(no subject)

[prog]

Any of my fellow Somervudlians use Comcast for broadband? D'ya like it? Do you know what TCP ports they block?

They've got a $20/month special going on now for new subscribers. Of course that's only good for six months, and they do a good job of not noting on their website what it reverts to after that. Still quite tempting, since I just learned that downgrading my RCN will still cost me $60/month for broadband alone. It's better than the $90 I pay now, but...

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Ordered a copy of Alton Brown's classic I'm Just Here for the Food yesterday. When I scratched out a budget a couple of days ago, I concluded that food was the slippiest variable, and the one I can carve the most out of. Currently I spend -- ulp -- probably around $600 a month on everything I eat and drink, because I buy no groceries and do no cooking. (Sometimes I brew my own coffee, or shamefully browse the "a la carte" thing of colorless microwavable nuggetoids at Shaw's with the other pathetic bachelors, but that's it.)

So, yes, I'm gonna turn this around. I think $400 is a good target number to shoot for, and conversations I've had in the last couple of days suggest that I can make it a lot lower than that if I start getting good.

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Heh. Much as I love Alton, and I do, I'm not sure how much using his methods is going to help you save money.

I do agree that cooking is way to save $ over eating out. There are a lot of fairly simple tasty things you can make. I recommend finding recipes that can freeze, making extras, and packaging them for quick meals later.

[lediva.livejournal.com]

*raises hand re: Comcast*

Works well enough for my purposes (i.e. four-way shared net usage, and a few services (FTP, VNC, web)). I've got the cable modem run into a wireless router.

I've got their combo package with digital cable, so it works out to ~$45/month.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

I'm spending maybe on average roughly $30 a week at Trader Joe's, but this is variable due to whether I'm out of coffee and so-on. I don't like cooking, but you can get all sorts of healthful food that still tastes good and requires minimal preparation and clean-up. You can get all manner of frozen, microwavable pasta; you can get frozen and easily baked fish. You can get chicken drumlets and so-on. I have been buying chicken drumlets and lightly breaded cod. I have been occasionally -- well, forget that. You can get gobs of food that *EVEN I* don't mind preparing. Um... I'll assume there is a store that's equally okay for getting stuff, if there is no T.J.'s near you.

Budget of Kyro

[kyroraz.livejournal.com]

Right now with:

* Buying groceries once a month and
* Eating out only once per week (delivery or eating out) for dinner.
* Eating out for lunch at work ...

... my budget for everything is between $340 and $380 for foods and drinks.

sounds like college days!

[jtroutman.livejournal.com]

my suggestion is to invest in some semi-disposable plastic containers, and then to do some cooking in quantity, once you figure out what you like to cook (and feel like eating afterward). And then you can freeze up some meals,a nd microwave them as needed.

Rice based things work pretty well, are cheap, and can generally be flavored a lot so they are just fine after being frozen and nuked. I used to eat a lot of rice and beans (curry style).

Ramen type noodles are a lot more fun if you can dress them up with some additions (like frozen peas or pea pods, and some fresh tofu, etc). If you like soup, there is a brand of nearly instant asian noodle soups (that I can't remember now).. they are like $1 per serving, and they are actually quite good and far better than raman or cup-o-noodles.

I also used to eat a lot of pasta, which is easy to prepare (10-15 minutes, mostly just boiling water), and you can buy some very good saucces for $4 which will give you 2-3 meals at least.

even if you just stick to "gourmet" frozen food that you can microwave, it will likely be lots cheaper than eating out. Coffee also runs into a large expense.....

there is also not a lot of shame in using plastic and paper plates, if you find the cleaning up after meals to be burdensome. But there is some cost...

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I have Comcast for everything (TV, net, phone) and haven't really had any problems (except that it took forever to set up auto-billing for phone). They don't block any ports as far as I can tell, and they've never seemed to notice that I run a web server, FTP server, several VNCs, sshd, etc, 24/7.