In a perfect world

I try not to follow trends for the shear fact of following them to be “in”. But I do follow them and participate if there could be a possibly great outcome for me. With that being said, numerous articles, blog posts, and discussions in general lately have been focusing on budgeting and monetary issues. I don’t have but a few issues of blowing money left and right, but I’ve always seem to be okay afterwards. Seeing that the three of us live solely off of my husband’s income, I think we’re doing just fine with two cars, two motorcycles, a baby, a house, and the normal variety of bills. Oh, did I mention that we are putting nearly a full week’s pay into savings every month automatically? It doesn’t even see our checking account - direct deposit to savings accounts ius awesome. Did I mention that neither of us have any school loans/debt from school? Woohoo. We do have a few small odds and ends on either Home Depot or Lowes credit lines, but all on 12 month no payments no interest deals that we pay off later without any problems. Our biggest problem is the random Target or Walmart runs, or the “ooh, look what I found – that’s cool – I’m going to get it” item that ends up sitting on the shelf somewhere and no being used. It’s got to stop. I’m working on it.

In a perfect world, I would only spend money on groceries that I know I would eat, necessities (bath supplies, etc), and bills. Yes, and unfortunately, bills. Some are required – mortgage, electric, water, alarm, house phone, and internet. Yes – the internet is required – unless you live on campus and can mooch off of the school all the time. Not here though. Other bills are comforts – cell phones*, tv, gym memberships, satellite radio, Netflix. *Cell phones – piss me off. You have to have them these days just to function. But to most people, they are an umbilical cord. Do you really need to be able to check your email on your phone or surf the web for an addition $40-50 a month? You lazy bastard – go to a computer! If you need directions to somewhere, write them down before you leave. Duh.

So yesterday, I spent my entire morning on the phone with Dish Network and AT&T. Dish Network is a bunch of crap, but sadly I won’t live without it. I was looking to switch to a lower bill somehow – drop some channels, view programming packages etc. Because paying nearly $100 a month for tv that we watch maybe 3 hours a night during the week and a little bit on the weekends (minus the multiple hours spent watching football games) isn’t seeming worth it to me anymore. So by browsing Dish’s website, I noticed a few new packages, etc., and called to switch the services I was paying for. But, come to find out, Dish Network is crap. The new lovely packages that would chop my monthly bill in half are NOT available to current customers. Translation – loyalty has no value anymore. Bastards. And what’s worse is that to be considered a new customer, you have to not have Dish for at least 6 months. Ridiculous.


AT&T is a whole other pot of crap. We have to have a home phone line for the alarm and the internet. Fine, no problem. Love my internet – we’re already on the lowest plan for the speeds that we want. Slow internet is not cool. The only calls I ever make from our home line are to order pizza and the occasional service call for some other issue. The vast majority of incoming calls are solicitors. And even then, it’s maybe 10 times a week max that my home phone rings all week – yes, I mean week. So I called AT&T to drop my services to the bare minimum – I don’t need long distance – that’s what cell phones are for. I don’t need call waiting – most people have my cell number anyway. Come to find out that when I called, the old plan that we were on was the same price as the lowest new plan, but with only half the features. So why have I been paying for features that I am not entitled to? Don’t you think that somebody would have noticed that at AT&T and called me to update my services? No. Jerks. So I moved some features around and changed plans, and saved a whopping $3. Great, enough to buy that one extra roll of toilet paper per month that I’ve been desperately needing. Translation – not enough difference to even phase me, but hey $3 is $3, so I’ll take it.

So what expenses do you think you could cut back on? What bills do you think you could really live without? I’m sure if I wanted to really make a difference I could do without Netflix, or the gym membership my husband never uses, or eating out so much, or all the tv channels I don’t watch, or the random Target runs for crap that I don’t need. Heck, even the gas for those Target runs is something that I can cut back on… granted I live about 1 mile from Target, but hey – gas is gas. Time to reevaluate my needs versus comforts – especially if we need to save more for our little SadieMo. Or pay off our house. Or hopefully move in about 3-5 years and be able to pay for more than half of our new house in cash. That would be nice. In a perfect world.