One of the things I hated most the last time I was unemployed, was the violation of my own principles in order to “cut back” and “survive”. Last time I was driving around a Mercedes SUV, with car insurance (and a car payment), but no health insurance. Some kind of values, boy I tell ya.
Now, I still have that vehicle (with no car payment), cheaper auto insurance (thanks to combining accounts with the BF) AND Health Insurance. I don’t drive it everyday (we take the Prius a lot), but I certainly feel like I’m living much better than I was then.
Case in point… Cox and the cable/internet bill. I have been on a promo for the last 6 months to get “basic” cable for free. We never used it at the old house because it didn’t work. When we moved to the new one, we decided to opt for the basic extended version (the one that includes USA, Lifetime, Fox News, CNN) in addition to the major networks.
Just the other day my “basic” promo expired, thus bringing the cable portion of my bill up to like $47. Whoa! I tried and tried to talk to them and ask for a discount, but they were unwilling to budge. (This is the same company that charged me a $8 “Self Install Fee” for hooking up my own cable and internet – each!) The only thing they would recommend to lower my bill was to drop me to the cheapest ($30) internet package. I said no because for $15 more, we get speeds 13 times higher than the cheap package. This was a conscious decision that we made together when we got rid of the Capital One bill (and the $15/month minimum payment.) It was a zero sum game, and we chose upgraded internet to replace our Crap One bill.
We decided to add the cable package when we moved, because we both agreed to ditch our $25/month gym memberships in lieu of cable. Again, a zero sum game where we had to get rid of something in order to gain something.
Now, we’ve both decided that cable isn’t worth $47/month to us, and we still don’t have our gym memberships. Quite truthfully, that extra $50 per month has been eaten up in increased Utilities at the bigger place.
However, my point is that despite having “less” then we had then, we are in a much better financial position than we were the last time around. And even better than that, we’re spending to match our values, and not feeling stuck to “the man” and his silly rules. Before, we would have just rolled over and paid it.