lisaviolet's diary

I cancelled my newspaper subscription. The first time I cancelled I’d neglected to renew on time and they upped the rate over forty bucks a year.

Then I got “please come back!” notice and could pay $8.50 for four weeks at a time, automatically renewed. I was under the impression this rate would be good for eighteen months, but I was wrong, it was only good for twelve. Then the price went up, it was over $10.00 for four weeks. Okay, well, that didn’t make me very happy, but I figured I got $2.50’s reading a week out of it.

But then then changed the format. Smaller sheets of paper and the front section was completely overhauled. And I realized this morning, in the month since the format changed, I’m not reading it as much. I had two Sunday papers that I’d never opened. So, I cancelled my subscription this morning. Since they’ve been automatically deducting the money from our account, I’m paid through October 8. And then it will be done.

And I don’t know if I mentioned signing up for Netflix back in June. I ordered that, the one movie a week and cancelled HBO. The cost is a wash. I did get the disk for my Wii and can watch streaming programs via the Wii, but they’re not hi-def. Well, last month Woot had a refurbed Roku for sale and I was seriously considering getting one. I thought it over for hours and when I decided it would be a good deal, it was already sold out. My luck.

But they had another yesterday for ten bucks more, and this one is better than the one that was up for sale last month. I jumped on it.

And once it gets here, I’ll see how good the downloads are. See, with Netflix, you automatically get Starz. And I subscribe to Starz. I was thinking about how often I actually watch it, I watch the On Demand more than the actual channel, so I may be cancelling Startz, too. That will save $13.50 a month.

Between the two of them, we’ll be saving close to $300 a year. It all adds up.

We no longer have water delivered, Brian installed a water filter and we use it for both us and the cats (the local water district added fluoride to it and cats don’t do fluoride). We got that whole house fan last year, which has been a very wise purchase. Since the problem here is heat, not so much humidity, it really cools off the house in the evenings and into the morning. We used to go out to dinner every Friday night, dropping a hundred dollars. Now a dinner out is Sizzler. I don’t like their food much, but I do like the salad bar. Fast food meals have greatly dropped since the blood results. They just weren’t healthy and another plus is savings. We used to go to breakfast every Saturday morning. Then, because money was getting a little tighter, we started going once a month. Then, we stopped that. The last time we went to breakfast was the morning we had our blood taken. Back in July.

Life sure has changed.

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Friday, September 10, 2010