Electric company

By June 21st, we would pay our electric company over $746.  I am not sure why it is that much.  I know we were paying for two places for awhile but I don't think it should be that much.  Not only that, we received another bill in the mail that combined both our former account with the electric company and this account.  They merged the two accounts and they say we owe another $402+ on July 2nd.  They did tack on $312+ from the former account to this latest bill.  So I am going to call them next week to get the current total we owe.  That is just ridiculous how much we owe.

Not only that, when we got home today, we had a letter from the office stating we have an outstanding bill of $12+ due for the electric company!  I don't know how that is.  We switched the apartment to our name.  I am pretty sure it was from the days that the construction people were in here. 

Two Miles of Walking and Yoga

Kyle and I walked at least two miles total!  Today is the first day of summer break for him.  We went for a walk around our apartment complex and I am guessing it was about a mile walk, although I could be wrong.  We went for a walk around 9:25am and then again at around 12:40pm or so.  It was overcast and not hot at all when we went for a walk the first time.  However, when we went for a walk in the afternoon, it was hot and humid!  

This morning, I also did 15 minutes of yoga!  

Shannon has been working non-stop since we moved.  So he’s been working just about every day for the last three weeks.  I think after this, he won’t be volunteering for this many days of work.  But then again, he knows we need the money.  He is trying to pay off his credit card, plus we have bills. 

I did manage to save us about $21 a month by switching our car and renter’s insurance.  I am very happy with the change.  I am also ecstatic about saving that much per month! 

Switched insurance companies

Since we moved, it was time to consider switching or looking for a lower insurance rate.  We have been with Progressive since 2007.  The other day, I shopped for a car and renter's insurance rate with Allstate.  If we switched to Allstate, our car insurance payment would be about $20 a month!  Our renter's insurance was about $1 or so lower. 

I made the switch this morning.  We are paying about $20 less a month for car insurance and about the same for renter's insurance!  I am excited we are now Allstate customers.  Our insurance goes into affect at the end of the month. 

More days off

Kyle was off of school today and will have tomorrow off as well.  I am so ready for him to go back to school, he's been home since Friday! 

I wasn't able to get much done today with him home.  It's a little more difficult for me to concentrate when he is home, but I do try to do what I need to do. 

Shannon will be taking extra shifts next week.  Once he has his work schedule for Best Buy, he can determine how many more shifts he can take for a co-worker who overextended herself.  She ended up taking so many shifts that she would have to work 15 days straight!  Plus she's taking an Electronic Health Records course through the local community college.  She offered him all of the extra shifts she took because she feels overwhelmed with her class and having to work.  Hopefully Shannon can take as many shifts as he wants.  We definitely need the money.  Shannon is working on paying off his credit card. 

Shannon also received a call from his manager from his security supervisor job.  His manager put in his notice and will be leaving at the end of this week!  He is working on having his guys cover shifts and give them extra shifts wherever needed so that everything is covered until they hire a new manager.  I told Shannon that he should apply for a manager position with the security company.  He now has a Bachelor's Degree, plus he's working in security for several years, been a manager and he's been on the other side of things.  When he was working at a hotel as the manager, he was the client of the company he is now working for.  He knows what a client is looking for in a security company!  I really hope Shannon will apply for the job or any promotion within the security company. 

Rent Due

We needed to pay rent, so I wrote the check and turned it in to the rental office.  Since we didn't have enough in our main checking account, we had to go to Shannon's bank to pull out some cash to deposit into our account.  By the way, our banks are across the street from each other.  Anyway, after I deposited the cash into our account, I realized it wouldn't be enough to cover the rent, so we had to go back to his bank to pull out more.

That's when Shannon and I got into a disagreement over where our money is going.  He knows that I was sent money from my parents for Christmas/Kyle's birthday.  I bought a few things with the money, plus it's been helping to pay the bills for the last month.  Shannon was confused as to where the money went because he was under the impression that we should have at least $1400 in the account.  I told him that we do have utility bills, groceries to buy, etc.  He wanted to see the bank account for himself to know where the money went.

We logged on when we got home and he saw that the money went to the toys we bought for Kyle at Toys R Us for Christmas, bills, HIS cell phone belt clip thing, and other things.  All he seems to remember is the money going in and not the money going out...  He doesn't pay the bills, I do.  He said he had the same problem with his own account.  He received an alert that he only had X amount of dollars left in his account and he had to check his account to see where all the money went.  

Netflix!

We've been talking about trying Netflix because of the savings and decided to really give it a try after receiving our cable bill yesterday. So, I signed up for Netflix this evening and we get a full month free as a trial.

Today, we went to Walmart while Kyle was still at school to buy MagicJack! We hope to set that up this weekend or so.

After trying Netflix for about a half hour, I'm ready to cancel our cable now! But Shannon says, "not yet." Kyle is playing with Netflix now and he's finding all of his favorite shows. He likes the beginning while they are singing and stops it after the song to find another show. I can also use Netflix on my iPad2!

Changes need to be made

We received our Internet/cable/phone bill today and it literally doubled from last month and they added Showtime Unlimited! I called them to rectify the situation. Our bills down to $143. This is still too much for us. We decided to switch to MagicJack for phone service. We also plan on canceling cable for either AppleTV or Hulu Plus.

Our bills

This weekend, I made the decision to call our cable/internet/phone provider and our auto/renter's insurance company about lowering our bills. 

I just got off the phone with our cable/internet/phone provider and they were able to lower our bill.  Our current bill is a little over $127 a month and they were able to lower it to $113 a month for the next 6 months.  He gave us free DVR service for 6 months as a special promotion (I think it's a great way to offer to their current customers to keep them as customers). 

I just have to call back in 6 months (May) to make sure we keep our DVR service on. 

I was going to call our auto/renter's insurance company but the cordless phone was low on battery.  I plan on calling tomorrow. 

A difference of $27.30

We just received our electric/energy bill today and it was $27.30 more than last month.  First, when we called to set up service, we were offered the option of "equal payment plan" and it would be around $80 a month.  Since our bill was more than $80, I called and asked why.  I was told that we weren't set up for the equal payment plan, but she was able to change it for us.

We're in the process of re-applying for food stamps in our current county.  We just need additional paperwork to send to our local office.  Since we are without food stamps, we are forced to pay out of pocket.