Save Up to $5,000 on Your Tech Tools

Feb. 16, 2009 — -- The average family of four spends about $3,500 a year on technology products and services. Add a new computer to the mix and the total soars. But there are ways to cut your technology costs and still keep your high-tech edge.

Cell Phone

The key is to find the ideal plan for your spending patterns. Pattern equals plan. But there are a zillion companies with a gazillion plans, so it's a pain.

Not anymore. A Web site called myvalidas.com does the analysis for you. You upload your most recent cell phone bills to the Validas site and its computer program takes care of the rest. It even examines your texting habits. It costs $5 to $25, depending on how many months of bills you want to analyze.

In one dramatic example, an Orlando family was paying $271 a month for three cell phones but it was paying for too many minutes. Validas found the family a plan for $109 a month.

Savings? $1,935.60 a year.

Another option, especially if you limit your cell phone use to emergencies, is to buy a pay-as-you-go phone and not have a cell phone contract.

Home Phone

Many people, especially younger people, save by ditching their landline phones. Another option is to use a computer phone service like Skype. Computer-to-computer calls are free and computer-to-regular phone calls are cheap.

A typical landline phone bill with a traditional phone company is $45 a month. Skype charges $3 a month.

Annual savings? More than $500.

Internet Service

Once again, look at how you use the technology. If all you do is e-mail and surf around a little on the Internet, you may not need all the bells and whistles.

Consider going back to the future. Yes, we're talking dial-up Internet access. But it's not your father's dial-up. Many carriers, such as Earthlink, now offer an accelerated service that makes it pretty fast, plenty fast for the basic things most of us use the Internet for.

DSL service typically costs about $40 a month but you can get accelerated dial-up from providers for $13 a month, less if you catch a special like Earthlink is running right now.

Savings? $324 a year.