Process of Deduction

There are two more months until my housemate leaves and I am in the process of streamling my budget. I have been going over my bills and I have pin-pointed were I can make some cuts.

Cell phone: My bill has been around $67.00 per month but since my contract expires in July, I called up the retentions department I explained to them that I wanted a better deal. I pointed out I wanted something comparable to the Sprint SERO discount they have but I was told that they could do something better for me. I ended up getting $50.00 credit for renewing my contract, a bunch of discounts and 500 free text messages. My current bill is $2.30 (because of the $50.00 credit). Next month my bill will be around $36.00. Pretty sweet, huh?

Cable: I have decided to get rid of Digital, HD, and DVR services from Charter Cable. I don't even watch that much TV anymore so I feel like I am wasting my money. My current bill is about $71.00. If I cut out all of the fat my bill will be around $40. I can get all of the HD channels, except for ABC because I am out of range, with a $10 antenna I got from Radio Shack when I first moved to Dallas.

A small difference, but nothing major. Besided, I download all my favorite shows in HD so I can watch them on my Xbox the day after.

The major feature I was going to miss was the dual tuner recorder on the cable companies DVR. But I think I got this problem solve because I just purchased a new 80-hour TiVo Series 2 Dual Tuner DVR.

I got the DVR for $30, and 1 year committment for $19.95. Since I already have a TiVo subscription, with both boxes the price will only be $26. I am paying $15 for Charter's DVR, but with the Tivo I am able to download them to my computer and archive if I needed to. I can't do that with Charter. So in the long run the TiVo will pay for itself.

Loans: I am in repayment hell with my student loans so I am thinking about consolidating to see if I can some some money. I will have to contact my someone so they can crunch the numbers to see if I will be able to save some money.

Home: I was thinking about buying a condo here in Dallas because with my rent and utilites I will be paying about $1100/month. That is a lot of money to be pissing away with owning something so I have to give buying a condo serious thought. I am not sure if I am staying the Dallas area for the long term. I like it here but I am not sure if I want to buy a home here. I could go back to Syracuse or Buffalo, and making the same amount of money I do now I could get a 2200 sq. ft. home in a nice area for about $80,000 and my mortgage will be about $600/month. Real estate is crazy here. They are building condos everywhere but the prices remain high. I will give myself a year and then decided if I should buy something.

So with my impending raise next month I will be doing okay. I will be able to live comfortably and still be able to put some money into the bank. If I get a $4000 raise, I will be living well. But the acutal amount will be more around $2000, which is still good. I need to have some children just for the federal deductions then I can be livin' large. Does anyone still use the phrase "livin' large" any more? Anyway ...

Big Brother All-Stars Update


You can see how my favorites are, can you help me out by voting for them at the Big Brother All-Stars website. When they first announced the voting I thought the audience would be voting for all 12 housemate. Wrong! Only the Top 3 men and women housemate will be in, and then the producers will be selecting other 6. My predictions:

Men - Kaysar (aka the person that doesn't know he's my boyfriend), Will, and Howie.
Women - Janelle (aka the person that doesn't know she's my girlfriend), Danielle (who should have won BB3), and Nakomis.

I guess they can't trust the audience to bring some drama into the house. The results will be announce on July 6th.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!