(UPDATE) Frugality Week: The high cost of staying connected

UPDATE: Editor’s note: Added video of Abby Sarmiento taken by INQUIRER.net business editor Ma. Salve Duplito.

Filipinos spend too much on staying connected. When you don’t text, you’re not a good friend. When you don’t call, you’re a bad daughter. Husbands know full well the wrath of a woman untexted.

These days, cutting costs will have to include taking a second look at alternatives to the high cost of getting connected. In our household, only my 7-year old and the toddler don’t incur costs. There are six mobile phones in our household (two for the hubby), a landline and a DSL service.

This should be interesting for financial voyeurs . On a monthly basis, this is what we pay telcos :

Hubby Line 1 – P1,800 (postpaid)
Hubbly Line 2 - P3,000 (Blackberry service paid by employer)
Salve – P2,500 (Blackberry service)
Danielle – P240
Maid 1 – P60
Maid 2 – P150
DSL service – P2,727.27
Landline – P700
Total: P11,177.27
Annualized: P134,127.24
Less company support: P74,127.24

Ouch.

To put expenses in proper perspective, annualize them. Multiply the daily cost of texting for prepaid plans, for example, and find out how much it would cost in a year. My daughter does not think a P20 unlimited texting fee is too much, until she realized she is actually spending P2,880 a year just to text. That’s deducted from her allowance, so she tries to be more careful.

By the way, you can use this tip also for other expenses, like restaurant dinners, taxi rides – just about almost anything. If you eat out two times a week and spend P500 each time, you are spending P1,000 weekly, P4,000 monthly, and P48,000 annually. That’s already tuition for Junior.

Awareness is the first step in cutting down the cost of getting connected. These things are expensive. Trimming the down without losing the connection may be possible with some discipline. Use the landline more instead of texting. Try instant messenger and email instead of calling overseas. Skype works for many of my friends. Cut costs but stay connected. Hermits are lonely.

For businesses that need to call overseas regularly, try VOIP phones. One of our editors in the office, Dennis Maliwanag, tried PLDT’s wireless landline. He’s P700 richer every month after he disconnected his landline service, with a new one that can also receive text messages.

(Model: Feliza Cana, INQUIRER.net)

Sweethearts and business partners Franco Mesina and Abby Sarmiento learned that staying glamorous with a small and hip mobile phone is not as good as being smart using their big portable landline. They have cut down business costs by getting a wireless landline and even bringing the clunky apparatus with them when they go to places as busy as the grocery.

Here’s a video I took of Sarmiento.

Franco says Bayantel charges P699 for the wireless landline service (it an also send out and receive short text messages.) PLDT has a P600 per month service but limits the calls to 10 hours. After that, you pay P1 per minute. Franco and Abby runs a water purifying business and need to be on the go and yet accessible to their people. They swear the wireless landline has cut their telephone bill significantly.

How about you? How much do you spend on getting connected? Annually?

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