Our View

We built our house 12 years ago into a new subdivision. I wanted to be in a subdivision because I believed it would help us should we ever want to sell our house. I had an old house that was in a low traffic area of a town and it took over two years to sell that place. I didn't want to make the same mistake twice.

The new subdivision was awesome. I was surrounded on all sides by farm fields and I had an expansive view in every direction.

And then the subdivision grew. Each year more and more houses were built all around us.

It has reached a point where we are now boxed in, 

The construction of this latest house will take away most of what was left of our view.

On the one hand, I wanted to be in a subdivision to protect my property value. But on the other hand, I would prefer if there were no houses around me, especially houses whose back windows can look directly into mine!

Thankfully, I still have a nice view out the front of the house.

So, that's the trade off. Want to be in a neighborhood? Or by yourself out in the country?

Running Toilet

The guy who made the indoor toilet famous was Thomas Crapper. He sold a valve that would refill a toilet bowl with water. Ever since then, his name has been associated with doing your duty in the bathroom. The next time you go to use the Crapper, you can thank Thomas Crapper for not needing to go outdoors.

The invention has evolved over the years, and is not perfect. Parts wear out and need to be replaced. If you hear the toilet running when it shouldn't be? You crapper probably has a bad flapper.

This is what a flapper looks like. It covers the pipe the runs between the tank and the toilet bowl.

When you push down on the toilet handle, it causes the flapper to raise, which releases all the water in the tank causing it to flush into the bowl, and for your waste to flush down the drain.

If that flapper wears out, it will leak.

First step? Shut off the water.

Next, disconnect the flapper chain from the handle and remove the old flapper. Replace the flapper with a new one.

Turn the water back on. That's all

It takes! In just minutes your crapper will be back to tip top shape!

Heavy Rain is Never Fun

When we built our house into the subdivision 12 years ago, the developer put in a gully to hold rain. He told us the water should never fill the gully to the point of reaching the area behind our property. He showed us a survey where that location was considered a "100 year flood plain". In other words, the area of the gully behind our property should only fill once every 100 years.

Since then, the gully fills at least twice per year.

When we complained to the developer, he said "You have nothing to complain about. The water is all on my property."

We have some heavy rain yesterday. As expected, the gully started to fill.

It continued filling until it passed the bolder (marking the property line) and overtook the back of the wing set. 

Meanwhile, my sump pump crock was filling and emptying every 5 seconds! Our poor sump pump has been running for 12 years! Fearing it could fail, we installed a backup water powered pump. I spent most of the day keeping an eye of the sump pump expecting it to fail at any time. Luckily, it kept going!

The yard filled with water. Because I keep dumping loads of gravel onto my driveway, my driveway now sits higher than my garage. This caused water to enter the garage. I had an inch of water within two feet of the garage door. Luckily, nothing was ruined.

I quickly remembered to turn off the irrigation system for the flowers. The last thing we needed was to add more water to an already wet mess!

Today, the gully water has receeded as the rain lightened. Rain is never fun for a home owner - especially this much rain. It wouldn't take much to have a devastating effect.

Work List

I have been putting in a ton of hours at work. When I get time away from work, I am too exhausted to do very much around the house.  This has caused my house maintenance work to fall behind. The following is a short list of immediate work for this weekend:

Fix rope light on deck - it is falling down

Drywall in office by window repair

Fill hummingbird feeder

Replace old power strips around the house

Fix kitchen aid mixer (leaking oil)

Smoke alarm battery replacements

Oldest son's TV doesn't work

Caulk 2nd downstairs bathroom sink

Van battery replacement

Replace broken Flood lights 

Kitchen light bulb replacement

Teach oldest son about sump pump

Meter read the water meter 

Building permit for shed

Dig out then fill in Eve troth hole

Investigate digging a storm drain in front of garage floor to prevent garage flooding 

I wonder how far I will get?

Decks

One purpose of this blog is to celebrate (aka complain) about all the work associated with home ownership.

If you have a house you either have a deck or dream of having home. Just think of it: if you had a deck, you could invite family and friends over for a BBQ and life would be grand. Right?

I built our deck myself five years ago. It was a lot of work and fairly expensive. Little did I realize the work and expense was just beginning. We have had to seal the deck every year since its construction!

Each year I use Olympic deck sealer with a 5 or 6 year guaranty and it only lasts one year!

Step one is the timing. It requires three rain free warm days in a row. One day to clean the deck, one to dry, and one to seal and let the seal dry. Finding three dry and warm days in upstate New York can be difficult!

The deck needs to be cleaned before it is sealed. It can be cleaned by sweeping it and then hosing the deck down, or better yet, poor a deck cleaner on it (basically it is bleach), scrub it, then hose it off. If you choose to use the deck cleaner method? Remember it is bleach and will turn anything it splashes on white (including your clothes).

Then comes the staining. At $40 per gallon, plus disposable brushes and various supplies - this gets expensive.

I tape plastic around the deck so the Cedar colored stain doesn't splash onto the white siding. The trick with Painter's tape is that it melts in the sun, so, it has to be removed within 24 hours or less.

I always apply the sealant with a brush so that I can fill the cracks and the areas between the boards. However, this year I used a plush roller because I didn't have the standard four hours that it normally takes.

Building a deck is very expensive and a lot of work, but it is just the start. The yearly maintenance on a deck is a huge consideration too. But now that it is done we can enjoy cookouts on the deck for the rest of the summer!

Flower Bed

In May, I planted over 100 flowers in the flower beds. Later, I went out of town for five weeks. I wasn't too worried about the flowers because they are irrigated.

When I returned home I found the flowers had been over taken by weeds worse than any other year!

I cleaned the weeds out and unfortunately, there isn't much left.

Part of the problem is that some of the flowers were purchased at Walmart late in the season, and those flowers didn't survive. Flowers from a local green house did better, however, the weeds took a hard toll.

It is disappointing to see the poor results of all of the expense and work. 

Change Furnace Filter

Home ownership comes with a lot of responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to change your furnace filters! A good furnace filter can cut down on the amount of dirt and dust coming out of your forced air furnace, which will help to keep you and your family healthy.

If you get quality filters, you'll only have to change the filter four times per year: before heating season, before cooling season, and during each season. If you get cheap filters? Plan to change them every month.

First thing I do is put today's date onto the new filter.

Remove the old filter, paying attention to the direction of the air flow.

Then insert the new filter in the correct air flow orientation.

That's it!

New Mail Box

Every winter the snow plows like to take target practice on my mail box. As a result, my mail box is a horrible rusted and dented broken mess. It is so bad that the post office left me a letter suggesting I consider getting a new one.

A new one? What for? The snow plow if just going to knock it down again this winter!

I decided to comply. Today I put up the new mail box.

Clean the Grill!

The joys of the summer cook out. Hot dogs, burgers, grilled corn, and everything! I love cooking out doors. And chances are? You do too.

However, if you neglect your grill's grease trap, your cook out could end in a fireball as a grease fire ungulfs the grill. So, let's make sure we all regularly clean the grill.

My grill has a grease trap drain that you can see from th grill top.

Connected to the bottom of the drain is the grease trap. It sometimes looks like a soup can, but mine is a quare metal pan.

My model has a removable grease drain too.

I clean both and then hit them with the garden hose.

It takes about ten minutes and then they are as good as new.

2015 Flower Garden

2015 Flower Garden

The flowers are planted! First, I had to refill the garden with miracle grow dirt.

Then I leveled the dirt off.

Next, my family formed a planting crew

Planting involves cutting the plant out of the plastic holder, dipping the roots into a pale that contains water and miracle grow, planting it in a whole, they pressing the dirt around the roots to make sure air can't get to the roots. Each family member had a different task in that process.

We planted 140 flowers between the front beds and the back yard beds.

The first year, we planted 195 flowers, which were far too many. Last year, we did just 180, again, too many. This time I cut it back to 140 while in search for the right number of flowers. I believe next year I will try 114. Perhaps 14 for the back yard, 50 for the curve, and 50 in front of the porch. 

This year I added 8 cubic feet of additional garden soil. I didn't think that would be enough, but, it worked out well.

I have been doing flowers for ten years - far too long for me to remember all the past crops. But I do remember some of them. In 2013, the flowers were hand watered daily and they overfilled the gardens. In 2014, we used sprinkler and soaker hoses. The summer was unusually hot too.  The plant's stems were thin and viney, and the flower bed did not do as well as most years. This year, we are using sprinklers and soaker hostes again, so, it will be interesting to see the results again.

Cleaning the Bathroom Vent Fan

You may have a bathroom vent with a fan on your bathroom ceiling.

If you do, those can become filled with dust and become inefficient and become a fire hazard. You must regularly clean them out.

Start by grabbing the vent cover and pull it strait down. It will only pull down a few inches and then stop.

Next, you have to reach above the vent and find two wires on each side of the vent cover.

Pinch that wire together and pull down. This will release the vent cover allowing it to come completely off.

Using a vacuum, clean the vent  over and the fan area in the ceiling.

It is that easy! Put this on your yearly maintenance list to keep a safe and well running vent fan.

Cutting the cable Part 13

My cable bill is $250 so I am working at reducing it. Calling Time Warner is like shaking a magic 8 ball - you never know what you might get.

On April 15 I accepted a rate of $119.18. Since Time Warner bills one month on advance, that new price should appear on my next bill, right? Wrong. The bill arrived at $178!

I called and the first operator wasn't helpful.

So I called back to get someone else. This second fiddled with the bill and got it down to $142. But hay! What about my $119 price? Why is that not reflected on my "we bill one month in advance" bill? If I accepted $119 on April 15, then the time period of April 23 through May 22 should be $119.

It is almost as if Time Warner wants its customers to go to Dish. Is Time Warner trying to drive itself out of business? I am just one customer and look at the crazy things I have gone through to try to get a decent monthly rate! I think they hope that by making things this difficult, you will just give up and pay the high bill.

Lint for Lent Part 2

Lint for Lent is all about preventing a fire by cleaning dryer lint. I like to do this every year at lent (before Easter). However, Easter came early this year and I'm a little behind schedule.

In part one, I cleaned the dryer vent.

In part two, I unplugged my Whirlpool dryer, then I took the front cover off and vacuumed the inside.

I pulled the dryer out, vacuumed all around, and made sure the dryer vent was secured.

It only took 15 minutes and now I'm good for another year!

When was the last time you cleaned your dryer? You had better do it and avoid a fire!

Lint for Lent

Remember this simple rule to help avoid a house fire: lint for lent. It means: clean your dryer vent every year and lent (just before Easter). You can clean the dryer vent anytime, but this catchy phrase is a great reminder to get it done. Failure to clean the dryer vent can lead to inefficient cloths drying (taking longer) and could cause a fire that burns your house down.

I have a long 15+ foot solid dryer vent run.  Easter came early this year and I am a little late cleaning the vent, but, it still needs to get done! This is what I use, a lint eater:

It works like a dream.

A flexible plastic pipe connects to your drill and snakes a brush through the vent, cleaning it as it goes.

There is an attachment to connect a shop vac to the vent. This creates a vaccum inside the vent shaft and pulls all the loose lint to the shop vac as the brunch scrubs away.

I have a spot in the solid vent where I can access the vent for cleaning from indoors . I collected a lot of lint this year!

Cutting The Cable Part 12

My Time Warner Cable TV bill is $250. In this series, I am cutting my cable TV bill. So far? I am down to $127 plus I saved $35 on my cell phone bill during his adventure. And I have more to go!

My cable bill includes an $8 rental charge for the internet modem. My internet modem used to support two telephone lines, so, I could never replace it. But now that I have dropped my two telephone lines? Good bye rented internet modem!

I checked the Time Warner site for compatible cable modem models (make sure you get a modem that your cable company supports!) and then did some price checking. I wanted to get the most capable yet least expensive cable modem I could find. I found the Arris Surfboard SB6121 for $65 at Walmart.

Just a warning about selecting cable modems. You might be tempted to pay a little more for a better modem. Perhaps the next modem says it is faster or does more. Don't be fooled! Just because the cable modem says it can do 200 Mbps, it will only do whatever you are paying the cable company for. In my case, I'm paying for 15 Mbps internet. I could buy something that supports 700 Mbps, and I would still only get 15 Mbps.  Don't pay extra for something you don't need! And that goes for the support plans. If Walmart (or whomever you buy it from) offers you a support plan? Turn it down. Those things tend to be 12% of the original price, yearly re-occurring, and often have a 2-year buy-in that costs around 25% of the purchase price (robbing you of the Future Value (FV) of the money you are going to spend). Keep it simple: Buy the cheapest modem that your cable company supports, and will run your internet speed.

Before making any changes to your internet, you should bench mark your internet performance. Go to http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and run a couple of tests. Write down the results.

I unboxed the surfboard and plugged it in - pulling the cables out of the old modem and plugging them into the new one. The surfboard blinked and blinked and spent several minutes rebooting. Many devices need to download new versions of their software when they are first plugged in, so, that's fine.

When the cable box settled down, I called Time Warner to register the new cable modem. In some instances, you can go to a website to register your cable modem, but in my case, that option isn't available if your old cable modem use to support telephones.

The Time Warner operator needed my cable modem model number and the MAC address printed on the bottom of the cable modem. Ten minutes later? The cable modem was registered and I was surfing the internet again!

It was time to repeat the speed tests to make sure they were approximately the same as my benchmark. I did a speed test at http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest and was satisfied with the results. When doing these speed tests, you rarely get the same result twice. You aren't checking to see if you get the exact same rate as the bench mark. You want to make sure you get something close to the bench mark - something in the neighborhood.

I'll return the old cable modem on Monday and get $8 per month off my bill. My break-even point for purchasing the cable modem is around 8 months, afterward, I start saving money (that is why you don't want an expensive cable modem because the break even point will be farther out).

My cable modem install was very easy and pain free. If you are still renting a cable modem from the cable company, you should consider replacing it.

Cutting Cable Part 11

My Time Warner Cable TV bill is $250. In this series, I am cutting my cable TV bill. So far? I am down to $127 plus I saved $35 on my cell phone bill during his adventure. And I have more to go!

Today, I arranged to have my Cable TV bill automatically billed to my credit card. I get 2% back on credit card purchases. That means I'll make $30 per year by making this change. I won't see this decrease on my cable bill, but I'll feel it in my wallet!

Cutting The Cable Part 10

My Time Warner Cable bill is $250, so, I am cutting the cable bill! If you have been reading my updates, you would know that I have already cut my bill significantly. Or... so I thought. I logged in to see what my next bill would look like and discovered my bill hadn't lowered as much as it should have.

My January bill was:
$78.47 - Starter and Standard TV and Sports and fee
$12.38 - Variety pass and The Guide
$50.87 - Standard Internet
$67.70 - Two phone lines
$21.96 - Equipment rentals
$17.63 - Taxes and fees
======
$249.01

I logged into Time Warner to see my bill and was shocked at how high it was:

$79.21 - Starter and Standard TV and Sports and Fees
$12.28 - Variety Pass and The Guide
$65.99 - Standard Internet
$21.96- Equipment rentals
$5.95 - Taxes and fees
======
$185.39

I returned the cable boxes. Why was my equipment rental still high?
Why wasn't the Guide nor the Variety Pass removed as the guy told me he would.
Why did my standard internet go up $15.12?
Where was my $89.99 for the Double Play Promotion? No one told me, but, when I returned the cable boxes I broke the Double Play Promotion. By saving a little on the cable box return, I ended up with a larger bill!

I spent half a day complaining to four different Time Warner operators and after the fourth agent, I got the following changes completed.

$79.53 - Starter and Standard TV and Sport and fee
$39.99 - Standard Internet
$8.00 - Equipment rentals
16.69 - Taxes and fees
=====
$144.21

I called back a fifth time to try to get the Double Play back. What I received was a rate of $127.82. This includes everything I have presently, plus a cable box and HBO.

I feel like calling Time Warner is like shaking a Magic 8 ball. You never know what you are going to get. At this stage in my cable cutting, I have dropped two phone lines and one cable box, saved $121 and am getting HBO. It doesn't make any sense to me, but, I need to let the dust settle a little big before I attack this bill some more. There is still work to be done though, so, tune back soon!

Cutting The Cable Part 9

My Time Warner cable bill is $250, so, I am cutting the cable bill! I have already cut the bill back and now I am going further.

For this latest chapter: I recently installed a second ooma and transferred the phone number to it. Today, I called Time Warner to verify that the approx $45 per month charge for telephone was off the bill.

I won't know for sure until the next bill comes, but, I estimate my cable bill should now be $105. If I am right, it means I have cut over $1700 per year off my cable bill in exchange for no service loss! And, incidentally, during the process I knocked $35 per month off my cell phone bill!

But wait... I am not done yet! Come back soon to see how I am going to get my cable bill even lower!

Cutting the cable Part 8

My Time Warner Cable bill is $250, so, I am taking action to cut my cable bill. Between Cable and Cell phone, I have cut $100 per month so far!

Last month I tried to return my cable boxes. The guy at the counter gave me a big discount in exchange for keeping them, so, I agreed. But when my bill came this month, I noticed my discount was not tied to my cable boxes in any way. 

Tonight, I returned my two boxes and saved $18 per month! In addition, Time Warner has several other charges, such as The Guide, that I was able to drop and save around $5 per month. That puts my total savings so far at around $125 per month! Imagine what I could do with that extra $1500 per year!

When I turned over the boxes, the guy warned me that within a year Time Warner was switching everything over to digital so I would need a cable box to watch TV.   What they are going to do is scramble the cable signal and require you to either buy or rent a cable box. I have heard the digital converter boxes will be free for the first year, and then $1.50 per month thereafter. I am not sure that is true, but I figure I will deal with it if and when it ever happens. By that time so might be converted to Dish and not care!

I'm not done cutting this cable bill. I have a lot more money to save! Tune back later to follow my crusade. 

Cutting The Cable Part 7

My Time Warner Cable bill is $250 per month so I am cutting back the cable bill!

In my neck of the woods, Time Warner has a monopoly on high speed Internet. The only real competition is DSL, which doesn't come close to my bandwidth requirements.

Verizon is moving into the region and running fiber optic to every house. They plan to provide an alternative to Time Warner. But so far the roll out has been pretty slow.

I called Verizon tonight to check on availability in my area. Unfortunately, there is none. Which means Time Warner remains my only option.

Since I was talking to Verizon, I decided to right-size my cell phone bill. Verizon recently dropped their prices. Also, I have a 3GB plan and never use more than .5GB, so I dropped the plan to 2GB and will monitor my usage and consider going to 1GB later. Finally, I asked if I qualify for any promotional discounts - and I did! All together? I dropped my two smart phone cell bill from $144 per month to $109 a month. That is $410 per year!

Getting a smaller cell phone bill wasn't part of my cable cutting plan - but I'll take it! And add it to my cable savings, totally my monthly savings with this project at $100 per month so far!

Great Experience with Ooma

I have two Ooma boxes and I have had great success with Ooma.  Ooma allowed me to drop from a $42 per month telephone bill to a $3.50 bill. Before I made my purchase, I read many reviews  (mostly negative reviews) so I knew what I was getting into. I then compared the negative reviews to my experience to try to understand why some people had bad experiences. From that, I have made the following recommendations so that you can have the best possible experience.

Before I show my suggestions, my disclaimer: I dot work for Ooma. I have no connection to Ooma other than being a customer. My good experience is no guaranty of your experience, so, don't blame me if your experience differs.

My suggestions:

A. If you want to keep your existing phone number, it will cost you $40 and may take a month to transfer the number ( during which time the number might not work). My experience took a week and I received notifications through the process. However, you should set your expectations correctly.

B. do not transfer your existing number until you have the ooma working perfectly. Let the Ooma run for a week or two and play with it. If you try to switch your home phone number while the Ooma is having problems, you could set yourself up for a nightmare.

C. Unlimited calling means less than 5000 minutes per month. If you go over, they reserve the right to drop your service.

D. Don't connect ooma to a wifi network. Wifi sucks to begin with so you will probably get bad calls. Connect the ooma to your home network using a cable.
E. Pay attention to how you plug the Ooma into your home network. For the simplest success, plug the Ooma into your cable modem and your home router into the ooma. If you decide to plug the ooma into your home router, make sure you don't pick a port linked to the uplink port and haven't made custom settings on your home router that might cause the ooma to have communication problems.

F. don't plug in the ooma until after you have went to the website an set it up. There is a simple to follow guide in the Ooma box that explains these steps but I can only imagine how many people don't follow it.

G. after unboxing and plugging in ooma, it could take an hour or two for the ooma box to set itself up and the ooma light to turn blue and ready to go. So, plug it in, walk away, and come back later.

H. There will be a call quality decrease. There are too many variables to tell whether the call quality will be acceptable to you, so don't ask. 

I. If you don't have a good Internet connection (6mb or more) you may have unacceptable quality problems.

J. If you type something wrong into the website during configuration, you will have problems. So, pay attention. For example, if you are moving your phone number and you don't type your phone number correctly, or, don't provide a copy of your bill for troubleshooting - you are going to have problems.

K. Do your best to do self service. I haven't had to contact the Ooma support, but most people who have contacted Ooma support for help are the ones who report the worse Ooma experience. I recommend doing everything you can before needing to call for help.

I hope these suggestions help make your Ooma experience a good one!

Cutting Cable part 6

I am cutting my cable bill from $250 to as low as I can get it without significant sacrifices. So far I have cut $70 per month by fighting for a discount and by replacing one of my two phone lines with Ooma.

Next? I am going to cut at last $42 per month more by cutting the second phone line. I can run both phone lines  through one Ooma, however, the second Ooma goes to an attached Inlaw apartment. Therefore, I want them to have their own separate phone line. That means two ooma.

I had a great experience with the first ooma and had no problem switching my phone number to it. I ordered the second ooma, set it up, and tested it. The installation was flawless (because I properly set my expectations and installed it properly). 

My next step is to move the Inlaw phone number to the ooma. Then, I will be able to drop the second phone line from the bill and save another $42 per month!

Tune back soon and watch my progress as I cut the cable.

Cutting Cable Part 5

The second Ooma is on order. I expect it to arrive any day now!

I don't need two ooma for two phone numbers. But, I have an Inlaw apartment and it will be easier if I have two of them. This way my phone won't ring if it is for them (and vice versa). 

Cutting Cable Part 4

My Time Warner cable bill is $250 and my plan is to cut the bill heavily. So far I have went to Time Warner to negotiate a better rate, and I have dropped one of my two telephone lines by installing Ooma.

The bill arrived today and was only $146! Part of that was because they prorated a discount for last month. My bill will normally be $183 (including the taxes)

Next step? Another ooma for the second line and I will save $44. I could run two lines on my single ooma, but I don't want to.

Then I will return the cable boxes and save $14.

With the phone service off my cable modem, I will be able to replace it with my own cable modem and save $8.

That should get my bill cut from the original $250 to $120. And then I can start looking at cutting the cable TV back.

Stay tuned and read about my journey in cutting cable! 

Driveway Repair

You might recall that in 2014 we had our driveway re-stoned. Unfortunately, the dump truck dropped off mostly dirt, not stone. And as warmed temperatures have melted the snow, parts of the driveway are turning into a mud hole!

Patching a paved driveway can be difficult - especially when the temperature is 38 degrees. But patching a stone driveway is easy! $40 worth of pea gravel took care of the problem.

I didn't patch the entire driveway, but I patched the worse of it. In another 5 or 6 weeks the rest of the driveway will dry out and be fine.

Chinese Drywall

Buyer Be Ware!

When I first heard about this problem I thought it was a joke. But make no mistake, this is not a joke!

After 2001, and during the housing boom, cheap drywall was imported from China. The drywall emits sulfur under humid conditions. those sulfur emissions corrodes copper and makes people sick and is throughout Florida. Houses that have sit empty for a year without air conditioning to control the home humidity could be very bad. The corroding can turn the copper electrical wiring to dust, ruin plumbing, damage refrigerators and appliances, and break air conditioners. Remediation requires, basically, gutting the house to its studs and starting over.

There are regulations for remediating Chinese Drywall, but many contractors will do just the minimum and will not do a complete job - like not replacing the electrical wiring.

The only way to be sure is to have the home inspected for Chinese Drywall or Chinese drywall damage before buying the house.

Cutting cable

Time Warner gave me a $61 discount that allowed me to keep my cable boxes. Nevertheless, I haven't hooked the cable boxes back up. I want to see what life would be like without cable boxes, and without any channels above 100. So far the only thing we have missed is the clock on the front of the cable box. We became conditioned to look at the cable boxes to see what time it was - and now that is gone! Other than a clock, we haven't missed the cable boxes.

The discount bought me some time while I continue to replace our telephone service with Ooma and investigate satellite TV.

Cutting Cable: getting a discount

This is Part 2 in my Cutting Cable adventure. My Time Warner bill is $250 per month. My plan is to cut the bill.

Over the weekend I called Time Warner and asked for a discount. I was told there are no promotional deals available for me. The problem was that I was talking to someone over the phone. I wasn't standing at the counter with my cable boxes telling them to cut my channel subscription.

Well, that is what I did today. I fully intended to return the cable boxes and drop my channels to 1 through 100 - something that would have save around $45 per month.

Amazingly, today I qualified for a promotional discount! Not only will my cable bill drop $61 per month, but I get it prorated so that my next bill will an additional $34 cheaper.

How about that?

Of course, this doesn't stop my plans of cutting the cable. I am continuing with plans to drop the phone service, followed by getting rid of the Internet modem rental, and then so will look at satellite offers to see if I can find something to beat cable.

Cutting Cable

My Time Warner cable bill is $250 per month. For that, I get Internet, TV, and two telephone lines. That seems like a lot of money to me, so, I am taking actions to cut my bill. I will chronicle my activities in this blog.

I called Time Warner and asked them to reduce my bill. They said they couldn't. That's OK because I am going to reduce it myself! Cable companies made their fortunes being monopolies, but today they aren't needed at all!

My first step was to order a Ooma telephone device for $110 at Amazon. Someday I will write a blog for how to have a good Ooma experience. So far my experience has been excellent. I plugged the ooma into my Internet, plugged a phone into ooma, did a little bit of web site configuring, and was done.

I pay over $70 per month for two telephone lines. With Ooma, all I pay are the taxes - $3.50 per month.

Today, I issued the request to have my home phone number switched to Ooma. The request cost $40. It can take a month for the request to process.

Once the request is finished, I will be able to drop one phone line from my cable service. I have $150 invested in the ooma. I figure I will break even in five months. After five months I will be saving $32 per month!

If this is ooma is successful, I will order a second ooma for the second line. You can run a second line to one ooma if you want. But my second line goes to an Inlaw apartment, so, they will need their own device. Once both Ooma are installed I will have knocked $70 per month from my bill!

I am looking forward to cutting my cable bill. Right now it is $250 so I am going to keep chipping away at it until I can get it as cheap as possible!

Business Opportunity

I have a business opportunity for anyone interested.

Groceries are one of the highest expenses for a family. There are many examples of proud people who use coupons, comparative shopping, and stock piling to drive their grocery bills as low as possible. But for most of us? That isn't realistic. Double income families raising a gaggle of children? I just want to spend a moment sitting on the couch each evening before falling asleep - but that rarely happens.

It is unfortunate. We kill ourselves making money and then watch parts of it slip out the door in unnecessarily high grocery bills.

So, here is your business opportunity. If you are an extreme couponer, stay at home parent, or just like hunting endlessly for the best deals? Come do my grocery shopping! I'll split the savings with you. If you can figure out how to feed my family the things they like while also saving money? Go for it! I will help you carry the groceries into my house from your car.