Are we utilizing our streaming services.

 So a couple of weeks ago I learned a little bit more about myself while being restricted on internet usage. I thought my unlimited plan would at least give me some internet at all times but within a week, my internet completely shut off. Dora and Danial tiger could not be streamed non stop and we needed to restrict other forms of internet usage as well. I knew my unlimited plan truly wasn’t unlimited but at the same time I didn’t think my plan would completely shut me off, which they did. 

Within a week our internet usage became severely limited. We had four phone plans. 2 were “unlimited” and the other 2 combined had 14 gigs. My wife learned that her Tik TOK usage was not good after using 7 gigs on her 10 gig plan within a week, plus she learned her phone constantly disconnected from the Mobile hotspot. Eventually 2 days before our trial was over, we had no way to stream movies. We got our old vhs’s out and started watching them. Picking a show became easy with only a handful to pick from.

This brings me to my point. Are we utilizing our streaming subscriptions or our we just throwing money away?

Let me try another approach to prove my point. 

When I was introduced to RedBox, I was excited. For just a dollar you could rent a New release movie. At Blockbuster that movie could cost 4 times as much. Their selection was slim but it was kinda nice to find a cheap movie on a Friday night, order pizza and before having kids my wife and I would have a cheep date at home. It was even cheaper because I knew a code that would get me a free rental every night. Eventually that code was tracked to a credit card and became useless.

There was something Redbox didn’t offer that Blockbuster did. I found this out while renting 2-3 movies out at one time. Blockbuster lets you return the movies 3-4 days later. Redbox does not. In fact I believe blockbuster gave you one night per rental. So if you had 5 rentals you had 5 nights to watch them. If you have 5 rentals at red box and it takes you 5 nights to watch them, what you thought would cost you 5 dollars now cost 25! Right after that mistake I found it best just to rent one dvd at a time. It wasn’t worth the risk to have more than that.

There was this one time where my wife and I were in line at a Redbox (a rare sight these days) and a mom and her kids were deciding what to watch. At one point she had. 5 dvds in her cart and she was planning on renting all 5. What I did next probably saved her a lot of money over the years. I mentioned to my wife that Redbox gets you by enticing you to rent more than one rental. It’s just best to rent one dvd at a time, return it and rent another. Who watches 5 DVD’s in one night?

I saw the wheels turning in her head she thought for a second and reduced her cart to 2-3 dvds instead of 5. My guess is her kids watched a movie and she watched one herself.

So this brings me to my point. Are we simply paying too much for all of these streaming services? Currently I have Amazon Discovery plus Hulu and Disney plus. Amazon unfortunately is a business decision Aand, I get it for half off because uhm, I’m poor. Disney plus was a Christmas gift and we don’t have to pay for it. We usually don’t have Netflix simply because a lot of the shows are MA which in most cases stands for trash. The two shows we do like are still producing shows so we probably won’t have a subscription until October or November of this year. I purchased Discovery plus because of Expedition Bigfoot. I’m done with that and now find nothing I like. So is this like my Redbox analogy where we are renting 5 DVDS at once but not getting the value? These streaming services are so low priced that we either don’t care, or we don’t notice how much we are paying. And quite honestly it’s probably not much but if your like me where you want to save whatever you can, and get the most value, you’ll fine tune your finances and your wants and feel your not only watching all your favorite shows, you’ll be paying less while doing it!

So how do you do that? Here’s my suggestion. Just like the “rent one return one” Redbox strategy do that with these streaming services. Rent one per month then cancel and move on to another one! You could also share passwords and just have someone else pay for your subscription👌. With limitation you might be finding something you do like in which you’ve always passed over. My wife and I have found a love for dumb cheesy movies especially around Christmas time. Every once in a while we find a gem. Last year we added a new unknown Christmas movie to our must watch list. There’s also free streaming services to give a try like the Roku channel. Limiting your choices may give you more freedoms Improve your mood and even increase gratification.