Utilities, phone specific...The Poor Farm Budget 2017

Well, now I've done it.

After reading all the great comments about phones and how you, my esteemed followers keep your costs down, (I especially loved Cro's comment " I don't bother with a mobile phone. If they want to contact me, they'll have to wait till I'm home") I took the leap this morning and cancelled my Smart Phone.

It felt a bit like chopping off my thumbs.

T. But, the immediate financial savings realized have elevated my mood. We were paying $120/month for one Smart phone and one basic flip phone. As of this coming Monday, when my flip phone arrives, we'll just be paying $45 a month for both phones, a savings of $75/month or $900/year.

The customer service employee asked why I was downgrading, but never tried to talk me out of it, yet she did say she could not remember the last time anyone had called to decrease their service or downgrade to a simpler phone. Everyone, she said, wants bigger, better and faster.

I get to keep my old Smart phone which is great because I love its camera, and I can still connect to Wi-Fi with it, if I am so inclined say, in a restaurant or just outside on our property since we already pay for Internet here. But  I plan to get away from my obsessive habit of always being connected all of the time. Just because I see an unusual hawk in the yard doesn't mean I have to look it up on Google that second does it? Well, I did, meaning while looking at my Smart phone screen I was missing the birds real beauty, its antics, and probably oblivious to its swooping down and carrying off our ducklings.

I will also have to stop my annoying habit of telling my adult kids to "Look it Up" on their Smart phones when we are in disagreement about something like the US's educational requirement for the Supreme Court. Turns out they don't have to be an attorney first.

Not having a Smart phone in the car will mean that while my husband is driving, I could be writing, reading a book, or how about this? Actually talking to him instead of surfing Facebook, doing non-sense texting or checking my emails. We will also go back to hard copy maps or look up directions on our home computers before leaving for an unfamiliar location.

I think we can do this, I really do.

And when our kids make fun of us, as they will, I'll just remind them that I was the first manager in our hospital to get a portable phone for my car back in 1988 and the first to have a laptop in 1993. Once upon a time, before I was an embarrassment, I was cool, very very cool.