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Living a Better Life
But It's only $18
a Month * * * Just $18.00. That’s how much my cellular phone service was, before I cancelled it. Now, it’s zero a month, which is even better. While driving into town this morning, I caught myself thinking, “but it’s only $18 a month.” And the cable is only $25, the newspaper delivery is only $12.00, and those sodas we like to buy while we’re driving around running errands are only $1.19. But let’s take that just one step further. The cellular phone for $18 a month equals $216 each year. Cable TV, at $25 a month, equals a whopping $300. That inexpensive newspaper subscription (even just $12 for the weekends), will cost you $144. Sodas at $1.19, let’s say three times a week, comes out to $185.64 per year! Just these few items come to a grand total of $845.64. It’s so easy to fall into the “it’s only $18 a month” thinking, most of us know better but we still do it. I remember when my husband and I bought our first house, almost 15 years ago, we felt we also had to buy several large items to go with it. All the appliances and things we needed were just $10, $20, or $50 a month… we put them on credit cards of course. After all, we had two good jobs (at the time), and *knew* we’d be able to pay them off quickly. But they added up to thousands of dollars worth of debt that took us years and years to pay off. As I was driving through town today, thinking about how nice it would be to have my cellular phone turned on again, I thought about how some people might think it’s just dumb to be saving that money. But then I thought about how it wasn’t that long ago, than none of us had cellular phones, and we got along just fine. We do carry AAA road service, that’s something we don’t skimp on due to our proud ownership of two *very well conditioned* cars. But since everyone else has a cellular phone, if my car breaks down I guess I’ll just borrow a phone call from one of you lovely people who will hopefully stop and offer assistance (to this pitiful driver who’s too cheap to buy her own). Right now, my priorities are just in a different place. It’s not that we can’t afford the phone, it’s that we have other things to spend the money on that are more important to us. Including, contributing to an employer matching 401k to build our retirement fund back up since we lost it a few years ago due to a job loss. And in this case, that $18 a month just became $36. This morning I thought about lots of things that would also be nice to have, all of them costing just around $10 - $20 a month. But I knew that each one represented a bigger number (when multiplied times 12 months), and though by themselves they may seem small, add too many of them and you can have quite a dangerous threat to the family budget. So, next time you find yourself thinking "it’s only going to cost $18 a month," get your calculator out and think again.
Copyright 2001 by Michelle Jones
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