Digital overheads – save money painlessly –

A few years ago, the utility bill included only classic utility services, but nowadays almost every household spends an amount that is clearly visible to the naked eye on digital services. However, many people overlook these items, since the digital overhead is typically made up of many small items – and if you don’t prepare a home “bookkeeping”, it is certainly not easy to see the situation.

First of all, it is worth looking at what is included in the classic overhead and what is included in the digital overhead category; namely, because there is a certain gray zone here, which includes services that could even find a place in both categories. Classic items include:

• joint cost
• electricity bill
• gas bill
• water and sewer charges
• district heating
• landline phone
• TV service.

Also, in our opinion, internet subscriptions and mobile phone subscriptions can also be classified here, although these two items are a gray area, since it can also be argued that they are already part of the digital overhead. However, in our interpretation, the amount of the digital overhead is made up of the subscription fee for the services that we use online – via the Internet. And among these we can list a lot of different items. This includes, but is not limited to:

• subscription fee for any video streaming service
• subscription fees for all music streaming services
• software subscription fee
• subscription fee for cloud-based services.

Let’s also take into account that these categories can sometimes overlap – but more on that later.

The cost of the classic overhead

Let’s start from the utility costs of a 60 square meter apartment in an apartment building – if there are no special items, then the common costs are 12,500 forints, the electricity bill is 12,500 forints, the gas bill is 5,000 forints, the district heating is 9,250 forints, the water and sewerage fee together is 6,000 forints, the landline phone, internet and TV – also together – for HUF 12,500 costs per month. This is HUF 57,750 in total. We don’t even want to upset tempers; we know that in the case of a single-family house, the monthly total can be much higher than this, and in the case of the mobile subscription, we calculated extremely conservatively and only for one person – in extreme cases, for a family of four, the sum of the costs related to the mobile can be the same.

Digital overhead: awareness is key

The situation is that if we start from the above HUF 57,750, then – as we will immediately see – it is easy to put together a digital package whose monthly cost is comparable to the above. And we don’t even have to have too many extra needs. It is enough if, as a law-abiding citizen, we do not “buy” movies and programs from the torrent store, but buy them through legal channels.

The reason for the high cost of digital overhead is primarily that almost nothing is expensive individually, but a lot of small things add up to a lot. If you stack them up, a few thousand forints here and a few thousand forints there add up to a serious amount.

Video streaming

Most people immediately associate it with Netflix, but several other services are also available in Hungary: Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, SkyShowTime and Apple TV+ among the big ones, as well as several smaller platforms such as RTL+ and TV2 Play. The starting monthly fee is typically HUF 2-3 thousand, but those who choose an annual subscription usually only have to pay the price of 8-10 months. Of course, the price can be much higher if someone is not satisfied with full HD quality, or if they want the given service to work on several devices at the same time.

The trick with streaming services is that each service offers completely different content; in addition to exclusive titles, self-produced films and series are what service providers can use to attract subscribers. An excellent example of this is RTL+, whose Premium package includes UEFA Champions League matches this year, and this alone is enough to attract subscribers.

This means that anyone who wants to watch movies, series, and matches legally and doesn’t want to miss anything can easily find himself in the position of having his name among the subscribers of not just one, but three, four, or even all of the services. In today’s world, HUF 3,000 is not a large amount, but if you have to pay it five times, then we are already at HUF 15,000. This means that if you only watch a movie every second day, you will already pay HUF 1,000 per piece. If you want to save money, in addition to thinking carefully about which streaming service you really use, you can also check whether your linear TV subscription is necessary in addition to them – if not, you can even cancel it. you have to pay for less per month. By the way, the number of streaming subscriptions in Hungary is well over 2 million, although this does not mean 2 million subscribers, because there are many people who are connected to more than one service provider. However, the number of actual users can be even higher than 2 million, because we do not know how many people actually use a subscription.

Average monthly cost: minimum HUF 10-12 thousand for 3-4 services, but it can be twice as much. (And that’s not even talking about smaller players like Cinego.)

Zene streaming

The situation with music is a little different, because the service providers work with more or less the same title list; Spotify, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer all have a database of 70-80 million, in the case of Apple Music and YouTube Music, only the catalog is larger, with a database of 100 million. So here we can safely say that the services replace each other; that is, you don’t have to keep several irons in the fire at the same time. It is worth choosing based on the extra services; for example, Spotify has been integrated into many devices, and the YouTube Music subscription is not only good because the music is always “coming”, but also because it is free of advertising on YouTube, as well as clients that can be downloaded to mobile phones when the phone’s display is turned off. they also work.

What you may want to consider is whether you choose an individual or family package, the latter is available from several service providers, and you can save a lot with it. However, one of the recent brutal price increases is also related to this: the price of the YouTube Premium family subscription jumped from HUF 2,690 to HUF 4,790 (+78%). This made this service by far the most expensive, with Spotify, for example, the family package costs HUF 3,290, and Deezer charges HUF 2,999 per month.

Average monthly cost: HUF 4,000

Software Subscriptions

This category is Pandora’s Box in that if we are not careful, we can even spend our pants on the software. In the past (a long time ago), we paid for the software, downloaded it, and then used it as long as the license allowed – this usually meant unlimited use, with the main version only being updated for a few years. Then the developers realized that this could be really screwed up, and since then they have been switching to the subscription model. Which, of course, means a much cheaper monthly fee, but we have to pay this until the end of time even if we don’t want to update the main version, for example.

One of the pioneers of this model is Adobe, whose individual modules can be subscribed for between 6 and 28 euros. Of course, there are special offers, for photographers the Photoshop-Lightroom duo costs 13 euros, and those who need all the applications will have to pay 71 euros – per month, of course. At the current exchange rate, the latter is close to HUF 30,000, which is quite a lot of money.

More and more anti-viruses operate according to a similar scheme, and parental control applications are typically not included in the purchase category, but in the subscription-based category. Do you want to strive for security and use a password manager? Then we have some bad news: premium functions are almost always available with a subscription for all software. Of course, the monthly fee is not much here either, only a few euros, but if you not only use something alone, but buy the program for the family, then 20-30 will add up in a flash from the many items of a few euros, and here we are again with HUF 10,000 per month!

And then we haven’t even mentioned Microsoft Office, which is now available as Microsoft 365. The single-person version costs HUF 2,500 per month or HUF 25,000 per year, and the family version (for 2-6 people) costs HUF 3,500 or HUF 35,000. There are so many extras because we get the right to use not only the four basic programs, but also a lot of software, and 1 TB of cloud-based storage (per person) also hits our mark.

If someone wants to save money on software, it’s easy, because basically every important application has a free alternative – and in most cases, you don’t have to make too much of a compromise. You just have to accept that the free app is “different”. For antivirus, there is, for example, the integrated Defender, which works really well, Darktable is quite good instead of Lightroom, and Libre Office replaces Office very well.

Average monthly cost: HUF 12,000, but it is impossible to spend twice or even three times that amount.

Games

If anything, everyone is paying for games and sex on the Internet without hesitation. The latter is beyond the scope of our article, but many people are also willing to reach into their pockets for games, so subscription plans have also appeared. Just because the subscription does not necessarily mean that you can play all the games in the catalog – some only have a purchase discount, and some don’t. Microsoft Xbox Game Pass, for example, costs a minimum of HUF 3,600 per month, so in return approx. You get access to 350 games (the title list is constantly changing), and many games can be purchased at a discount. A similar structure is available in the Android Play Store and the Apple App Store, as well as for the PlayStation 5, but in the case of Steam, which is considered the largest, there is no subscription of this kind – although for some games you really have to buy a subscription, but this is unique in each case .

Average monthly cost: HUF 3,000-10,000

Cloud-based services

We can classify hosting services here, but if we examine the potential candidates a little more broadly, we will see that there are many other expenses that can come from this direction. For example, a subscription that includes an online hosting service can be connected to several applications, but that’s not all we get with it. An example of this is the individual and family package of Microsoft 365, but with many security software it is also possible to buy a premium subscription that includes online storage, for example for storing backup copies. In the case of password managers, synchronization between devices (which is also cloud-based) may be paid for, and secure cloud storage for important documents may be included in the package, but the list could be continued for a long time.

The price of online storage services is typically pennies, if we want an extra 100-200 GB in addition to the free 5-15 GB of storage, we have to pay an amount of around HUF 600-1100 per month. More expensive packages typically include extra services, for example, in the case of Google One, the Gemini Advanced artificial intelligence module can also be used in the company’s services in addition to the 2 TB package.

And speaking of artificial intelligence: in addition to the ever-increasing number of AI chat and image generator services, AI image editors, music editors, and letter writers have also flooded the internet – these either work on a credit basis, or we also have to subscribe to them if we want to use them regularly.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning two sentences about VPN services, most of which also work in such a way that if we don’t want to limit either speed or data traffic, we have to open our wallets.

Average monthly cost: HUF 3,000

Clearly visible costs

If we take all digital services into account, then based on the above, it can easily come out to HUF 30-40 thousand, which is certainly not a little. And it is not certain that this cost can be drastically reduced: it is possible to optimize what one subscribes to, but with streaming services, for example, this comes with the compromise that we will not have legal access to everything.