Frugality!
Apr. 21st, 2010 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterFor full effect, imagine the above word read in the stentorian tones of the "Mortal Kombat" narrator.
This last month I've taken a look at some of my bills and noticed that there was significant room for improvement. I took a couple of big steps in that direction yesterday. First of all, my new wireless router arrived, and I was able to hook it up to my new DSL line. For the last few days, I had still been using my old cable modem service because my old wireless router would work with that but not the new DSL. This new $25 wireless router, a Rosewill 802.11n Draft 2.0 model, works perfectly and gives me 150 MBPS wireless with my laptop and iPad.
(It also came with a free USB 802.11n wifi dongle, which I'm not entirely sure what to do with—at present, all my devices have at least 802.11g wireless capability, and I don't foresee any future devices not having it. Given that even g's 54 MBPS is faster than the 6 MBPS downstream I get from DSL, the important stuff is already covered.)
The other step I took was picking up an $80 Sanyo Mirro Boost Mobile pay-as-you-go phone. As I think I mentioned here before, my monthly cell phone bill was entirely too much for a service I rarely used (and will use even less now that I have a local landline plus Google Voice to make my long distance calls) and my contract was, by happy coincidence, set to expire on the 24th of this month.
So now I have my phone, and it's charging up, and in a few days when the 25th rolls around I'll call in and have them port my cell phone number over from AT&T and start paying nearly nothing for a service I nearly don't use. I estimate I'll save about $100 per month in bills—money that can be used for much better things.
Of course, it's going to hurt a bit in the short-term, especially considering the estimated-at-$110 repair bill for my long-unused bicycle, but give it a month or so and things should start coming together a little better. Or so I hope, at least.
This last month I've taken a look at some of my bills and noticed that there was significant room for improvement. I took a couple of big steps in that direction yesterday. First of all, my new wireless router arrived, and I was able to hook it up to my new DSL line. For the last few days, I had still been using my old cable modem service because my old wireless router would work with that but not the new DSL. This new $25 wireless router, a Rosewill 802.11n Draft 2.0 model, works perfectly and gives me 150 MBPS wireless with my laptop and iPad.
(It also came with a free USB 802.11n wifi dongle, which I'm not entirely sure what to do with—at present, all my devices have at least 802.11g wireless capability, and I don't foresee any future devices not having it. Given that even g's 54 MBPS is faster than the 6 MBPS downstream I get from DSL, the important stuff is already covered.)
The other step I took was picking up an $80 Sanyo Mirro Boost Mobile pay-as-you-go phone. As I think I mentioned here before, my monthly cell phone bill was entirely too much for a service I rarely used (and will use even less now that I have a local landline plus Google Voice to make my long distance calls) and my contract was, by happy coincidence, set to expire on the 24th of this month.
So now I have my phone, and it's charging up, and in a few days when the 25th rolls around I'll call in and have them port my cell phone number over from AT&T and start paying nearly nothing for a service I nearly don't use. I estimate I'll save about $100 per month in bills—money that can be used for much better things.
Of course, it's going to hurt a bit in the short-term, especially considering the estimated-at-$110 repair bill for my long-unused bicycle, but give it a month or so and things should start coming together a little better. Or so I hope, at least.
