Category Archives: A Year Without Spending

Based on experiments by Robert Llewellyn and various other bloggers & authors – A year of spending nothing on stuff (with the exception of food, necessary bills and a used car in the summer).

A Year Without Spending – Day 4 – Virgin Media & Asda

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Sorry Richard, I Like Virgin but needs ust, and I must not SPEND

Sorry Richard, I Like Virgin but needs must, and I must not SPEND

Well I’m into day 4 of my ‘year without spending’ and I’m yet to feel even the slightest pinch (well OK I admit I was tempted by a 2GB Flash Drive for 99p from Aria, and a 500GB External HD from Tesco, but I managed to resist). So today two major challenges, one was to downgrade my Virgin Media cable package, and the other one was to go grocery shopping without spending any more money than necessary.

Firstly, the Virgin Media issue. Since moving into our new house (and back into a cable area, as we have lived in a nature conservation area of Manchester for 6 years with no cable, and no gas for that matter) we have been enjoying the complete Cable package from Virgin. This includes the XXL TV Package with Movies and sport, plus 20meg broadband and unlimited telephone calls for a fixed fee. The bill was coming in at around £95 a month after I haggled some discount off Virgin when we moved in back in July. Now with the discount, the TV package was great, with the exception that we have taken to sitting in front of the V-Box all night. This isn’t healthy and it got to the stage where we looked for crap to watch on the TV.

For years we have been Freeview users, being early adopters and even having a great PVR box, however it was all ditched for the shiny V-box and subscription. So after months of vegging in front of the TV, and paying a lot for the privilege, I have finally cancelled the subscription. That’s right, I called virgin and cancelled our TV. No more Sky Sports, no more Sky Movies, no more on demand choice content and music videos, and it feels great. I have dug out our freeview PVR box and ditched the V-box. We can now watch a range of good TV, and if there is nothing on we can switch it off, or watch a pre recorded programme we actually have an interest in. Instead of sitting through night after night of Dog the bounty hunter and Cribs, we can watch decent TV or none at all.

I also considered downgrading the Broadband and Telephone package, but we really do benefit from the free call allowance, and I do hammer thr broadband daily so after haggling a good discount (£30 a month for XL 20meg broadband and XL telephone with free calls) I am now £65 a month better off, and what’s more we both have more free time in an evening!

The selection of Freeview channels and content in the UK is pretty damn good, and the fact that I can pause and rewind programmes (yes like Sky+ and V+) without paying any subscription fees.

Secondly, Asda. Thanks to the great advice by Rebecca Ash in her book The Spend Less Handbook, we armed ourselves with a list and refused to deviate from said list, only buying what was planned before we left the house. Surprisingly shopping this way saved us a lot of time and stress in the supermarket. We seemed to be in and out in no time, with everything we needed, and actually ended up spending in moderation for a change. That would be my top tip for saving on Groceries and ensuring you don’t splurge on the BOGOF offers and other clever marketing scams, write a list!

A Year Without Spending – Day 3 – Full of a cold & Xbox Live

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Xbox Live - Stick to top-up cards

Xbox Live - Stick to top-up cards

Well its day 3 of the Not Spending experiment, and I am full of a cold (hence the lack of a post yesterday. The upside (if you can call it that) is that I would be unable to go out and spend even if I wanted to!

So back to the No Spending experiment. I actually called Xbox Live yesterday to cancel my Gold Account. I tried to do this months ago as they where rebilling me automatically on a monthly basis to my credit card. The fact of the matter is, in over 2 years of Ownership and Membership to Xbox Live, I have probably played around 5 hours online. When you consider membership is £4.99 a month I have spent well over £120 for 5 hours of online play! So when I tried to cancel months ago, I realised that there is no way to take your card off file and stop the recurrent billing. I tried on the Xbox Live website, the Xbox itself, nothing. You can add new cards, but you can’t delete them or cancel your membership, Crafty Bastards!

So I finally bit the bullet and called the Mumbai call centre. What a nightmare. They have a terrible line for a start, and the Xbox recorded message has been voiced by the typical “you want fries with that” American diner accent. After fighting through the warnings and the voice Activated menus “Accounts & Billing!”, “Cancel”, “CANCEL” you reach possibly the worst phone line left in existence where you are asked if you will give consent to record the call by pressing 1. I didn’t want to consent and ignored pressing 1, to which I was cut off!!!!

I tried again, this time going through all the menus AND pressing 1, and I was cut off again. I finally made it through after around 5 times of shouting “CANCEL!!!!!”, much like the fonejacker flat line. The poor guy in Mumbai tried his entire repertoire of sales spiel to keep me as a customer,which I was having none of. After running around the houses over and over I finally managed to cancel the account.

And the lesson we learn from this? Well Microsoft aggressively try to keep their customers for one, and also the fact that they have no way of cancelling an account without calling and jumping through hoops suggests that they retain a great deal of customers through pure intimidation. After all, who wants to wrestle with a website, an xbox menu and 5 phone calls to cancel a £4.99 per month subscription, I mean what is £4.99 nowadays. But out of principle, I was determined to cancel the account and stop paying for what is  great service, but I never use. Besides, paying £60 a year for nothing is stupid. I can get 3 months of my Broadband for that price, and play better FPS games for free on the PC.

From now on I will stick to buying the pre paid Xbox live cards if I wish to use the service, or even buying the 24hr/week trial codes on eBay which are great value for a quick dabble online (mailed directly to you via email), although I’m not sure if they are legitimate from a Microsoft standpoint, they do work!

Next in the cross-hairs is the Cable TV and the Virgin Media package in general. I’m sure I can shave some extra £££’s a month off that package.

Now excuse me while I crawl into a corner and die of the cold, will hopefully post an update tomorrow, if I survive the night! :(

Tissues for the dying geek

Tissues for the dying geek

A Year Without Spending – Intro & Day 1

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A tough year without spending? Lets see!

A tough year without spending? Lets see!

Well I feel inspired. After reading a few books & articles on the subject, not to mention podcasts, I have decided to spend 2009 without spending. I know it will be a tough year, but the groundwork is already in place. 

Coming from an academic background of first completing my degree and then my Masters, I have become familiar with frugal living. My salary for 18 months in between made me a lot of money which I wasn’t used to, but alas we live to our means and spend it anyway. I can’t figure out what the money went on whilst I was working full time, but it all went and I didn’t pay off much student debt!

Now we work from home and earn enough from that, it seems like the perfect time to try this experiment. I’m not tied to paying for commuting, parking, lunch, work nights out and all the other trappings associated with the 9-5 (9-6) city job. 

Over the past few months since Vicki left work and I finished the Masters, we have been living pretty modestly. At the moment our entertainment consists of watching movies at home and making our own popcorn, attending the local pub quiz once a fortnight and generally taking life a lot more slowly.

So what is included in the year without spending, and what is excluded? Well obviously food & drink is excluded, as is accommodation. Basic utilities such as gas, electricity and water as well as council tax will have to be excluded, and debt repayments (just can’t stop paying those). Also business costs such as jiffy bags, hosting and materials, along with the business mobile have to stay (although the business mobile is a PAYG iPhone, so requires little upkeep).

Things that I will cut back on are landline and “extra” utilities such as Cable TV. Also spending on stuff such as clothes, gadgets & gizmos, and general crap that we all buy will have to go. Books will have to be traded on Read it Swap It, or borrowed from friends & relatives. Xbox 360 games will have to be begged, borrowed and stolen (not literally stolen), and that Xbox Live subscription I never use will have to go. Also I’m purging a lot of clutter from around the house & office on eBay, so check them out in my right hand sidebar –>

I will try and post a daily update to my anti consumerism year on this blog, so keep checking back for all the gossip on my Year without spending.