Cutting Down, Cutting Back, Cutting Out

Cutting down, cutting back and cutting out. That seems to be what I’m not only hearing but doing in our on household. I really find it intriguing to try new ways to save a dollar and I’m finding a lot of it is just taking advantage of things I already have like my cell phone. I use the cheap free one that you can get every two years. I did add unlimited texting after I looked at one of our bills and found out that teenagers don’t talk anymore they just text their fingers off. I actually called my cell phone provider when I was scanning my bill and saw that we had over 4000 text messages in one month. I didn’t realize someone could actually send that many messages without damaging some part of their anatomy but obviously they can, because that seems to be the average per month over the last year. I found out that we weren’t using all of our minutes so to save money I lowered our minutes and went to unlimited texting. It seems to be working, so far and we’ve saved money every month. To get information on phone numbers, weather, directions, temperature and a bunch of other things you may or may not use, you can text 466453 (Google) and put in a business or persons name and location. You will be texted back the information you desire. If you want to know the weather just put in the word weather plus the zip code and it will text you back the weather. I haven’t kept up with the savings but we never have a charge for directory assistance anymore. You will either be charged for texting or it will go against your plan like a regular text so keep that in mind if you don’t have unlimited texting. It’s a way to save on charges if you’re not at your computer.Do you ever get tired of getting calls every time you sit down even after you’ve added your name to the no call list? I know we did. I mean really, could there be that many surveys? In most places you can keep your DSL and turn the phone off, it’s called a naked line. Since we already had cell phones we rarely used the landline anyway, so we said good bye to Ma Bell and just kept the DSL for $19.95 and saved about another $30 a month. We’ve been trying out another gadget called Magic Jack. If you have DSL and at least XP on your computer this is another nifty little gadget we have been using for the last year. I have to admit it’s not perfect but gives us a way to save on cell phone minutes while we’re at home. It just plugs into your computer’s USB and after you follow the first time directions, you plug in a regular phone and you have a dial tone. You can choose an area code for most places in the USA and I’ve heard you may even be able to use your own phone number very soon. It’s really nice if you live in a place you don’t have great cell phone reception or I understand some people even use it to call back to the States while out of the country. It may not be for everybody but it’s worked for us and it also comes with free long distance, voice mail, directory assistance and lot of other things. We paid $39.95 for the Magic Jack, including the first year of service and then its $19.95 per year after that. You can get more information at www.magicjack.com. We do find that sometimes the connection isn’t always perfect and have to unplug the device every once in a while and restart it, and that seems to do the trick. We also have been able to use our fax machine with this but found we had to slow down the fax speed for it to work. It seems that along with HDTV, Online TV will also be one of the next big things. You can take advantage of the DSL you already have by connecting your newer flat screen TV directly to your computer and watch your favorite shows at your convenience and it’s FREE. It’s not the best quality yet but it’s on the way and they’re adding new websites all of the time. You could also just watch it on the computer but we like the bigger screen. All the major networks already have their own websites. We’ve been able to not only catch up on past episodes that we’ve missed but have actually found new shows to enjoy and its available 24/7. We have found websites like hulu.com and many others that are free. There are devices that you can buy to connect your TV directly to the internet but the prices I’ve found, are still too high.

These are just a few of the fun ways we’ve found to save a little cash. May or may not be for you.

Have you found a way that saves you money without the pain of doing without? I would like to know what’s working for you.

Just Saying!

Odes Roberts