is to make a list of all of your options just as I did with television. Have you downgraded lately? Click here for more articles by Mary Ann Romans. Don't Believe Frugality = Happiness? Try This! Reusing What You Have - Dresser Drawers
Just look to the right of this blog and find the subscription center (it looks just like this picture, although you'll have to find the "real" one just above the category listing ). Click on "Subscribe via Email". You'll be instantly subscribed and the email address that you registered at Families.com with will receive an instant notification whenever we post a new Frugal Living Blog! Don't miss a thing - subscribe now! Learn more about Mary Ann Romans  Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, the kids and a 16-pound cat. Relevantfrugal tags User Comments MegfromAllAboutAppearances (330) 10 Dec 2008 07:36 AMDowngrading is a great idea because really, so few people do it. It goes against our instincts to do and get more, more, more. But if you really examine how much of something you use, it may be easier to downgrade. For example, I had unlimited minutes on my phone, but recently looked to see how many I actually use a month -- about 250! So I switched to the 500 minute plan and am saving about $40 a month! My husband and I have downgraded our cable before. We didn't watch the extra channels much. Right now, we're considering getting rid of it altogether. And while we could probably use even faster internet since he downloads and uploads a lot of stuff for work, a lot of people have more bandwidth than they really need. Another tip for those who are downgrading: find cheaper or even free ways to replace/supplement what you're downgrading. That way you don't feel like you're settling for a lower quality of life. We replaced our gym membership with evening walks together, and cutting cable will be a lot easier for us now that I'm used to borrowing movies from the library and watching stuff on Hulu.  Andrea Hermitt (5512) 10 Dec 2008 08:41 AMI would gladly downsize if I could sell my house... I did manage to get rid of my rental properties just in time though... I'd hate to have to deal with those money pits in a bad economy. So in a way, I did downsize. Still, my family of four could easily live in a house half the size of our current home. I know I grew up in a much smaller house and at one time there were 11 people in our home. Hindsight is 20-20.  ruthann8 (6378) 10 Dec 2008 10:46 AMI would love to downsize too....if I could sell my house. Other than our house there isn't much to downsize on. We have one car & no cell phones. We do have cable, phone, & internet. But all three together is less than 90$ If needed we can go to just phone and get rid of cable & internet. If only we could sell our house. It would be nice to have a smaller newer house with less maintenance and LOWER utility bills!!! And less to clean :) Our house is just too old and I'm afraid it is going to become a money pit. mrmnmom82 (3365) 10 Dec 2008 11:09 AMWe did a mini upgrade, and are compencating by down grading other places. My husband wanted a new tree this year, we have a fake tree that is about 3 feet tall. so 2-3 strings of lights was plenty on the small tree, but leaves a bit to be desired on the big tree. Instead of buying more lights and ornaments to fill in the gaps, we are going to string popcorn and cranberries. We have some leftover crafts from last Christmas, and the kids are making us a few more ornaments. Down grading sounds negative, but if you really take a close look at everyones examples, downgrading can actually add to the quality of our day because we are spending more time together; going on walks, not having to worry about 2 other buildings in addition to the one you live in, less tv time, crafts with the kids! That all sounds like an "Upgrade" to me!  Mary Ann Romans (26886) 10 Dec 2008 11:45 AMSo many good points! I do have some ideas about downgrading a house when you can't sell--check back tomorrow! Samual (11722) 10 Dec 2008 04:43 PMWe fairly recently bought a second house which we are either selling or renting in three years time, so we had to downsize in other areas, we had to sell our Landrover which was a 1975 series three which was totally my baby, I miss it lots but here our small holding is well, alot smaller than what we had back home, plus it wasn't practical to drive it 7 hours here really, I miss here but there was no point in keeping her if she was going to sit outside and rust. So now we just have on vehicle. We have six dairy cattle that we are thinking of selling but we're having trouble finding a farmer that doesn't use milking machines and hormones, so it looks like they'll be relocating to Wales after christmas. We had Sky TV back at home but we don't have it here so that saves us £40 a month, which is alot of money. Ideally we would only have one house, but our house back home belonged to my grandmother and we have a tradition of keeping houses in the family so we are going keeps and then selling our new house. Mary Ann Romans (26886) 11 Dec 2008 11:41 AMIt sound like you really are making some good decisions with downgrading. Community Tags downsizing, frugal living, save money, thrifty Discuss this article
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