Cutting costs = cancel Netflix?

[Lykke1000]

Inspired by a previous thread about coping on a high salary with a breakdown of all monthly expenses.
Have you noticed that the expenses that always get mentioned are subscriptions, especially Netflix. My Netflix is £4.99 and just looked up that Disney is the same. Sound weirdly out of proportion to suggest cutting it out first thing. True, it’s not essential but if at least one person in the family actually uses it daily then it’s a pretty cheap per hour of entertainment.
TV licence is another story ( I don’t pay it as I genuinely don’t need it).

A takeaway coffee or a pint (once a month) costs the same but is way worse price for 15 mins of entertainment.

What are your thoughts?

I most certainly wouldn’t cancel Netflix or Apple TV - the cost together is 2 cheap glasses of wine , but gives me hours of pleasure- not going out!!

Completely agree. Why would you do this ? Arguably one of the best value things you can get for a fiver. A fancy coffee in Starbucks is a fiver.

I think the Netflix advice is more to look at your spending and see what you can reduce/shop around for to make savings. So switching from ad free Netflix to with ads Netflix saves a few quid. On its own that's not a lot but if you do it with every item of expense then you can save quite a bit.

Ive just changed the whole family over to sim only contracts with lebara. It now cost £3.40 a month for 3 phones when before we were paying £60 (this lasts for 6 months then goes up to £21 a month, but overall a big saving)
We rotate tv subscriptions so only pay for 1 a month, review all Insurances etc rather than autorenewing.

But its the big ticket items like rent/mortgage/childcare that are truly crucifying people's budgets.
Ideally housing should be 25% of your income but that's not possible with house prices where I am in the home counties

No. It was in response to Tbh there is nothing that makes people sound more out of touch and clueless than cancel Netflix (maybe- stop eating avocados?)

Thanks to all who recommended lebara. 3 x phones about ti be switched!

Sometimes it could be used to mean Netflix literally but more often than not, I think people use it as a common placeholder phrase or expression for cancelling a small and nonessential expense (and many of these small, nonessential expenses add up over time).

When people say “cancel Netflix” I take it to sometimes mean literally cancelling Netflix or cancelling several small ‘Netflix-like’ subscriptions e.g. cancelling Hello Fresh, Gusto Box, foregoing their weekly Starbucks, cancelling Spotify premium etc.

I have Netflix with ads and an Amazon fire stick. I'll be cancelling Sky TV once my contract is up, it will save me a fortune.

Yes it’s not just ‘Netflix’, but cancel or downgrade any subscriptions where possible.

Last year we ditched Spotify, and apple. Downgraded Netflix. Changed home internet provider, swapped x4 phone contracts (2 private, 2 business). Maybe some other ones I forgot. But it saved us €115 a month! So about €1500+ in savings since so just swapping providers or ditching things we didn’t use.

When I mentioned to Sil at the time she was like ‘ oh I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of swapping’.

so do you go around telling people who are struggling with money to cancel their Netflix? Otherwise your response doesn’t make any sense. It’s not about you, it’s about people who tell others to cancel their Netflix 🤷🏼‍♀️

@Bambamhoohoo . Do you not have anything better to do?

Was going to say the same.

My kids are all on Lebara, and it's great. I'm tempted to switch in Dec, but I know I'll be dazzled by the thought of a new handset haha

Changed home internet provider

Would appreciate recommendations.

We pay EE (BT) £30 per month.

@LoandBeahold - we live abroad unfortunately but ours was €35 originally and then kept increasing every year. Until it was €68. And annoyingly only allowed new customers to sign up to better offers.
Left and new company €30.

I might resign back with old one though now as better consistency with speeds. But we had to leave at least 12 months to go back. And now we can join as ‘new customer’

If you own your phone, take a look at GiffGaff. I think all their PAYG tariffs have unlimited calls and texts, so the cost depends on how much data you want. I have 3Gb for £6 per month on my phone and I think 20Gb for £10 on my iPad.

I agree. It's such a small outgoing that it's really not going to make that much of a difference. Years ago, when I was struggling with my finances,my DM said that I should stop spending money on my weekly magazines. I spent the grand total of £1.80 a week on 2 magazines (this was 20 years ago when magazines were nowhere near as expensive as they are nowadays!). It would have saved me £7.20 a month. Not enough to really make a big difference.

cancel disney though for political purposes 😅😅

The luxuries are cheap.

Its the essentials that are expensive.

why would cancelling Netflix be meaningful when the cost to rent a 1 bed flat is £1500?

I agree that there are subscriptions and then SUBSCRIPTIONS.

My ex was moaning that he never had money but he smoked, had the most expensive sky package (think it was over £100 a month) as he had films and sport and had netflix as well. Oh and he was paying for BT sport or something, massive football fan.

I told him to stop talking about being skint until he had either quit smoking or got rid of the stupid TV packages.

ETA he also said that there would be no way he could afford the repayments on the size mortgage the bank would offer, I pointed out that he could easily afford them if he prioritised that over fags and tv (fags were circa £600 a month ffs!)

Depending on where you live, you might have a local library which has newspapers or magazines in a reading corner.

Often you don't need a library card to read stuff at the library; only for borrowing.

Some libraries have online newspapers accessible through your account. If you don't have an e-reader, you might still be able to read the newspapers on a laptop screen - again, it depends on the library.
Not the same as physical paper, I know, but at least those are current and offer full access to all articles, in comparison to many news sites.

I can also recommend looking for libraries of larger cities, even if you don't live in the city itself but nearby in the surrounding counties, because they often offer more media online.

On that note, some libraries offer an additional streaming service, but not all of them.

What on earth are you taking about? You have jumped on me and posted arsey replies despite the fact I am not saying anything different to anyone else on the post- you’ve either misunderstood or you’re a bully harassing a random poster for fun. Go away.

Yes, these people could probably save much more by looking at their supermarket shop, dropping a brand level, cutting a few of the extra treats.

Watching ads is just like watching old TV. Get up go to the toilet, make a brew. You should be taking a break from the TV. Save the money!

I cancelled our Sky after it rose to £70 odd a montage for the basic package and they wouldn’t budget.
that was worth doing.
we don’t have prime, Netflix or Disney +

dh moans there’s nothing on, but there never was more on our Sky package anyway!

Once you take affordability out the equation it’s about value, if you feel you are getting value from it, it’s worth keeping. IF you could watch the same stuff your watching on the free catch ups, then your not getting value.

I couldn't cancel Netflix, I love it, it has some showstoppers on there.
We cancelled Amazon prime (£90 a year subscription)
We get around it by ordering to a local post office/shop at checkout and just collect from there, it's £2.99 postage, far cheaper than standard Amazon postage if you don't have prime. Plus we don't order that much from it, and we found the tv package was naff, still had to pay for good things to watch.
I buy clothes from charity shops these days, and sell unwanted clothes on vinted for an extra cash boost.
Takeaways once a month normally on pay day.
Buying food when you go on day trips, take a pack up instead. I also have an old iPhone now and opted for sim only contract once I'd paid it off (because do we really need a new iphone every few years?) I pay £10 a month also sim only, I did haggle the £10 a month tho as originally they wanted £16.

I think it's just something to say.
A friend was talking to me at the weekend about a friend she visited in London, in her lovely 4 bedroom house in Hampstead, privately educated kids and the fabulous food they ate.
"You can see how they do it" she says "They don't have Netflix and they make their own bread."
I didn't really even know how to begin to challenge that!