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Three ways to cut your tech spend as prices rise everywhere

    With the cost of food, gas and electricity rising, we have no choice but to spend more. But we do have more control over how many dollars we allocate to one of our biggest ticket items: personal technology.

    Compared to the price of gasoline, which rose 48 percent between March 2021 and March this year, the prices of tech products such as smartphones, computers and apps rose just 1.3 percent over the same period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. †

    Still, any increase is significant because tech products like TVs and phones, which range from a few hundred to thousands of dollars, are so expensive at the outset. Plus, some luxury devices depreciate just as quickly as cars, says Jully-Alma Taveras, a personal finance expert.

    “Tech moves so fast,” says Ms. Taveras, a YouTuber known as Investing Latina who teaches workshops on investing and saving money. “If we spend that much on a computer, three years from now there will be another chip, another upgrade, something else.”

    Aside from hardware, we tend to lose sight of spending on other types of technology, such as online streaming services, cloud subscriptions, and mobile billing.

    Here are some tips for shutting down some of the biggest drains on our budgets.

    A few dollars a month to watch your favorite shows on Disney+ and another few dollars a month to manage your data with online services like Dropbox might sound like a bargain. But these costs add up quickly.

    According to an analysis by Mint, Intuit’s online budgeting tool, in 2019 people spent an average of $640 on digital subscriptions, including streaming services, cloud storage, dating apps and productivity tools. That is equivalent to buying a luxury smartphone per year.

    Here are ways to limit that expenditure:

    • Create reminders to cancel. Many of us subscribe to streaming services like Apple TV Plus and Hulu to watch specific shows, but we forget to cancel once the shows are over. We’d be saving precious dollars if we searched the show’s release schedule and created a calendar reminder to cancel the service the month the program airs its finale.

    • Set goals for the whole year. If make one reminder sounds too annoying, there is a broader approach: set savings goals periodically, such as every six months. Dropping a few subscriptions would save hundreds of dollars for the rest of the year, Ms. Taveras said.

    • For cloud storage services, try to pick just one. For most people, there are no practical reasons to back up data in multiple cloud services, such as Dropbox, Box, iCloud, and Google One. Try to choose the one that best suits your devices and the type of software you are using. A good rule of thumb is to select a cloud service that works well with many types of phones and computers, such as Google One, in case you switch to a different hardware product in the future.

    Mobile bills can easily overshadow the cost of the mobile phone itself if we are not aware of the plans we choose. According to an analysis for The New York Times by Mint, Americans spent $1,342 in the past year on Americans who subscribed to a Verizon Wireless plan.

    But the plans offered by the major airlines are not the cheapest options. There are other brands that offer cheap phone plans. WalletHub, a personal finance website with a phone plan calculator, found that Visible, which runs on Verizon’s network, offers the best deal for individuals with an unlimited minutes and data package for $40 a month. By contrast, Verizon’s basic 5G plan costs $70 per month.

    What’s the catch? You will not get customer support from an established provider. Also, off-brand providers usually only support a limited list of mobile phones. The good news is that more of them now usually include the most popular devices from Apple and Samsung, so the trade-off is small.

    “You basically get the same coverage for a much lower price,” said Jill Gonzalez, an analyst for WalletHub.

    The cost of smartphones continues to rise, even as the improvements become increasingly incremental. (For example, this year’s entry-level iPhone SE costs $429, $30 more than the 2020 model.) So it pays to make informed decisions about the best time to invest in new gear and how much you’ll spend, rather than automatically. to upgrade.

    -The life of our tech devices can be extended for many years with some maintenance – make sure to replace the battery every two years and get rid of unnecessary apps and photos clogging your device storage.

    When it comes time to upgrade, the newest and fanciest isn’t always the best for your budget. Ms. Taveras said it was common for her students, some of whom are in debt, to spend $5,000 on a new computer. That may make sense to some, but many could live without the excess frills and net significant savings, she said.

    It’s worth bearing in mind that when something new arrives, it’s also an opportunity to buy last year’s model – which is generally very capable – cheaper.

    “I’m fine with getting the second-latest phone because the technology is still great,” said Ms. Taveras. “These small financial wins are very important.”