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!

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