It's been a while, huh? I just wanted to ensure everyone that I am still alive and still remember this blog. I'm even still making some progress on my goals, though the weight loss has trickled out a little bit since Thursday. But it's only Sunday, and I have time to get back on track. Tomorrow I'll track Thursday through today as like 2400 calories as a guess-timate since I am still tracking my weight and it hasn't skyrocketed up.
I... got through Mother's Day okay. It's been rough since I lost my mother at 16, and I expected that it would be even more rough now that I lost my second pregnancy, but it was okay. Still. People who are single get to whine on Valentine's day. People who lost both their mother and their pregnancies should get to whine too, right? I'm just glad I "quit" Facebook so that I don't have to look at the 20 babies currently being shown off.
So hm. Happy updates. Well, the biggest one (weirdly enough) is that we switched phone services last weekend. Due to my compulsive morning financial blog habit, I've learned a thing or two about super-cheap wireless services, mostly from Mr. Money Mustache and his Republic Wireless reviews. But when I was doing my Republic Wireless research, I discovered Google Fi (apparently there was a review of Google Fi on his blog, but I wasn't aware of that until today). Corey and I researched the services, the phones, the little extras like making your phone a wireless hotspot, and decided that Google Fi was the competitor we wanted to go with, so we chose to embrace our new Google overlords and make the switch. Here's the fun part:
Current plan with Sprint: $188/month after taxes for both of us, unlimited data
Current plan with Google Fi: $89/month after taxes for both of us, 2gb data/month each*
Cost to purchase 2 new phones compatible with the plan, after tax: $422
Months to break even: 4.5
Monthly savings after that: $99/month +$1 for every 0.1 GB of data unused
*I checked my data usage with Sprint before we started, and the most I've used is 1-2 gb.
So in less than 5 months, we'll get an ROI of over $99/month, especially if we aren't spendy with data usage and stick to wifi as much as possible. Plus, Corey's phone was on its way out anyway - his power plug had stopped functioning, since we've only ever had 1 smartphone. So we get an upgrade. Plus instead of texting from my phone, since the plan uses Hangouts with SMS as a texting function, I can send and receive texts from my computer instead of checking my phone at work.
Okay, enough squealing about my cheap upgrade though. Let's see, what else... I had a quasi-fight with a coworker last Friday, which wasn't fun and had me very upset to the point of tears. But it led me to find out that that coworker had been against my promotion, and put a bug in my ear about both increasing my work performance and panicking about not having a good emergency fund. So as soon as I could, I threw another $100 into the emergency fund, plus I've been on my toes and shared some ideas management liked, and I feel a touch safer now.
I also made a grocery list that is semi-based on this Reddit post in which a super-cheap and reasonably healthy meal plan is described. I've tweaked it for our own use, of course, but I love love this post. I'm wondering if I can start price-tracking all of the necessities I put on our own grocery list across the 3 stores where we buy things, so that I can buy lots when prices are extra low per unit.
I even started a batch of sourdough starter. I'll let you know how that comes out. So far so good, and I'll be "feeding" it tonight.
Hm, what else. I did slip up here and there. Made a few impulse purchases (most recently $6 on a coloring book and some candy) and ate out a little, which isn't great. Still, I think we're doing better than the average, and we even have more in our eating out fund than usual, which is amazing.
I guess that's it. Next, I'll work on coloring in my bubbles and posting the updates to the side bar. Hopefully I can get a little more done soon. Until next time!
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