Suzanne O’Connor’s Bargains LA

Our New Obsession

I’m not the type to obsess over much. But lately I’ve had an obsession to create a more sustainable lifestyle.

The big obsession both hubby and I are focusing on together are lowering all our bills. We went through this same focus about 3 years ago with some success and are now addressing it again. With new technology and heavy competition, market pricing has changed on may items and services. Hubby is actively working on lowering our phone, health insurance and electric bills.

The first thing we did was dump of our full sized freezer in our garage. Though it allowed us to buy frozen goods in quantity at substantial savings, at $50 a month in electricity, the benefits evaporated. We are now looking around for a smaller, newer unit, but are in no rush.

Our experience with health insurance is worth a full article in itself. But if you haven’t shopped around in the last year, we strongly suggest you do. Our new health insurance agent is worth her weight in gold and we will be savings $500 a month with better coverage when our new medical insurance plan kicks in at the end of the month
Traci Beith at Aloha West Insurance, (760) 547-2626.

Since I don’t talk or text while driving and neither does hubby, our cell phone use has dropped dramatically this past year. Plus I hate my phone that came with our current plan. It’s the dumbest, hardest to use “Smart” phone on the planet. We have changed plans to a lower usage and I am now researching what phone I want to buy separately. Outside of the iPhone… any suggestions?

We are also going back to living more on an as needed, cash only basis. We did this for 5 years and it was an eye opener how well we could actually live without “want” items. We stopped for a couple of years to reward ourselves for our frugality and have slowly accumulated items that we didn’t need or add to our quality of life. Done with that.

We’re not going into a time of self denial…. it actually should be a time of abundance. Just in a more reasonable, frugal, sustainable way.  Can you say Amen?