When It Pays to Add a Bill
I am cheap (frugal?) about some of the strangest things. I haven’t wanted to pay for DSL because there are so many places (restaurants, coffee shops, parks) in my town where an enterprising blogger can get wi-fi for free. I was pretty resigned to the fact that I needed to leave the house if I wanted to e-mail or publish to this blog, but my fiancé decided that enough was enough (he’s been doing some freelancing lately) and had DSL installed in our home last week.
And it’s been fabulous.
I’m kicking myself for not ponying up for home Internet access sooner - it looks like we are saving money as a result of adding a monthly bill.
I don’t have access to my personal and school email at my nine-to-five (it’s more like 7:30 - 6:00, but that’s a subject for another post). I need to check my personal and school email pretty darn near daily in order to answer reader questions and communicate with students. The most convenient place to do this (for “free”), used to be the coffee shop just up the street. The problem is, I seldom made it out of that coffee shop without spending at least a couple of bucks. Even worse, on Saturdays and Sundays (when I grade papers and stockpile blog entries), I typically go someplace like Panera Bread and have breakfast and lunch while I worked - not exactly the least expensive place to go for a bowl of soup or a sandwich.
Well, I added it up - last month alone I spent $78.41 eating and drinking in exchange for my “free” wi-fi fix. Our monthly DSL bill is going to be $35.99.
Is adding a bill a good investment for us?
Sure looks that way.
Do you have any good stories about how you needed to spend money to save money?
Stumble it!
May 7th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Hi!
Found this blog through somewhere else, but can’t remember where….at any rate, I’m a Banker Girl, too, so I was drawn to your title! (A banker girl who works in HR actually, but at a bank, so…)
Anyway, wanted to add something to this post….my LIL (that’s Live in Lover, if you didn’t know) and I have had cable internet since we moved into our apt last June, but had decided not to get cable unless the reception was completely horrific. It took a few months, but I’d had enough of watching slighlty ghosty TV and called the cable company. It turns out that adding basic cable was going to cost us -$5/month. Yeah, you read that right. NEGATIVE $5/month. As in our cost for internet pre-cable was $60/month, and after adding basic cable we pay $55/month for both cable and internet. Granted we aren’t getting any fancy channels (I think we get about 16 total - really just the major networks and the local community stations), but it’s nice to see things clearly now….and save money!
May 7th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
@ Sarah - excellent example. We should all be so lucky. Thanks for sharing your story!