To be paying £250 per month for broadband and phones

[Kmetsch3]

A family of five, with two teens
We have sky super fast broadband, sky sports, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and 4 smartphones.

Are we, more or less, normal?

And multiroom!

Don't have amazon prime or net flick.
Three teens here.
We buy our phones and then get a £8 per month data contract.
I think you are spending a lot!

Fucking hell. £3k a year on phones and TV. Not how I choose to spend my money. Up to you though. Family of 6 - £85 a month.

Can you afford it and do you use it all is the issue. If the answer to either question is no, there is scope to cut down.

But seeing as a contract for the latest iphone can cost £50-60 per month, there will be people spending nearly that on the phones alone, before you even add in all the TV and home broadband stuff.

Wow that’s a lot! Can you afford it?

We are a family of 4 inc 2 teens and pay

£10 per phone (x 4)
£56 for sky inc top fibre BB and sky sports (no movies)
£8 per month for Netflix and £3,50 a month for amazon prime
£0 for freeview in bedrooms

So £77.50 a month?

Definitely aim to haggle for cheaper rates / strip back packages and move to SIM only when your phone contracts are up (ignore teens moaning that they NEED an expensive upgrade!)

If you are on Sim Only contracts, you also need to account for the cost of the phone when comparing.

I buy my phones outright and generally spend £150-200 and try to make them last at least 2 years. So when thinking about how much things cost, I mentally add £10 a month for the cost of the phone.

Of course no-one needs a high end phone and you can get basic smartphones free with even £7.50 pm contracts, but unless you are on the breadline, it's fine to spend a bit more.

Well my sky package is £60 for everything inc sky sports and broadband.
We pay 50 pm phone contracts. If you doubled that for two teens it would be 100 so 160 all in.. 250 is a lot. Do you need netflix and amazon prime and sky?
If you can afford it I wouldn't say it's a major problem

That's utterly insane. Nobody should be paying more than £20 on a phone and broadband with TV is £30.

How do you get amazon prime for £3.50 19lottie??

I pay £7.99!

I wouldn't say that was normal no. Lazy maybe when there are ways to cut that.

Can you get a family plan for your phone? Might save you some money.

Sky is so expensive. You could switch to Now TV. I think my broadband, phone and entertainment package is about £35 a month. Plus you can add sports packages etc and watch many Sky channels.

My total
£82.50 for Sky Q with multiroom and one sport
£12.50 for BT Sport via Plusnet
£22.50 for 76Mb/s fttp without landline from Plusnet
£0 to receive calls to landline number via Sipgate VOIP
£2.50 a month for smartphone 1 from 1p mobile.
£7.50 a month for smartphone 2 with Giffgaff
£4 a month estimated depreciation on smartphone 1
£9 a month estimated depreciation on smartphone 2

Total £141 a month.

Smartphones were bought for cash, so mobile tariff is for calls/texts/data only.

Most people will struggle to emulate the above, as having broadband without paying for a landline is a trick that relies on having fibre all the way into the home, which is only an option for a tiny minority living in the right areas.

Bloody hell that is a crazy amount of money on first glance but if you have phones on contract it probably isn't THAT bad. And if you watch a lot of movies and sport at home then it is a relatively cheap form of entertainment.

I have internet (very fast, £30/month), netflix, prime and a sim-only phone contract (£12/month) but then I buy my phones outright and try to keep them for 3 years so need to add on the cost of my lovely iphone x :-)

Also when it comes to subscriptions if you have students in their family- use their student discount to get the best deals

We have sky broadband/landline/tv package (3 boxes) and 3 contract phones, Netflix, amazon prime and Now TV and we’re paying less than you. I think you need to look at your packages and see why you’re paying so much.

lasketchup we get a half price student deal £39.99 for the whole year.

Reading some other responses, surely what matters is not what it costs in total, but whether you can get the same for less?

People can afford different things and want different things. I know people who are shocked by what I spend on TV. They don't watch sport.

That does seem crazy! We have 2 adults 2 kids:

Smart TV so no sky
Netflix £7.99 a month to watch on 2 screens eg tv and phone
Mobiles x 1 per adult about £120 a month
Landline and broadband package is £19 a month
Amazon prime (but this is also used for all the physical amazon deliveries) which is £6.60 a month

So total of around £150 ish which still seems a lot!

Eeek just added ours up...3 x phones, full sky package, net flicks, broadband..... we are nearer £350

We pay £60 ish for super fast internet/sky and phone line.

Then my contract is about £18p/m (sim only), dps is about £40 ish per month.

Your probably about normal, assume each phone contract is 30/40 pm x4 then £10 for Netflix £7 for prime and the rest for sky?

Maybe look at the contracts and see if their are any discounts your eligible for.

Also relook at your contracts. If your unlimited data on teens phones do they actually need that much if there hooked up to the WiFi at home.

Mental.

Our 4 phones - 3 iPhones 7 and one 6s, sky full package with sports and movies, Netflix, phone and broadband, BT sports, amazon prime and 3 Spotify subscriptions all adds up to £220 which I still think is a ridiculous amount of money.

Think you need to shop around a bit!

I pay around £70 per month on 3 phones,

£50 for dd's iPhone + insurance and £12 for my phone and £8 for ds's (He rarely uses it though)
They came as a package it was cheaper than adding the extra on my phone.
I think we paid £73 or something like that for Amazon Prime for the year and similar for NETFLIX.

Home phone and broad band is £17.99 per month
So about £100 per month.

All phones are on contract

family of 4, 2 teenagers

4 x phones on contract = £120 per month
BT unlimited broadband and BT TV with BT Sport = £83
Netflix and Prime = £16

So total of £219 but no Sky/Sky sports.

The boys phone contracts are part of their Christmas/Birthday gifts but really just works out much the same as buying the phone upfront plus a monthly SIM and DS1 has just sold his old phone on so got cash back too.

That sounds a lot. So I thought I'd add ours up to compare.

There are just the two of us, so our costs for phones are bound to be lower.

Monthly costs:
Broadband and landline, £25
Amazon Prime, £7
2 Phones on Giff Gaff sim only, £20
Total £52

Underlying costs:
Purchase of 2 phones in 2017, expected to last 3 years, £950.
Annual cost, £316
Monthly cost £26

Total monthly cost £78

If the phones only last 2 years instead of 3, our costs will of course be higher. In that case they would be £91 per month!

I have never actually analysed the costs like this and see exactly how much we do actually spend. It's easy to just look at the £10 a month sim contract and forget that you've spent almost £500 buying the phone itself!

£121pcm, family of four smartphones

Basic Sky, BT broadband, 4 phones (2 bought so depreciation included)

Have also included the £12 pcm that we pay for the BBC - grrrrrrrrr