Utilities and Sky bills - am I paying too much?

[33goingon64]

DH just casually mentioned our monthly Sky bill is £70 and I nearly fainted. He looks after all household costs and I have no idea what we pay for everything. I know we are all meant to be switching to save, but how do I actually find out whether what we are currently paying is reasonable or not?

That payment to Sky is for broadband, tv and landline phone. We are also now paying another £20 for super fast broadband. I just think this sounds so expensive.

ours is expensive too but we also have multi-room that costs a bit more. We dont have much choice as we cant get Virgin Media as we arent in a cable area and we like the choice of channels with Sky.

I always check my gas/electric, home/car insurances when they are up for renewal so I know I am paying a reasonable price for them - I have switched Home insurance most years, my car insurance has been price matched the last 2 years and I will stay with my gas/electric supplier as the tariff they offer will be the best out of the ones I looked at.

I look at various price comparison websites to get the best price I can

You can spend a very worthwhile and profitable afternoon this weekend watching the snow fall, sipping hot chocolate, studying the Direct Debits leaving your various bank accounts, going through your utility bills and researching various comparison websites to get a better deal.

• Go through each Direct Debit and ask yourself a) if you know what it's for and b) do I need it? If you don't know what you're buying (and you'd be amazed how many people don't) and/or if you don't need it then you can probably cancel it and save the money.
• If you genuinely need the item then use comparison sites to get the best deal. In the case of phone, broadband and TV there are package deals available
• If you save just £5/month here and £10/month there, grossed up over a year you can claw back thousands.

Have fun...

£70 is about what we pay for our sky/broadband/phone. Ive had a look around and not found anything else to be cheaper in the long run ( as in usually broadband cheaper for first 3 or 6 months elsewhere , then much dearer after initial period), where i live i can only get sky so not sure of cable deals, plus there is the convenience of only have one dd for everything.

My sky was £90 a month, that was for everything including a multiroom. I phoned them to cancel to the basic package and they offered me multiroom for £2.50 a month now, so I now pay £50 a month for sky, phone and fast broadband.

Do you need all the channels you are paying for? We cancelled the movies and subscribed to lovefilm instead, went from £20 per month to £5. We have the sports channels, but only because it's cheaper than DH going the pub to watch matches :) we only have evening and weekend calls free as generally we are both out during the day so just use mobiles, and also have Internet from sky.. Our bill is around £50 per month.

First question with Sky is - do you actually watch the stuff on it? If you do, then possibly worth it. If not, cancel it immediately. Only really worth it for big sports fans.

You can get a lot cheaper broadband and unless you are in the back of beyond, 'standard' is fast enough for anyone now. If you can manage with just freeview, then you can get unlimited broadband for about £30 a month with line rental. Maybe a bit more if you want unlimited landline calls too.

BTW a bit concerned that you have no involvement in household finances.

"I have no idea what we pay for everything"

If you do nothing else, please rectify this.

I've banged on about this before but check out a sat dish and decoder maybe £100 for both - and after the initial cost of installation (maybe another £100) your only ongoing cost will be your TV licence.

DD and & both have unlimited broadband on our phones, so can use these as modems for the laptops. No landline.

We are with Virgin and pay about £62 a month for TV including most good Sky channels apart from Atlantic, Sky Sports, Sky Movies, TiVo, broadband (which is plenty fast - no problems streaming etc) and phone with unlimited landline calls. So that seems a lot for Sky in comparison.

I have virgin broadband as we can't get fibre to the cabinet on ADSL. I like Sky Atlantic so I can't switch to virgin for TV. But tbh, I've checked virgin vs sky, and there isn't much difference in price between the two. You get the best deal by taking a whole bundle like you have. You cut the cost simply by removing options you don't need. Like movies, sports, HD and what not.

OnTheBottomWithAWomansWeekly the cheapest would be to get rid of your satellite dish and aerial. That way you don't have to pay the license fee. You can still watch via iplayer and 4OD, lovefilm/netflix. I've done it for years and the licence people have come and verified we can't get live broadcast.

if its your dh organising it, bet you have sky sports and thats where the money goes
we use bt and thats ok but would be 65 with sky sports so similar price.

2 top tips

1 phone and say you' re thinking of leaving what can they do pricewise

2 look on topcashback and quidco if you move - up to 150 quid cashback

We have landline phone with Primus, c £7pm, but that was discounted at the time, I think it's usually £10-ish. We only use landline for 08 numbers though, calls are generally only £1-2 a month on top. It does allow use of 18185 where applicable which minimises connection charges (doesn't work on 0844 or 0871). Other calls are all by mobile

broadband is with O2 & that's £6pm because I've had an O2 phone for more than whatever the qualifying time is

Our Sky package includes HD & Sport but not Movies & is £58pm. Freesat would do for most of what I watch but not for anybody else

So our total, unbundled, is £71 - not so different from the Sky bundle. I do prefer having them separate

has anybody suggested checking out \link{http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/\moneysavingexpert's utilities section?} It is very helpful. Combining that with switching via a cashback site should make quite a difference.

I've just noticed how rediculous our Sky tv is. Someone I spoke to recently did too & asked for a better deal tk which they were refussed so he cancelled them, resigned in his wife's name & got all the new advertised discounts....

I've not quite got to that yet.

We've been with the same multi utility provider for years but it's only recently I've started using their cashback card so it comes directly off our bill - an extra 28% off this month! worth looking at: www.utilitywarehouse.org.uk/cat