We're all talking about energy, but how much do you spend a month on digital services and will they take a hit with the current cost of living crisis?
We're currently paying around £125/month (which is a LOT!) for everything - that's BB. Sky, Netflix, Prime, Disney, Apple, Strava, Spotify, 2* mobile phones and Ring. Netflix may get the cut next and possibly Spotify in the future as I don't use it that much. That would save £22. Strava premium probably won't be renewed in the new year.
few TV packages got culled at the weekend. About £35 a month, £400 a year. Or 2 month's heating bill.
Yes, as per the bike cost thread, GCN subscription and Trainerraod subscription gone. Also Babbel language learning thing, which to be honest I'd have sacked off anyway as not going abroad for a while.
Or 1 month’s heating bill
Surely?
I have netflix, spotify, amazon prime, Zen broadband but use them all and can't see I'll be cutting any that soon. I did go from print to digital only for STW, but the physical mags from the last year are all still sat in the magazine rack unread sadly.
£125 per month doesn’t seem like much! (I know it should) we spend that much on Sky and broadband. Not cutting back yet, but very aware of cost vs value of everything we consume so we’re ready to.
Zwift got the elbow a few months ago, so I'm left with Spotify and Adobe for myself. I have Strava but pay for that outright at renewal. Girlfriend and I share Netflix and Amazon Prime so thankfully not much.
£33 per month for broadband and landline including all calls, £14 month between us for mobiles and £14 month for tv licence, so £61 per month. No subscription services, never had any apart from a couple of magazines which went four or five years ago. Have no intention at present of dropping any of them.
I'll be cutting down. I've subs running on Now, Prime, Disney and Tidal that really aren't offering value given the amount I actually use them. I'll maybe switch to starting and stopping the video services intermittently to catch new stuff as and when. I should be able to easily save £20 a month which isn't a fortune but will buy a couple of decent bottles of wine!
Sky, Netflix, Prime, Disney, Apple
That is a lot of TV. We just pay for one at a time and swap them on a regular basis. Certainly Netflix, Disney and Apple let you chop and change on a regular basis
£14 month between us for mobiles
Impressive.
£125 per month doesn’t seem like much! (I know it should)
It is a lot.
Currently I have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ then of course my broadband total monthly cost of about £50.
They’re busy with full fibre in my street so I’ll upgrade my broadband which will be about £15pm more.
We have Spotify Family, Netflix and Prime.
Won't be cancelling any of those but have just cancelled Now Sports as it was very poor value after initial offer expired.
I don't think you can include broadband as 'digital services' as without that you can't have any of the other services! 🙂
Impressive
I’m on GiffGaff £6 a month, she’s with EE on £8 per month. I suppose you could argue that we should include a running cost for the phone purchase?? Neither of us get near the low data allowance so no need to pay more
Strava is pretty important for me, for the heatmap based routing on trails. I'm going to bin Adobe Creative Cloud, but the things that are staying are Amazon (music/video/postage), Disney+ for now and Netflix which gets watched the most by far in our house. We pay about £50/mo for mobiles for four, with 280Gb data a month to share. However the Mrs and I have phones on interest-free credit (which will be paid off by the summer) and the kids have the cast-offs.
We cancelled Sky many years ago. It's crap value for money compared to Netflix.
Oh and broadband is £55/mo for mega fibre, which is awesome for work so it stays.
Netflix - Stepson allows us to use his.
We pay for:
Prime
Spotify
Zwift (just renewed ahead of winter)
Oh yeah forgot about Zwift.
tv license (£10ish?), prime (£8ish?), borrowed netflix/lent disney+ (£4), stw (£1.50), broadband (£20), phone (£30 but paid by work so £0), dual spotify (£12?) so £50ish per month. Won't be cutting any of them soon, I think I get vfm out of all of them except maybe the tv license.
I'm getting a bit worried as we've already trimmed most of our extraneous spending. Down to just Prime and Spotify now.
The only other thing is my mobile which i'm committed to another 9 months then can switch to Smarty or whatever.
I have Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime. YouTube I really do use a lot, but at £22 a month its quite expensive.
Sky is £60 a month, that includes Sky Glass (so TV). I have most channels bar the sport. I’ll be keeping that.
Mobile is also expensive, £80 a month. Three with unlimited data and calls. This was important as I travel a lot so used the data for listening to music on YouTube app. I’m stuck on this contract for another year. Killer! My phone is a 13 Max Pro so should last me a good few years after the contract is up.
I’ll probably cancel YouTube and Netflix and just use Amazon for TV and music. Will be painful to give up YouTube and go back to the Ad laden version.
I also have Wahoo SYSTM, will also be keeping this for when I decide to try and get fit again! £15 a month. Hmmm, might have to give that the axe for now. Really do rate it, but £15 is a bit spendy for something used twice a week.
No streaming services here although currently waiting for Viaplay (Scandi dramas) to reach the UK. No TV license either and have received a number of threatening letters from the Capita thugs. Only have broadband and landline, mobile pretty much ditched and can't remember when it was last topped up (PAYG). Considered Youtube sub cos I enjoy the music on there but really it's too expensive.
£125 per month doesn’t seem like much! (I know it should)
It is a lot.
Currently I have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ then of course my broadband total monthly cost of about £50.
They’re busy with full fibre in my street so I’ll upgrade my broadband which will be about £15pm more.
No phone(s)? no TV License? No music? No mags?
My £125 is everything for a family of 4 with an 11y old and a 6y old. Without NF, Spotify and Strava, we'd be at £95 which is pretty close to your £75 (inc BB)
Zwift has gone and not renewed GCN - I'm commuting to work again. Will Keep Prime/Disney and Netflix - finding terrestrial TV completely depressing with the news ! I had a 'word' with The AA and got them to knock 25% off renewal, and let me pay monthly.
We biffed off any TV packages a while ago, and, to be honest, I bet we get 95% of our viewing from iPlayer and don't miss them.
Other than that it's £25 broadband, about £25 for both phones, £10 Spotify (which is a bit of a waste, I don't know how much it actually gets used cos I hardly ever do, and I doubt she does much either), that's it I think. I'll be starting Zwift soon, but I only have that through the winter.
No phone(s)? no TV License? No music? No mags?
Yeah I do but I took it we meant streaming more than others.
No house phone as it’s totally pointless, mobile is £15 a month, what about £12 tv licence a month no idea, I think I have apple family music now you mention it what’s that £15, mags no other than here and they gift me that for moderating. So, about £90 to £95 a month with everything then.
Oh and I was replying to TonyD more than yourself but can see why you got confused.
I've just managed to get another £5 off Spotify every month, so down to £120.
£18 pcm on my mobile. £25 pcm broadband. £ 10 pcm spotify. Stw whatever that is. Thats the lot
I need a better broadband deal and will revisit the mobile
Mobiles cost us about £6 each. BB is £22 Inc phone line (no phone connected)
Binned off the TV licence and move around various streaming packages depending on what we want to watch and who has offers. Last 6 months, Now has been £1 a month. Disney I think we've been paying for with some sort of supermarket reward points thing.
Broadband is up for renewal and will be changing suppliers as it's been a while.
Mobiles are both sim only, although one S9 becomes unsupported next March so will need to look at an upgrade for that one.
Sky sports + BT sport has gone from an add on of that to add-hock jumping between whatever's on offer, usually there's some offer whereby if you pay £15 for PPV of a match on Now TV, you get a month's access on the app as well.
Zwift I'm undecided at the moment, if I can fill my diary with enough clubs/group to fill the week up then it's fairly pointless. Otherwise it'll probably come back. I do have a fairly premium PureGym membership which I need to reduce down to the normal level too.
Prime, Netflix, NowTV Entertainment, Spotify. Will have a cull of those at some point, just need to reach the end of a few series first!
Currently got:
5 mobile phones
Spotify
Netflix
Prime
Disney
FTTP
Can't do anything about the phones - and it's £55/month in total so not too bad.
Spotify will stay
Netflix might be under threat
Prime has just renewed at the old rate so that's staying for 12 months
Disney is a 3 month trial and I won't renew it.
FFTP (£37/month) - staying.... obvs.
No Sky as I ditched it long ago - IPTV will be renewed in April for £60.
Not paid for TV except the times we were on Virgin and it was barely more expensive than just having broadband.
Freesat via the previous owners' dish, £50/month on decent fibre broadband (mostly for work), Amazon Prime is free via wife's health insurance, then Netflix (£10.99/month), Disney+ (£7.99/month), and I have youtube premium (£11.99/month) that we also use for music streaming. If anything I think we'd cut Netflix although the kids watch quite a bit, I think they'd be fine with Amazon, Disney+ and BBC though. Far too many fragmented services now, think we'll keep to a couple and just rotate them.
Les Mills streaming at £7.94pm (some discount via work) although that will go now that wife is back in the office a few times a week so can go to the gym.
Mobiles under £10pm each for payg-type rolling contracts with 10+GB data and unlimited minutes and texts.
Strava at £48pa, I'll see how I feel next time that comes around. I've canned Zwift as I'm giving up the box room for my son to move into and if I do get some turbo time this winter I'll use some free trials of the rival ones.
Will drop STW to a digital sub (too many paper copies just get flicked through then recycled) and been trying out Readly which will be £8 a month, my wife and I can share a sub as it does separate profiles.
So just under £135pm if we pay for all those and include the £13.25pm TV licence. Cut Netflix, Strava, Les Mills and it's about £111.
I can never remember the full set of subscriptions!
Internet £24.99 / month
Mobile £22.34 / month
Spotify Duo £13.99 / month
Netlfix £10.99 / month
Prime £8.99 / month + £4.99 / month for some channel so we can watch French TV
O365 £45 / year
Apple £2.75 / month for photo backup
Strava £7 ish / month
Email £30 ? / year
Flickr £60 / year
NYT $4 / month
Guardian £5 / month
FT £155 / year
Economist £90 / year
Sure there are loads more....
I dropped Le Monde as they upped it from £1.99 /month to £8.99 / month....
Also culled Patreon subscriptions...
Already made the decision earlier in the year I wouldn't renew my Amazon prime subscription when it comes up for renewal in January. Just joined back to Netflix to catch up with some series but will cancel once I've done and got bored of it. I get Sky free through a mate but hardly watch it. I keep saying to myself if the tv goes bang it won't be replaced anytime soon.
I have Zwift, was going to cancel but coming up to winter I'd probably be using it again. I get Apple Music cheap as part of my sim-only contract with EE so I'll keep that. Though thinking of it I think I do pay for Apple fitness that I don't use so need to cancel it.
I also have Readly but will keep that as I like it and it's not much more than the price of 1 mag a month. And I think it would piss my sister right off if I canceled it as she has one of the logins.
nothing to cut really ...
broadband 21.50 (landline but no included calls)
tv lic 13.37
mobile 8.74 sim only (3yo moto g7)
no steaming services or subscriptions
It is good to write it down I think we have:
£39 - Broadband including unlimited calls
£13 - TV licence
£20 - wife & daughters mobiles mine is with work
£8 - Disney+
£9 - Tidal. I did question if anyone uses this at the weekend so it may be for the chop
£2 - STW
So £91, if the wife and daughter could get wifi calling we could chop the landline cost down, they are on Tesco. A mobile mast was erected nearby at the start of the year but apparantly it is for emergency calls only?
Might get rid of the BT sport app, don't think kids would let me get rid of netflix or spotify family. I've just renewed Disney+ but will cancel that agian once I've watched a few things I want to. Wife pays for amazon prime but I might suggest we drop that as I don't think we get enough out of it.
Mobiles, we have are between £6 & £9 per month, one each for four of us. Get 32gb of data on the £9 ones though with plus net which I think is pretty good.
No idea how much we pay for braodband as it's in the wifes name.
Broadband £19 (actually £15 when you net off some cashback and tesco vouchers I got for signing up, but £19 comes out each month)
Mobile telephone £10 per month.
And that's it.
No telly, no subscriptions, no streaming, never felt the need for any🤷♂️
There's some big numbers up there, I had no idea telly was so expensive!
1p/month currently on Lebara 12GB/unlimited for all our mobiles (x3, plus elder two have their own 1p/month).
£23 broad band and phone.
£7.99 this month for Disney - we have a 'rule' of only one digital subscription at a time.
£14.99 for Spotify family for the 5 of us.
£13 tv liscence
0.99p Apple back up.
That is it.
Got rid of Disney, Netflix and Spotify. Kept Prime for now. Will swap back to Disney or Netflix (maybe not) once Rings of Power as finished. Only other sub is to this place. Broadband is relatively cheap at about £30
Youtube Premium, Adobe Creative Suite, Broadband + mobile (£43) and STW digital.
Need Abobe and the broadband, if anything goes it will be Singletrack.
EDIT: Forgot Prime. Must cancel that.
£16,99 spotify family (shared cost between 6 accounts)
£25.16 bb
£47 sky and Netflix
£12 for 2 sims from sky
£8.25 premier sports
£2 nordvpn
Was considering removing Netflix but will keep it for now.
Have security cameras which don’t need a subscription.
VW want £55 per year for the car net app on the egolf and another £42 for the infotainment system. I’ll not be paying it as the app doesn’t work a lot of the time anyway.
don’t think you can include broadband as ‘digital services’ as without that you can’t have any of the other services!
Sure you can. I pay £22/month phone SIM only deal, unlimited data (on a three year old Moto G7 Power). No landline or broadband. If I want to fire up a month's subscription on a service I just use the phone. In the rare instance I use my old laptop I use the phone to generate a hotspot. I'm sure I could get a cheaper SIM deal if I looked around.
No TV, but I pay the license (£13/month) because I like R4 and 6Music and think the world is a better place with them in it.
OS yearly subscription.
That's it.
Mobile £13
Broadband £22
Prime, about a tenner I think?
So £45 per month.
OS yearly subscription.
Forgot that one!
And also Audible at £7.99 / month
I can't believe how much some here are spending!
We have 2 mobile phones at £6.55 each, Prime at £79 for a year, so £6.58 per month, although this is about to go up, GooglePlay music at £14.99 for the whole family, and Broadband at £23.95.
So around £35 per month for the lot.
No TV license, Disney etc.
I have Sky+, Apple1 and my broadband with BT, which is the most basic one now available, about £58/month - I don’t stream stuff, I’m not interested in sport and movie channels don’t bother me that much, I either read or listen to music. I’ve just upgraded my phone to an iPhone 14 Pro Max with 1Tb of storage and a 30Gb/month airtime package, plus the ability to upgrade any time in the future, and I’ll be still paying the same amount each month that I’ve been paying for the last three years. My current package has 90Gb/month, and I use about 5Gb.
Difficult to see anything else I can cut.
We have 2 mobile phones at £6.55 each, Prime at £79 for a year, so £6.58 per month, although this is about to go up, GooglePlay music at £14.99 for the whole family, and Broadband at £23.95.
So around £35 per month for the lot.
Does your phone have a calculator?
ji
Free MemberI can’t believe how much some here are spending!
We have 2 mobile phones at £6.55 each, Prime at £79 for a year, so £6.58 per month, although this is about to go up, GooglePlay music at £14.99 for the whole family, and Broadband at £23.95.
So around £35 per month for the lot.
No TV license, Disney etc.
Is that not £59 before Prime goes up?
EDIT Jinx
£8 mobile
£17.99 Broadband
£19.99 Tidal music
£9.99 Apple music
$119.88 Roon (yearly)
£10.99 Netflix
Amazon prime £95 (yearly)
£10 YouTube premium
Free Apple TV
Adds up to quite a lot but I’m stuck on my arse in the house so I don’t mind
Not thinking of cutting these, but perhaps the most left field of my subs, given that I visit the UK once a year if that:
OS Mapping premium: 30GBP/year
Online Welsh course: 99/yr
Plus VPNs to watch NRL & Superleague matches
They're safe for now as we don't have heating in our flat, but if we did it'd be a different story...
My mobile contract just ended but including that
Landline and internet £30
Mobiles X3 £45 (2 are on 1p mobile I soon will be)
STW £2
TV license £10?
Disney and Netflix £0
Crunchyroll £5
£92
I know it's not much compared to some but it's more than I thought tbh
Broadband and house phone. £30.
Amazon Prime £7
TV Licence. £13
Here £2
Two mobiles £20
Make the odd one off donation to worthy places.
Was previously £70 a month with Virgin TV/Broadband due to inertia/laziness. Haven't missed it since going to Vodaphone Fibre and Freeview. I eventually had to leave Virgin when new users were getting my package for less than half what I was paying. Virgin wouldn't do any deal presumably as they could see I had been with them since NTL days and I wouldn't leave.
Ditched Netflix as well. Wasn't watching it enough.
Probably watch as much stuff on free youtube channels as paid TV.
Just binned Sky at around £120pm for TV (sports, cinema, HD), BB & phone, which was £35 for 17Mb and doesn’t cope very well with Disney+ And any other internet use or 2 Zoom calls at the same time. Just waiting for an engineer to plug in the fibre that’s been installed for 100Mb at £30pm (BT deal). No phone line any more (when Sky goes) as we pay for 2 mobile (£10pm each with 50Gb). Still got Prime, Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify. Probably get the least use from Prime, we all use Spotify and the kids almost exclusively watch Netflix or Disney+. Extra storage on iCloud and Strava are being kept too. And here!
All tv packages cancelled. Will do the odd one month as and when there is something new to watch.
Mobiles all (4) swopped to Lebara.
Internet Virgin dumped to BT (and now on land line needed). That saved £35/month alone.
£10/month for spotify, which may have its days numbered.
Just binned Sky at around £120pm
Holy shitballs - you did the right thing!
I either read or listen to music
I think reading can get quite expensive if you do it a lot, depending on what you read. If I read fiction as much as I watch TV, I'd be spending more than a Netflix sub I reckon. Non-fiction is much better value for money!
Dumped Sky last month, was £85 a month going to £100 for phone, broadband and basic TV package. Been thinking about it a while. The price increase was the trigger, now on Plusnet for £30 a month. Might subscribe to Now tv, would still be £45 to £60 saving.
Have Netflix, Disney, Prime, Prime Music and OS maps. Prime is for free next day delivery as much as anything.
Can't see Sky doing very well over the next couple of years, despite the incessant ads it's not value for money, tired and contrary to what they say the only thing you get for being a long standing customer is price hikes.
I think reading can get quite expensive if you do it a lot, depending on what you read. If I read fiction as much as I watch TV, I’d be spending more than a Netflix sub I reckon. Non-fiction is much better value for money!
Got a library card? I read a lot, mostly from Apple Books on iPad because I’m lazy but I much prefer a real book. I just finished a book so might dig out my library card and take a stroll.
tonyd - you can read magazines but also many books for free on the iPad using the Libby app and your library card
Our Broadband isn't cheap - it's BT, but we've had good service and have their Mesh discs (3). We could lose the phone line rental TBH.
Phone is contract so £45 but I think I'll drop it down next year - very happy with current phone (Samsung S20), but what usually happened is my phone would end up as a hand me down as my 'adult' son is prone to smashing them !
Recommendations for high data use SIM ? We've a caravan, so use mobile data down there to stream TV.
BT broadband, think it about £70pcm , keep meaning to get a cheaper one but we had to use this as previous supplier caused issues with Mrs Kilo’s work dial in and her IT said get BT
BT sport - comes with broadband, never watched it.
Stw - probably keep that but every time the forum messes about I consider binning it.
About £14pcm for mobile
Eurosport is about a £8 pcm will keep that though not used it much.
Apple TV is cheap but pretty crap.
Mrs kilo pays for Netflix so that can stay and she has her phone provided by her work.
Our Broadband isn’t cheap – it’s BT, but we’ve had good service and have their Mesh discs (3). We could lose the phone line rental TBH.
I just renewed with BT and they wanted a lot of money to keep the Complete wi-fi disks (I think £20 extra per month). So I just downgraded contract and kept the disks, they charged me £60 for not returning kit but I'll save that back after three months.
I think reading can get quite expensive if you do it a lot, depending on what you read.
Try buying books in France! Makes the UK look very good value!
BT broadband, think it about £70pcm
I pay £70 per month for BT, that covers broadband (at average speed) and x5 mobile phone contracts on family plan (with 20gb of data each)
Cut Virgin down to the bone. Just the BB now, no land line or TV services. Use freeview and streaming services which I switch around monthly. Plus some usenet.😉
Going back on Zwift though, soon I hope.
Giffgaff for my mobile and TV licence obvs.
£20 a month for TV and broadband (its actually £40 a month but we split all household bills in half)
£10 a month for Spotify
£10 a month for my phone (Giff Gaff sim only deal)
Thats it
NowTV BB with unlimited <60min calls £23
Zwift (free monthly 25Km typically Apr-Oct, paid Nov-Mar) £13
TV License £13
Prime £7
Strava (buy a year around Black Friday with 2 free extra months) £3.50
Mobile BB (prepaid 25GB Three sim that's valid for 24 months) £1.25
Mobile PAYG (Three, gone up a lot from 3-2-1 to 10-10-5 this year) £1
So ~£65pcm.
Might try a turbo alternative (but races to help motivation sometimes rather than erg wrkouts), might look for a cheaper light use PAYG mobile package.
Nudged by one of the earlier posts, I just went and joined the library where I am now. Crikey, talk about making energy savings - the place was heated to about 30c, I was drenched in sweat by the time I'd completed the registration procedure and got the hell out!
Unfortunately we don't have a huge amount to cut back on. The big drop we did a few years agho when I convinced the family we didn't need a TV service (It was Virgin at the time) so we moved to Firesticks. I can't take Spotify, Netflix and Amazon away from them, I will be a pariah.
@Daffy, how do you get a reduction on Spotify?
Anyone tried flitting between Netflix and Amazon Prime based on what you are watching month by month? That could give a saving of around £60 per year if you alternate?
Sky TV & BB £39/m
Prime (shared) £10/m?
Trailforks £12/year?
Strava - £56/year?
Mobile sim only - £10/m
Nothing I particularly want to cut there, could live without Prime but it's my part of a sharing deal.
Anyone tried flitting between Netflix and Amazon Prime based on what you are watching month by month? That could give a saving of around £60 per year if you alternate?
That's what I do. 1) It gives the other a chance to get new stuff, and 2) You sometimes get a discount offer to rejoin.
After ditching Sky last year (went up to £75 for basic + BB, they wouldn't budge on price and didn't ring back either), we've got Plusnet line + BB for £18.99 and Netflix or Prime for £8-ish.
Freesat connected to the old Sky dish after I swapped the LNB
Edit: 2X ID Mobile SIMs for £14 p/m 8+10 GB with unlimited minutes and texts
£13 TV licence, £20 BB, £10 mobile.
