Ohio finally got the message that it can do something besides rain and man, is it hot. And humid. Hot and humid. Yuck.

I think it got up to 88 degrees yesterday, not sure what the humidity was, except gross-oh-hundred. But I refuse to turn on our Air Conditioner — yet. I drew closed the curtains and turned on the fans upstairs and we dealt. We’re going to at least get through this weekend, when the temperatures are supposed to drop again. Next week, we’ll see.

When do you turn on your AC?

Do you make everyone suffer? Do you cave right away?

I grew up in Kansas, where people joke, “Don’t like the weather? Wait ten minutes!”

It wouldn’t be unusual to have the heater on one day, the AC on the next. Or heck, you might wake up with a sweater and greet lunchtime with a fresh application of deodorant.

So… what’s your story? Are you all-American and can’t go a day with a little sweat on your brow? Or do you go el-naturel and wait until your computer starts to melt away?

Take my (very informal) poll and see how you compare to other readers!  (If you subscribe via email, you may have to click through to view the poll.)

I’ve also added a new tab on my navigation bar (under the header above) (for those of you not reading this on email) for Polls if you’d like to view and participate in all the polls I have posted so far on my blog.

I recently exchanged emails with Mary Hunt. Eeeek! Yes, The Mary Hunt!

She had posed a question on her Debt-Proof Living facebook page:

“Have you gone extreme to cut the cost of 1) Cell phone 2) Cable TV 3) Internet service and 4) Landline phone? Care to share? If so, all the details, please!”

I hastily typed my two-bits in the comments:

“We canceled our cell plan months ago and went to pre-paid tracfones. Never looked back! We’ve saved hundreds of dollars!”

Then she emailed me!

“Hi Jolyn … I would love to quote you in my Woman’s Day column (Nov issue) re: going with prepaid Tracphone. That’s GREAT. Could you email me, mary@debtproofliving.com so we can do this via email?”

Then I proceeded to reply to her email on facebook instead of using the address she gave me, and I just now realized that. But she forgave me (or likely just rolled her eyes) and kept up the dialogue via facebook email instead of chastising me for my oversight/rudeness.

I have no idea if I will be quoted or not. Wouldn’t it be grand if they mentioned this website? *sigh* I wish I were better at this self-marketing… thing.

Anyhoo. I got to thinking that I had never blogged about our cell phone switch from a contract plan to pre-paid. And I had never even crunched the numbers we’d saved until the email exchange with Mary. (Hi, Mary! Can I call you Mary?)

Switching to pre-paid was a no-brainer for me and my husband.

I took a look at the number of minutes we were using each month, and it was nowhere close to the number we were allotted — and we were on the cheapest plan. We’d used pre-paid phones when we lived in Italy (pre-paid is the norm over there) so we thought, why don’t we do that here?

I google-researched and came up with TracFone. I found a package deal that included two phones with double minutes; I opted to add bulk minutes that keep the phone active for 365 days (the normal time with fewer minutes is 90 days) which cost us more up-front but saved us money in the long-run.

We are not huge cell phone chatters. Or texters –though that is my husband’s medium of choice. We mainly use our cell phones for information exchange; as a means to communicate when we travel; and for the children’s schools, etc., to reach me when I’m not at home. In the last few months, my cell phone has been indispensable as a back-up to our land-line for the realty company to reach us to schedule a showing.

That being said, we’re still using the original 1000 minutes that we loaded onto each of our phones ten months ago. John’s are going much stronger than mine! His phone went largely unused the entire time (four months) that he was deployed.

The Bottom Line:

• We paid $278.28 online for two TracFones with 1000 minutes each and had them shipped to our house.
• In the ten months since, we have saved about $67 a month over what we paid for our cell phone plan.
• This is a savings of $670 so far since we switched.
• We will have saved about $862 for the entire year if we do not add any more minutes in the next two months. I will probably not make this, but I’m going to push it hard.

The Teenager Issue

Full disclosure: our 14yo son did not endorse the switch.

Our previous cell phone package was a family plan with three phones. Our son never used his phone… Until about a month before our cell contract expired and we made the switch. Then all of a sudden Conner discovered texting.

Our cell phone bill went up about $30 that month.

We told him The Plan. He didn’t like it.

When we informed him that we were switching to pre-paid we offered to buy him his own phone, but explained that he would be responsible for adding the minutes from his own money. I even offered to help him get a head start on the minutes by matching his initial start-up amount. But he was grumpy.

“Why do we have to switch? It only costs $5 a month for unlimited texting!” He’d heard that from his friends. Yes, $5 a month, but that’s in addition to the cell phone plan, which costs at least $30 a month for one phone. Is that what you want to pay for yourself?

Of course not. And he refused to listen to the reasoning behind our decision. What he really wanted was an iPhone. All of his friends had one. (Not true.) Apparently, he’d been preparing to hit us up for an upgrade… And now it was like we were telling him that not only was he not getting a Maserati, but we were taking away the Pick-up he’d been driving and giving him a Bicycle instead. He was not happy.

Fast Forward Several Months

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this “discussion” with our teenager went on for months. I was ready to pull my hair out. Ultimately, he refused to put any minutes on at all. “There’s no point if there’s not unlimited texting.” Oh, the joys of raising a teenager in a middle America suburb. Sometimes I see the appeal of a military boarding school. I shrugged my shoulders and said it was his choice.

For the record? He claims not to remember any of this — the part where we offered to help him put on minutes. He talks like we just took away his phone without giving him any other options at all.

BUT, he has matured beyond talking like cell phones are an entitlement instead of the luxury that they are. Over the past year he has commented on some of the things his classmates have: the latest phone; a huge allowance “for doing nothing”; computers and Tv’s in their own rooms… And he’s not endorsing any of it, though he may have a touch of envy that’s only natural. Some of this is maturity, yes. But I don’t think it’s an accident that his mindset evolved about the same time his dad and I were actively eradicating our consumer debt and talking more and more between us (and out loud for the kids to hear) about the budget and what we really needed to spend money on now and what could wait.

Will We Always Use Pre-Paid?

I don’t think so. I’m actually looking forward to one day owning an iPhone — or the equivalent of what’s out there once we’re ready. I definitely see the appeal, and the practicality, of having a portable way to communicate and share photos and use the internet. Especially with our lifestyle of moving and traveling and having a teenager who will soon be ready to drive *gasp* and generally be out more on his own.

I’ve even told Conner of our intentions. Yikes! He jumped on it. “When? Can we get it now?” And he proceeded to regale me with the latest options of iPhone paraphernalia. I won’t have far to go when it’s time to research.

But no, no time soon, I assured my disappointed son  — at least not until after we move to California. And for sure not while this house is on the market. I-Phones and cell phone plans in general are certainly not a budget priority with these huge financial elephants in the room. The point is to realize your choices, after all: not just to pinch pennies and hoard them with no goals in mind. But once those goals are met? I see no problem with treating yourself to a modern convenience, within reason. There’s no doubt in my mind that making the choice to go to pre-paid in the first place helped us pay down our debt. Now that we’ve paid off that initial goal…

Could You Ever Give Up Your Cell Phone?

How much do you pay for your cell phone? Is it worth it? If you have a plan, do you use all your minutes every month? Is your cell phone purely a modern luxury of convenience, or do you consider it a necessity? Would you ever consider giving it up?

It’s amazing how we didn’t used to have things like cell phones, and now they seem indispensable. I know that I would no longer feel comfortable running errands while my kids are in school, for instance, if I didn’t have my phone on me. But does that justify a cell phone plan? Not in my mind… But I’m not a huge phone talker anyway. Pre-paid minutes are perfectly adequate for emergencies and the occasional urgent call, in my opinion. If we get i-phones and go back to a plan, it will be a pure luxury.

What say you?

I’ve had these papers taunting me from the pile in the corner where I stuck them when my focus turned to getting this house put up for sale. Guess how many late bills are hidden in there?

Apparently, at least one. At least, I was assuming my phone got disconnected for a reason. I never paid the bill from April. April. And I never noticed. I suppose there are worse things I could have forgotten.

• Late Fee: $5 — refunded very courteously
  
• Reconnection Fee: $32.30

Our realtor was supposed to call yesterday about coming by with the paperwork for the sale contract. I had been wondering if she just got busy…

We have a package with AT$T for our land line, internet, and dish cable. The phone is the only one that went out, but it was just a matter of time before we lost it all. Anyone else feel like losing the internet would be like cutting an umbilical cord?

In other news — The Hubs’ flight from Kyrgyzstan is already delayed. By 13 hours. So all the state-side connections are canceled. *sigh* I’m not at all surprised, but I am disappointed. At least he still has his same room over there where he can wait it out. He was supposed to have turned in his key already, but for some reason he held onto it until the last second. You might get the idea we’ve been doing this for awhile…

I’m really determined to work on lowering my grocery bill over this next year. It’s one huge area that can make or break a household budget. I don’t feel like I buy groceries needlessly: I do shop with a list; I meal plan; and I don’t buy my kids a lot of junk. I use coupons — though not obsessively.  But I’m definitely not one of those hardcore coupon moms who goes up to the register with a stack of coupons and sales flyers and pays only $48 for $248 worth of groceries.

What is a “Reasonable” Grocery Budget?

A cousin of mine posed a question on facebook recently, asking people what they thought a reasonable grocery budget was for a family of six. Lots of people chimed in with their typical grocery bills for their own families… I offered up that, for a family of five, I think spending $400 a month on groceries is doing quite well.

Apparently, we haven’t been doing very well around here.

You’d think, going by the title of this blog, that I would be all over my grocery budget. But in truth, grocery shopping is a part of running a household that I simply don’t like. Okay… So I hate it. There, I said it. My family needs to eat, therefore I shop.

I sort of had an idea of how much we spent? But I never actually looked at the total numbers. Until five minutes ago, that is. Ooch.

You know how excited I was because I did the Pantry Challenge last month and only spent $200 ($198 to be exact, thankyouverymuch) on groceries? Yea. What I didn’t realize is how very, very low that number really was. At least, compared to how much Mint.com tells me we spent on groceries last year.

(I wish I knew how to do fancy graphs. If anyone can direct me to a site they like where you can make pretty charts and graphs for free, please do.)

For clarification, I define “Groceries” not only as food, but also personal items, various household items such that you find at the grocery store, pet supplies, vitamins, etc.

Total Spent on Groceries in 2009: $6600

Here’s the Breakdown…

January:

• Groceries: $438
• Fast Food: $15
• Restaurants: $56
• Coffee Shops: $6.87

February:

• Groceries: $649
• Fast Food: $5.74
• Restaurants: $56
• Coffee Shops: $12.00

March:

• Groceries: $441
• Fast Food: $8.92
• Restaurants: $65
• Coffee Shops: $0

April:

• Groceries: $762
• Fast Food: $50 (traveling!)
• Restaurants: $58
• Coffee Shops: $24.00

May:

• Groceries: $461
• Fast Food: $15
• Restaurants: $98
• Coffee Shops: $0

June:

• Groceries: $584
• Fast Food: $3.41
• Restaurants: $20
• Coffee Shops: $7.09

July:

• Groceries: $515
• Fast Food: $73 (traveling!)
• Restaurants: $30
• Coffee Shops: $14.00

August:

• Groceries: $418
• Fast Food: $62 (traveling!)
• Restaurants: $33
• Coffee Shops: $0

September:

• Groceries: $721
• Fast Food: $0
• Restaurants: $0
• Coffee Shops: $0

October:

• Groceries: $412
• Fast Food: $0
• Restaurants: $0
• Coffee Shops: $0

November:

• Groceries: $643
• Fast Food: $9.60
• Restaurants: $30.00
• Coffee Shops: $0

December:

• Groceries: $556
• Fast Food: $0
• Restaurants: $16.00
• Coffee Shops: $0

(I added the eating-out categories because I think that helps present the full picture of our family’s food bill. Those items are not included in the $6600 total above.)

Since I’ve started the cash envelope system, I have allotted myself $400 for groceries each month. This “shouldn’t” be a problem while The Hubs is away… I am wondering, though, if this is realistic over time. To be perfectly honest, I am not sure how much time and energy I am prepared to invest in playing The Grocery Game. I will continue to meal plan and to use coupons — but I need to improve on combining coupons with sale items and stocking up accordingly if I’m really going to see some drastic improvement over time.  Hmmm… We shall see. Baby steps, people.

How Much Do YOU Spend?

So here’s the deal. I am very interested to get some perspectives on how much y’all spend on your groceries for your own family. If you’re not comfortable sharing the ugly numbers, comment anonymously! Please include not only how much you spend but also the following information (my answers are in bold):

1. Where do you live? (This can be general.) In Ohio.
2. How many are in your family? Five.
3. How old are your kids? 14, 7 (today!) and 5.
4. Do you buy organic? Not unless it’s a really good sale.
5. Does your number include any eating out? No.

I think your answers here could be even more interesting than the comments from my post asking y’all how much your heating bill was.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I don’t like grocery shopping. But I do like a challenge, and I am goal-oriented. Perhaps the challenge of trying to stay within the $400 inside that envelope each month will be what it takes to motivate me to drastically lower my grocery spending? We shall see…

For January’s budget, I underestimated our power bill by over $100.

I don’t know what I was thinking: it’s only been freezing here for what seems forever.

I immediately turned the thermostat down from 68 to 66 degrees. I’m thinking of turning it down even lower, even though The Hubs already thinks I’ve gone too far. I could tell because he just kind of shook his head.

We’ve been married for a while now, people. (Hi, Hubs!)

You gotta understand, though: He’s from Alabama.

I’m from Kansas, people. I grew up in the land of, “If you’re cold, put on a sweater and stop your moaning!” We’re hardy folk. At least, hardier than Southerners. (Go ahead, let me have it.)

I’d really love to take an informal poll. Pretty please, participate? At least humor me? I truly am super curious.

1. What temperature is your thermostat set at?
2. What area of the country do you live in?
3. How much was your last heating bill?
4. Do you have electric or gas power? (or oil?)
5. How big is your home?

As I said, our thermostat is now set at 66, but for our last bill it was 68.

Our latest bill was $258.54. We only have electric power (heat pump) (old), no gas.

Our home is ~3200 square feet (1970′s tri-level) and we live in Ohio!

Of course, this extra $100 puts a damper on the original amount I budgeted toward our debt eradication this month. But I’m not throwing in the towel yet: I’m doing The Pantry Challenge, after all!

**

P.S. I’m deliberately teasing The Hubs to test whether he’s been keeping up with this blog. He’s been so busy with pre-deployment stuff and frantically trying to finish some remodeling work in the bathroom blowing this stuff off lately so I decided he was fair game. Anyone else from Alabama? Feel free to let me have it. But I still say you’re wusses.