How to Save With Cutting-Edge Tech

Believe it or not, new gadgets can actually slash your spending over time

David LaGesse

An economy in the dumps has taught many consumers to live without the extras. And that would seem to include the latest in gadgets: New HDTVs, MP3 players, and game consoles can cost a bundle. But some of the best in fresh tech not only comes cheap; it can even save cash over time. Here’s how savvy buyers can cut their budget and still brag that they’re on the cutting edge:

TRIM THE CABLE.

One of the best ways to save on tech is to trim your monthly cable subscription, which often exceeds $100. Simply cutting out extra movie channels can save consumers as much as $600 a year. A cheaper alternative is to purchase a Netflixsubscription for $9 a month and get as many DVDs as you can watch, one at a time. There’s typically a two-day delay between shipping a disk back and receiving another.

Netflix also offers instant Web streaming of more than 17,000 TV shows and movies. Watching those streams on the living room TV is easy with a Roku box, which starts at $80. Roku owners can also pay a few dollars to stream a movie from an even larger selection at Amazon, and Roku recently added about a dozen “channels” that offer video from other Internet sites.

A variety of Blu-ray players, flat-panel TVs, and other boxes such as Apple TV also can stream Web video to the living room, “but Roku is the simplest out there right now,” says Chicago resident C. J. Chilvers. “It also offers the most diversity.”

Cut the cable completely.

Chilvers lives in a condo that doesn’t have good over-the-air reception. Otherwise, he says, he would have taken the next step of cutting out cable altogether. Digital broadcasts now offer crystal-clear video and audio with an old-fashioned antenna, including what videophiles claim is an HDTV signal that’s sharper than cable or satellite. Cutting the digital tier, or basic cable, altogether can mean the loss of live news and sports that aren’t yet available online. But it can also save consumers another $600 a year.

Marriage and money: What’s working for you?

Couples argue more about money than about sex, but not as much as they fight about the kids or taking out the garbage. 84% of our respondents note that money causes tension in their marriages, and 13% say they fight about money several times a month. The leading cause of dissension is disagreement about financial priorities.

Husbands and wives divvy up money-related tasks along very traditional lines. Men still tend to do most of the big-picture, long-term planning while women manage the household’s day-to-day finances. The gender divide seems to conform to some of our hardest-to-shake stereotypes. Man hunt food; woman make cave pretty.

In the poll’s most eye-opening findings, men and women had dramatically different ideas about who does what with the family money, and what their partners care about. Husbands were especially clueless, tending to underestimate how much women care about almost every financial issue, from saving for retirement to paying off debt. A hundred years after Freud, and men still don’t know what women want.

The gap between the financial issues that people care about most and what their spouses think they hold important may not be the Grand Canyon. But some couples will need an awfully big bridge to get across it. Women come much closer in gauging what matters to men. If anything, they tend to give guys too much credit, believing their husbands care more about paying off debt and saving for big purchases than men actually do.

PHOTOS: KATHERINE LEDNER