Saving money

Yesterday I got a phone call from Embarq, my telephone company. A man said he could save me some money on the bundle I have with them (DSL, phone, and DishTV).

First of all he wanted me to put my long distance service back with them instead of using the service I found at lowermybills.com. We talked a little and found a plan I could live with.

Then we got into a discussion about my DSL. I told him that, although I'm paying for the fastest service, since we moved out back of the barn, everything loads much slower. He checked by pinging or something, and sure enough: I'm only getting half what I pay for.

If someone comes out and checks it out, I pay. I can talk to their techs, but I've already done that. At my age, it isn't fun crawling around under my desk plugging and unplugging wires to see what works and what doesn't.

Finally he offered to lower what I pay for DSL to the price of the service I'm actually getting.

I'll take that.

I think I just cut $30 a month off my bundled bill.

And I recently cut back my Dish to 200, rather than 250 channels. That's another $20.

These days it's wise to cut back where you can.

Believe me, if times get too hard, I can live with an old-fashioned antenna. And our main television is digital, so no box will be required.