How I saved $428 for a year

Recently, we made a few changes to our utilities to bring down our bill.

Telephone:

We had a VOIP land-line with Vonage through we used to make a lot of calls to India, where our family lives. However, my Vonage bill was coming up to $43-$44 per month and it seemed excessive to us. So we looked into other options.

One of my cousins suggested Ooma. Ooma is also a VOIP phone which is similar to Vonage except that there's a one-time charge of $149.99 for the modem and setup system. There's also a $39.99 charge for porting your existing number. Other than this, there's an approximately $3.50 charge per month which is basically taxes.

For international calls to India, we decided to try out Skype subscription for international calls which comes to about 800 minutes per month for $8.99. If we exceed that, for extra minutes, it's about 1.5c per minute.

The math works out like this. For a year with Ooma & Skype, per month we would pay

     (149.99 + $29.99)  / 12
  +                               3.50
  +                             $8.99
  =                           $28.32

This gives us a savings of $15.68 per month.

Over the course of a year, this has saved us ($15.68*12) = $188 approximately


Internet:

My husband and I both occasionally work from home. And we watch Indian TV channels through the internet. So, good quality internet is a must. We used to have TDS Telecom which provided us with 5 Mbps DSL service. Initially, this was quite cheap for us but with time, this had gotten very expensive and even with a customer loyalty discount, we were paying close to $60 per month.

We decided to explore other options and decided to switch to Charter Internet from TDS.

With this switch, we will not be paying $40 approximately for 30 Mbps internet.

Over the course of a year, we will be saving ($20*12) = $240

Overall savings for the year: $188 + $240 = $428

Financial Goals and Savings Counter

My current financial goal is to bring down my mortgage by $20k this year. This is a lofty goal but I'm hoping to make it this year.

I've decided to add a savings counter to my blog where I will put how much money I've saved each month with coupons, sales, etc. At the end of each month, I will take that money and put it into my mortgage.

Let me start the counter from today. I shopped at Rite-Aid today to buy some supplies. I bought some Lubriderm moisturizer, some handwash liquid and band-aids for my daughter.

With the Lubriderm moisturizer, I saved $1.50 by using this coupon.

Total Saved: $1.50

Invest $82.28 a day for comfortable retirement

I was reading an article today on USAToday about the amount of money to save/invest for retirement. According to this article, to live comfortably after retirement, a basic number to start with would be $82.28 per day. This does not count for inflation and makes some assumptions about the rate of return of investment and kind of lifestyle you would have after retirement.

It's a good number to start with but it's a hard number for a lot of people to accept - $2500 per month. A lot of people's monthly income after taxes is $2500 - how can they save $2500 per month.

Hopefully, this number does not discourage people from starting to save, however. Every dollar counts - how much ever you can put away every day matters.

Ask Matt: To live well in old age, invest $82.28 a day - USAToday