Is Your Home Internet Necessary?

On this blog, we embrace frugality, which means we are not cheap or Amish, but look to spend as little as possible on almost everything, and still derive value, and improve the quality of our lives. Today we talk about the internet.  If you use the BT broadband speed checker or any of the other tools online to check your home internet speeds right now, I can bet that you’re browsing at speeds much less than you signed up for.Internet has over time become very cheap, and very fast, but we are not only getting slower speeds than promised at sign up, we probably have too much internet, especially at home.

According to this article, in November last year, home broadband users averaged 17GB of data monthly, mostly video downloads, which means most home internet users use it for entertainment

But is home internet a necessity? 

This is a tricky issue, and while I agree that in today’s world internet is a necessity. Especially so if your job is internet related, or if like me you’re a blogger and an information addict. Would you be disconnected from the world if you cut off your broadband plan? I doubt it, there are other ways to access the internet.

How much of the broadband that you pay for, do you use? Most of us work 8am – 5pm, get home at 7pm and are in bed by 10pm, so even if internet is all we do at home, that makes 3 hours of internet access daily, yet you pay for a full time connection.

There are various options to consider. For example, instead of making internet a constant fixed recurrent expense, you can sign up for a “pay as you go” internet access plan on your phone, then tether your phone to enable you browse on your computer. Most coffee shops these days have free wifi, you can download all the material you will need, then work on it offline from home.

Advantages of canceling home internet?

1. Well, you save some money. Most of us pay upwards of Kshs 3,000 per month on home internet, this saved over one year is Kshs 36,000, almost the cost of an iPad 2 🙂 See? You can buy stuff.

2. Less time on the internet may be good for you. If we’re honest with ourselves, we spend more time on the internet than we should, compared to the value the time spent delivers to us. An internet free home could give you more time with your loved ones, time to read a (real) book, do home projects etc.

Consider switching off the home internet, it may be good for you.