Shaving off a few dollars on the budget

I was looking at my home phone bill the other day and was thinking that it seems to be too much for a phone that we have mainly for the alarm monitoring service and those few sales calls that come in (ok, most of them are the fraternal order of the police!). Oh, and my friend, “chatty” who calls at a certain time of the night. I decided that now was the time. I cancelled the caller ID ($9.99 a month) and the long distance plan ($4.00 a month). After tax and all, I figured that should knock out about $20 off the bill. Regular household service is $13.99 plus the stupid taxes. Should be about $20. The bill has been $40. My $4.00 long distance plan with one call at 5 cents cost me $10 after all the taxes & surcharges. So there. I am standing up for my right to not be tied to the caller id! DH swears that I’m going to regret the caller id removal. We will see. Since I pretty much know when Chatty will call, I won’t need to see that it’s her. And now, if I’m busy making dinner, or eating, or even just reading, I won’t feel obligated to jump up and ‘see’ who is calling. It can go to the answering machine. And if they don’t leave a message OR call one of the 4 cell phone numbers that EVERYONE has, then they must not be someone I want to talk to anyways! Now if I could just get DH to decide what to do about the $60+ a month gym membership!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Smelly Shoe Fix!

Image
Honestly, we have real good hygiene habits in my house, I can assure you of that! But, lets face it, living in paradise with 125% humidity can be a little trying sometimes ... my running shoes (which have NOT seen much running action for quite a while) get a little ripe smelling ... and oh man, you should smell the shoes that Hubby wears outside in the yard, patio, garage and boat that constantly get wet ... enough to suck the oxygen right out of your body ... whew! Then you have the Boy ... who works out pretty darn hard and doesn't always wear socks, nor does the Princess ... I mean, seriously, I've had to throw shoes away because you could smell them just sitting there. No one wants to be the person that people are wrinkling their nose at when they are walking by you! So when I saw the featured post for the Smelly Shoe Solution (and dang, I'm still trying to find the original post because I had no need to bookmark it, such a simple fix!) Yes. That's IT!...
Read more

Non Toxic Mosquito Spray

Image
Let's face it, living in Paradise does have a few drawbacks with the #1 complaint being ... BUGS. Yeah, bugs.  Mostly mosquitoes that can just ruin an evening of relaxation on the patio ... those pesky little guys can really do a number on you quickly!  Heaven forbid if you are one of those who are very sensitive to the bites (the Boy), you will have welts in no time. So Hubby always decides to spray AFTER everyone starts swatting the air and scratching. We have to gather up our drinks and appetizers, go indoors and wait for 20 minutes or so for the toxic fog to flat away ... only to be swatting and scratching AGAIN in 30 minutes. After seeing THIS tip a few too many times, I figured, what the heck, $5 at Walmart is worth it to try, right? Guess what?  It seems to work!!!  I need to do a few more nights to say for certain but I say it's WAY better than that can of toxic stuff ... and cheaper to boot! You must use the ORIGINAL fl...
Read more

Rice Cooker - Hard Boiled Eggs

Image
One of the things I picked up at Costco was a new Rice Cooker. The one I have, well, I gave that to the Boy when he went away to college (so he could make his macaroni and cheese), not to mention, it was small as heck, like mini size! So, I figured, you know, Hubby likes to make rice occasionally. The Boy makes brown rice in the microwave every other day and leaves the bubbly residue behind for ME to find when I go to heat something up (I hate a dirty microwave, totally wigs me out and sends me running for the windex!) ... so I grabbed the rice cooker ($29.95), a 10 pound bag of organic brown rice and a 20 pound bag of Basmati rice. I'm asking myself now, a whole week later, what the hell am I going to do with 20 pounds of Basmati rice? Anyways. Then I was reading the recipe booklet that came along with the cooker. They had one recipe that said to add the eggs, unshelled, to the steamer basket.  Ok. That made me re-read it a few times. Unshelled? Did they mean out of the shell?...
Read more