This past year, my husband and I have both been working remotely from home. Both of our daughters also are learning remotely for school. With the all of us home using our home internet, we needed to make a decision whether to stay with our current internet plan or upgrade. We upgraded and never looked back. But before, we did upgrade we weighed are options and took a look at our current needs. If you are contemplating your current internet needs for your family, you may want to read on now.
As you’re going about your new-year home organizing tasks, you’ll likely spend some time reevaluating the amount you spend on things like subscriptions, utilities, and streaming services and deciding where you can afford to cut back. One of the most easily-overlooked places to save? Your internet service.
You might not expect this to be the case, since Wi-Fi is a necessity in many households and, unlike gas or electricity, the cost doesn’t change depending on how much of it you use each month. However, it’s likely that you’re paying for more bandwidth than you actually need, especially if you’ve ever been tempted to upgrade to a flashier, faster service.
Figuring out how much bandwidth you need isn’t as complicated as it sounds — at least, it’s not thanks to this very handy worksheet from Money Crashers. Just tally up the number of each type of device you have in your home, and the worksheet will supply how many Mbps you should allot for each!
Especially if you work from home and can’t afford to risk internet slow-downs or spotty video call connections, it can be tempting to upgrade anyway, just for the peace of mind. If that’s a concern, read through the rest of the guide to get a better understanding of exactly how much of a cushion you need to tack onto your internet speeds to feel comfortable. You’re likely to find it’s still not as much as your internet company claims!
Please include attribution to Money Crashers with this graphic.
