Cutting Our Living Expenses in an Expensive World!

When it comes to money and living, you typically have two options open to you... try to make more money, or cut your expenses — or some combination of these.

Life in the USA in late 2023 is challenging for many people! As I have written about before, more than half the households in this country are no more than one unexpected US $400 expense from serious poverty. Sounds sort of strange, given that this nation outwardly gives the impression of being "the richest on the planet."

But deeper reality is often quite different from what initially meets the eye.

Anyway, Mrs. Denmarkguy and I have done many things to lower our "overhead expenses" because we have had very little success in trying to increase our income. We're self-employed, and most individuals are simply not spending money, much.

Today, we changed things around again, this time actually by upgrading our Internet service, and this time rolling our fixednet phone line into the cable package.

That's the cool thing about getting phone service from the cable Internet provider; the phone "line" just comes in through the same cable that services the Internet connection, so the additional charge for telephonics is just $10 a month, as compared to the roughly $105 a month we were paying to the phone company!

We even got to keep the same phone number we've had since 2006!

Meanwhile, our connection speed increased from (effectively) about 325 Mbps to somewhere in the region of 720 Mbps! I'd consider that pretty fast, considering that we're pretty close to "in the middle of nowhere," rather than in a big city with a well developed network.

The good news with it all is that by changing our account from myself to Mrs. Denmarkguy — because she qualifies for certain national benefits — we were able to get a 24-month "new customer discount," so where we before had two service providers at a total cost of about US $270 per month, we now have a single provider for better connectivity and the net cost will end up being around US $85 per month.

And that certainly makes a considerable change to our budget.

Life is definitely expensive, no matter how you look at things. And these days we constantly have to be on our toes to keep expenses under control.

It would be nice to think that the economy would magically turn around, and our home businesses start growing again, but can't afford to hold our breath and wait for that!

For the moment, I have much gratitude that we were able to get better service for less money!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

How about you? How is the cost of living where you are? How about the cost of phone and Internet? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2023.11.03 23:16 PDT
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