My wife and I have gone on a financial diet. We are cutting expenses everywhere that we can so that we can pay off some debt and have some cushion in our budget. We really want to give more money to ministries we are excited about, but have a hard time giving anything more than our tithe (and often, that is a stretch).
We are saving $80.00 per month simply by shopping auto insurance carriers. We have cut the food budget. Heck, we’ll probably save at least $30.00 every month just by paying attention to the due dates on all of our bills and paying them on time.
One of the expenses that didn’t make the cut was our cable internet by Comcast. It was just two expensive. We still have the $8.00 per month bare bones, not even basic reception package, but that will be gone as soon as I get an HD antenna. Another expense was the data package on my Blackberry. My contract with AT&T was up, and rather than renew, we just cancelled it.
Neither one of these are permanent. I will soon switch to Virgin Mobile prepaid service, and get their Blackberry service. It’s an excellent alternative for those who live in an area with good Sprint Wireless coverage (they share the same 3G network). Their 300 minute plan, with unlimited data and text is $25.00 per month, plus $10.00 for the Blackberry service. That’s only $5.00 more than the data plan alone on AT&T, and with no contract. When my wife’s contract is up, we will move her number also. This will ultimately lower our bill from the current $130.00 per month to $60.00.
The home internet will take a bit longer to resolve, but I think Clear Wireless will be solution. They have home internet available for $30.00 & $40.00 per month. They often run a special for the faster package at $30.00 a month for the first 6 months. The only catch is that I am currently in a 3 square block hole in their coverage, but they say they are working on it. When I have coverage, I will go with them.
I hope that that this time next year, we will have all of the same services that we had last month, but with a budget that’s approximately $210.00 lighter. Now, this will allow for some helping others in ways we can only dream of now.