Being on this new budget, Shane and I (Mostly me), had one week where we were freaking out about not having enough money that month to eat out or go out because of the bills that were lining up.
In week 2 of our course we had to fill out a quickie budget sheet which is a guess-timate of how much money we spend every month like tithing, housing, utilities, transportation, clothing, personal, and other.
Our electric bill that month was $135.00 and we had switched phone companys having to pay an "early termination" fee of $225.00. The sheet of paper looked back at us shaking its head like, tis tis.
We looked at our electric bill and immediately turned off the A.C. as if it was going to decrease the amount we owed on the bill.
That whole week we sat right in front of our tower fan moving it from room to room depending on where we were, or we went to the library, or our friends house for longer periods of time because it felt so good to be in the air condition. Finally we were like, "well what if we just kept the temperature at 78/79?" "Ok, let's try it hopefully our bill next month will be under $100."
Along with our electric bill, I canceled our Netflix and I have very good reasons why.
1. The only provider of internet that we have out here is super slow, too slow to play any of Netflix watch instantly movies. So we weren't getting our full money's worth there.
2. School started and we just didn't have time to watch enough movies to get our money's worth.
We save ourselves money on cable and internet by not having it. When we first moved here we were using the neighbors free un-locked wi-fi, so when we hooked up our internet it wasn't any faster and we thought "What a rip-off". So we canceled it and just used whosever un-locked wi-fi until one day it was gone. We were like, NOOOOOOOO!! and we thought, "you know what? it's not worth paying for internet and let me list why.
1.When we use it at the library we are more likely to do our work (not browse) and get home
2. It's less distracting at home to not have it so Shane and I really spend more time together.
3. We have internet on our phones if we really need to look something up
4. We have 2 places where we can easily access it, at the library and at school.
So living without internet at home is not so bad. Sometimes we'll get lucky and catch the un-locked wi-fi
I love your reasoning behind cutting your luxuries. In as world where most of us would rather have 10,000 channels than spend time with our loved ones goes to show that most of us have our priorities out of whack.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Irene. Your reasoning skills are very sound. I don't think it would work for us because we are not in school, so no easy access to internet. And Caleb has used it to work from home and LDS.org is oh so useful for our callings. But in your case: genius! And yes it is very distracting :(
ReplyDeleteIt is, and now that I'm blogging I can't ever stay of the computer
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