Monthly services are the kind of small expenditures that add up quickly. That being said, we also have very few of them. The only addition services we pay for aside from utilities are Phone, DSL Internet access, and cell phone. When I look at my budget I make sure I look at how much any one category or service costs for the whole year. For instance, we pay an additional $7 a month to have call waiting on our phone line. That’s $84 a year. I go back and forth about whether I think it is worth the $84 a year. I feel similarly about our cell phone. We can hardly get a cell signal in our house. We pretty much have to sit on the front porch to use the cell phone. Not a fun prospect in the winter. So when most of our friends were getting rid of their house phones, we dropped our cell phone package and opted for Net10 instead for $16 a month. That is by far the cheapest cell phone bill of anyone I know. That being said, it is still $192 a year for something we hardly use. We mostly like to have it for when we travel or as a safety precaution when I’m out with the baby by myself. But we have often considered getting rid of the cell phones altogether. But every time we do, something happens where we end up needing it. We also don’t pay for a phone long distance plan. Since we do have a house phone, we have a combination phone/DSL package. Trent is right that internet access is not a necessity. But it can be a potential source of income. If we ever faced a job loss or similar finance emergency, the DSL would go, without a doubt, along with the cell phone and the call waiting.
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