Simple economics

When your income goes down, or your expenses go up (or, God forbid, both at once), what does a normal person with common sense do?

I can't speak for everyone, but we got cable.

I know, I know--my readers are going, "Uh...what?"

Back while I was carrying the imp, Odysseus worked managing a payday lending storefront.  The pay was so-so (a "salary" figured at $10/hour, for 45 hrs/week, with a generous offer of half-time overtime, since it was a "salary"), and the hours creeping up.  By the time he gave notice, they were frequently working him sixty hour weeks for peanuts in pay, and he was missing watching the imp grow up.  He missed the first time crawling, not because the imp did it during the hours the store was open, but because the imp crawled during the two hours he was required to be there after the store closed, calling deadbeats--with no added compensation, praise for doing a good job, or anything but verbal abuse from his boss.

So, he gave two weeks' notice.

About that time, AT&T jacked our internet and phone bills.  Our bill had jumped for phone and internet (plus a cell phone contract) from $135/month to $165/month, and was climbing by a dollar or two every month after that.  I could see us paying half the mortgage payment for phone and internet if something didn't change.  We'd just gone off a two year contract, and when we called and asked if we could get that adjusted back down by getting into another contract, we were laughed off the phone.  They told us "Sorry, that was a special to get customers back.  We can't give it to current customers."

Then we found out that they were also putting a cap on data usage.  Something that, between my work, and Odysseus's habits of watching documentaries online, wasn't going to fly for us. And they did it by claiming that they sent notice, tucked into all the junk mail they sent us trying to get us to upgrade to a more expensive, "cooler," cell phone plan.  Any data used past the cap would be an extra $10/50gig used.  And, no there wouldn't be any exceptions made for that, either.

Fine.  So, we called the cable company.  We were told that phone and internet and cable would be $75/month before taxes and fees, or phone and internet without cable would be $95/month before taxes.

We had to have the phone and the internet--I need high speed internet for my work.  So, we made the decision to get the basic cable package, as well.

Simple economics.  We may not have wanted the TV, but we also didn't want to pay $20/month to not have it.

So, as long as I have my job teaching online, paying for cable is going to be one of those bills we can't cut.  If I ever lose that job (considering the fact my teacher evaluations are one of the highest for a composition class, and the highest for an online composition class, it's unlikely), we'll revisit that decision, but for now, paying for cable makes more economic sense.

For us, at least.