Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Only one cellphone

In an effort to get rid of money-wasting habits and purchases, I cancelled my cellphone.  We still have my husband's line and will be upgrading his phone (for "free") soon.  I also cancelled our texting and camera phone options.

Why?

A long while back, my cellphone stopped working correctly.  I planned to upgrade it, but never got around to it.  Whenever I did, the phones I liked (always basic) seemed to sell out before I could order them.  Then my daughter was born and only a couple months later, my family relocated to a different state for my job.  Basically... I just couldn't seem to get around to dealing with the cell phone issues.  My husband and I debated switching to a lower plan and knocking out the text and camera option, but we needed to get our phone's photo galleries saved before that, or all our photos would be lost.  Our service provider made it time consuming to download the photos, so that took time that we didn't really have.

Finally, last week, my husband got all the photos downloaded from both phones.  We discussed if we really need a second phone, especially since we've gone this long without it, and we decided that we didn't.  So, today I put in the request to remove the phone from my account and deactivate the line.  It won't take effect until the end of this month, though I may have my husband call and confirm with another rep as to whether we can have it removed earlier and get the cost prorated.  The rep I spoke with said it couldn't, but that doesn't sound right.

We are going to also look at the replacement phone options tonight or tomorrow and look at our phone useage.  If the useage for the past few months is low enough, we may also switch to an even cheaper plan.  My basic family plan was $70 with the texting/camera option of $5, totalling $75.  Since we will have one line and no additional options, the plan will be $40.  But... the next step down is only $30.

This, with the other changes we will (hopefully) be making in our lives, may add up to a decent amount of savings.

My end goal, for now, is to cut our expenses enough to put my son into daycare while also continuing to pay down our debt.  We'll see how it goes.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Brushing Off The Dust

It's been nearly 2 years since I last wrote here.  Since then, my little family went through several changes, two of the largest being my daughter's birth (note that the header has two kids now) and our relocation to another state.

I'm planning on making some big changes in my family's spending and saving.  I also might take up a self imposed challenge or two, though I have to figure out the "rules".

Regardless, it's nice to be back.  :-)