High cost for lazy

I've done a few catch up projects during the heat of the day.  Took a couple of reusable grocery bags and.....

made my brother a couple of golf ball gathering bags.   He wanted something that could be hooked to his belt. 

Turned my 15 year old pocket purse into....

a newer pocket purse.  I guess it was "about time" I did something with it.  Ladybug noticed right away that it was new.

Oh yes.... I also finished a couple of customer quilts and started working on my fair entry.

The heat has me feeling like a big old slug.  Moving slowly but steady.  I look around and see lots of things I would like to do but those projects seem just too much for the heat.  I do things that won't cause me too much stress.  Which also means not much to write about in a blog post. 

One of the things I did that didn't require much movement was to take a really good look at my phone bill.  Could I make changes in it that would save me money?  Well right away I noticed the long distance.  I've been paying $8.50 a month for a .05 cents a minute plan.  It went up to .07 cents a minute.  Ok, I ask myself, is this a good plan for me?  I looked through all the bills for the last year.  I used a total of 5 minutes long distance calls over the past year.  This was a shock to me.  This comes out to about $20.40 a minute for each long distance call I made over the year.

When I was quilting full time I had to make many long distance calls to customers about their quilts.   At the time, the plan was a good deal for me.  It's not so anymore.  Time to do something about that.  I emailed my friend Kathi who told me she uses purchased phone cards for her long distance.  That sounded good to me so I told my daughter about what I planned to do.  Hmm.... what my daughter said made even more sense.

Four years ago my daughter had given me one of her old cell phones and set it up as a free part of her own cell phone plan.  I use the cell phone only when I'm out running errands as an emergency phone.  At most I use the cell phone once a month for maybe a minute or two.  The free minutes on it just don't get used.  Well.... DUH.... long distance calls are free on the cell phone.  So my daughter suggested I use the cell phone to call my customers when I need to call them.  Makes perfect sense... so why didn't I think of it?  Oh well, now I have free long distance. 

Next thing to look at was my regular phone plan.  It had things on it that I simply never used.  Call block, three way calling, call return and things like that in the plan.  I've never used any of those features.... not even once.  So why am I paying for them?  All I need is a simple basic phone line to make phone calls. 

I called the phone company and got everything switched over to a plain basic phone service with no long distance plan.  My phone bill is now about one fourth (or less) the cost of what it was before.  That's a lot of savings that can be used for something else.  I'm glad I finally took a good look at the phone bill instead of putting it off longer.  I also thought about all the wasted money I've spent over the past year because I simply didn't take the time to look over the bill.  Bummer!  That's a hugh cost for being lazy putting things off too long.