THE GADGETEERS
Betsy and Scott slash their technology budget by $2,000 annually without suffering
BETSY AND SCOTT ARE RAISING three kids without traditional pay TV and loving every minute of it.
The urge to save a buck runs deep in Betsy, thirty-nine, and she credits her parents for that. “I was raised in a military family and my parents taught me to think through purchases, evaluate needs versus wants, and save rather than go into debt.”
By her telling, forty-three-year-old Scott’s family lived paycheck to paycheck when he was growing up.
Such different financial backgrounds could cause friction in a marriage, but it didn’t for Betsy and Scott. They quickly got on the same page financially after tying the knot.
I often tell male callers to my radio show that knowing their wife or bride-to-be is always right is key to a successful marriage. As I like to say, “Happy wife, happy life.” Good job, Scott!
For Betsy and Scott, the first thing they tackled after marrying was about $60,000 in debt, which included two car notes, Scott’s student loans, and some miscellaneous consumer loans.
“We attacked that and paid it off within the first four years of our marriage, then started budgeting and collecting all the information we could on using money wisely. At that point, my biggest resource was The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn,” Betsy recalls.
“I read and reread that book and not only used many of the ideas, but also bought into her idea of frugality as a creative and fun endeavor. . . . It really is a creative expression—instead of just buying the newest and greatest thing, we determine what about it appeals to us or would meet a need, then think of alternate ways we can achieve the same result. It’s kind of a fun hobby now.”
As I noted, one hobby Betsy and Scott don’t obsess over is watching pay TV. In fact, they fired their cable provider way back in 1998.
At the time, they both were going to graduate school and didn’t have the time or money for cable. They wound up switching to satellite four years later, but the romance with traditional TV providers didn’t last long.
“We were pretty much weaned off TV by then and cut it off in 2002. So we bought a DVD player and signed up with Netflix. It was pretty new then,” Betsy recalls. “I don’t know how my husband found out about Netflix, but he told me about it and we decided to give it a try—we were definitely early adopters. Between the library’s selection of DVDs, Netflix, our antenna, and the Internet, we have plenty available to watch.”
Because Scott isn’t a huge sports fan, he didn’t have to worry about giving up ESPN. “We catch some SEC [Southeastern Conference] football games over the antenna. The boys are more into football than he is,” Betsy says. ”We watch a lot of classic movies, documentaries, and miniseries—Netflix has plenty!”
Other than that, the programming they recently watched when I spoke to them included the original Planet of the Apes movie, British TV miniseries such as Downton Abbey and Cranford, the History Channel, and PBS documentaries such as The Shakers.
As Betsy remembers it, firing the pay TV providers put between $30 and $40 back in their budget every month. But that was more than ten years ago and the typical cable or satellite bill is now twice as much as it was back then.
Of course, pay TV is just one piece of the technology budget in anybody’s life.
Telephone, cell phone, Internet, and telephone services cost the average American household an estimated $2,160 in 2011, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When it comes to their cell phone bill, I’m happy to report that Betsy and Scott are definitely not your typical data-hungry, smartphone-loving American family.
“We both have TracFones and spend about $10 a month to keep both going. We don’t use cell phones much—my husband just for emergencies and traveling, and I mostly use mine to text, which only costs about 5 cents [per text message].”
Meanwhile, they cut the cord on their landline in 2011 and now get their phone service through an Internet calling company called VOIPo. Instead of paying $35 a month to their monopoly phone company, they now pay a little more than $6 a month with a twenty-four-month contract.
The funny thing is, while Betsy and Scott skip the fancy smartphones, they don’t deny themselves other hot gadgets. But as you might imagine, they’ve found ways to get their gadgets on discount and to reduce the costs of ownership once they have them.
Scott has an iPod Touch that he loads only with free podcasts, and Betsy has a Kindle Fire that she keeps packed with (mostly) free e-books.
“I bought the Kindle refurbished for $30 less [than list price] and . . . I’ve spent $7 on books in the six or eight months I have had it,” she says. ”I have hundreds of books loaded up on there to read. I’m on a mailing list for EreaderNewsToday.com and they send me a daily e-mail with books available free for the Kindle. They are independently published books for the most part, but mainstream ones come through sometimes.”
Saving money on technology is second nature in their household and it’s a key piece of their overall financial strategy. But they’re not just saving money for the sake of saving it; they do it with a higher goal in mind.
They have decided to live on Scott’s roughly $80,000 income working in the field of electrical power while Betsy homeschools the couple’s children—ten-year-old Nicholas, eight-year-old Todd, and four-year-old Elijah.
Homeschooling draws on Betsy’s early career experience as a teacher of everything from seventh-grade math to AP calculus.
“We were interested in a solid education for our children and looked into private religious schools,” Betsy says. ”We have a very good public school system in our area, but having taught school, I know a lot of time is wasted and I know children do better with individualized instruction and smaller teacher-student ratios.”
When I spoke to Betsy, she was doing a yearlong focus on American history with her kids. There were also planned forays into astronomy and Mesoamerican Indian tribes.
“A few days a week, we get together with other homeschooling families [in our area] for classes in music, science, and history, as well as [to] have social interaction. The other days, we stay home and spend four or five hours doing our school subjects and then run errands as needed. It has been a great choice for us to be able to spend quality time together, use our learning time very efficiently, and choose the best learning materials for our family.”
By homeschooling, the family can avoid cumbersome homework, spend more time together, and even save money on meals.
“I know exactly where my children are in every subject, and we can move on quickly or spend more time on a subject as needed rather than having them go at the pace of an entire classroom of children.”
Betsy and Scott’s approach to life has definitely rubbed off on the kids.
“My boys like to come thrift shopping with me. My oldest is always excited when he finds a name-brand shirt in mint condition for $2 or $3. It blew his mind when I told him that they often cost over $30 if you buy them new. He looked at me like I was insane.
“We’re all content with what we have and feel very blessed, and that’s rubbed off on them—they seem to ‘get it’ that money is a tool but doesn’t bring happiness, and we are having more fun together than a lot of people who spend a lot more money.”
What lessons can you learn from the story of Betsy, Scott, and their three boys?
Cut the TV cord.
Cut the phone cord.
Rethink what you’re paying for cell phone service.
Know the risk of going with smaller technology players.