Cingular requires a “PDA data plan” with their Treo’s (stupid policy, sigh) and the two flavors are 20MB/mo for $34.99 or unlimited for $39.99. Given that the overage is charged per-KB, to save $5/mo isn’t worth the risk that one month my wife will go way over–$5/mo is worth the peace of mind, really.

With regards to TV, we don’t spend a lot of time watching it, and thanks to the TiVo, we watch it when it’s convenient (i.e., in the evenings after the kids are in bed). The kids have lots of good programming that records throughout the day while they’re in school and the KidZone feature of TiVo lets us ensure that they only watch what we’ve pre-selected for them.

I think the end result is that the only way to lower costs significantly is to give something up–I was hoping there were cheaper alternatives to the choices we’d made, but it looks like I shopped around pretty aggressively as it is. Oh well.

Phones – do you need the landlines at all, or could you just use your cellphone for everything? From your description of your cellphone service the answer is probably “hell yes”, but its worth considering. As for long distance, don’t restrict yourself to the big guys. For example ECG ( http://www.ecg1.com/ ) says their rates are 0.05/min to UK and 0.17/min to SA, with no monthly fee or minimums. And the actual service is most likely provided by one of the majors anyway.

Treo – maybe you need the unlimited data plan but your wife could do without or with a limited plan. This is really a “do we need it” question.

TV – go without, and spend more time with the kids! You can’t really justify it as “quality of life” as there’s nothing good on tv anyway Get a netflix membership and watch a movie a week for the tube time. This one may actually be easier than the others to get rid of, but TV is such a central part of our culture that we just dismiss it. Try avoiding it for a week and see if everyone goes crazy.

Unless I can borrow a large sum of money for less than 6% interest, there’s not much I can do about them except try to pay them off faster. Which, if I can reduce my monthly spend on other small expenses, I could put the difference towards paying off the larger debts, faster.

Do a web search for a Sprint email address you can use for the referral. That’s pretty much an open secret by now.