Comments on: Financial Starvation-Should I or Shouldn’t I?

By: The sister

The sister — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:25:38 +0000

I haven’t had cable (or even basic tv service) for a couple years now and don’t miss it at all. The internet provides a lot as far as entertainment, and you can get that free if you have wireless and are a little creative. I think what you’d learn most from this exercise is how resourceful you can be with what you do have, but I don’t know that a month would be enough. Definitely worth consideration, but you do have to take all factors into consideration, including how this experience, however long you’d do it, would affect important relationships.

By: Matt B

Matt B — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:20:54 +0000

Shopping around is great, and really smart…but one of the main purposes of the exercise would be to see what I do not miss if I remove some of these things. I have a bare-bones cell plan, and I would never get rid of that because it would just be asking for some kind of emergency.

If I do go through with it (which is looking more and more unlikely) I would be very careful to only give up what would not completely put me out.

By: Sarah T

Sarah T — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:53:44 +0000

I don’t think you should just cut off all the cell phone, cable, etc bills. Instead I would shop around and see if there are better plans or offers from their competitors. Then I would call them back up and see if you can negotiate a better rate. If you cancel some of these bills, they might have termination fees associated to it. Then in a month when you turn everything back on they can hit you with installation or activation fees. I know my cell phone company will do this if I’m still under contract. You could also see if you can downgrade some of your services without canceling them entirely. For example going down to basic cable instead of expanded; removing extra channel packages if you had them; and dropping any unneeded cell phone plan extras.
For magazines I would look to see if they are available at the library so you can eliminate the expense entirely.

By: Matt B

Matt B — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:23:38 +0000

Here’s the thing…The Mrs. would absolutely hate this exercise. I, on the other hand can probably do it with almost no issue.

What I do not want, is for it to seem like I’m doing it to punish her or teach her a lesson. It looks pretty bad if I end up breezing through the “starvation” with no issues at all, and she is struggling at every turn.

If it is not even a challenge for me personally, is it worth it?

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:45:45 +0000

Wow – What a challenge! I would DEFINITELY run it by the Mrs. And possibly a few close friends. Maybe your parents. The latter 2 not for permission, but just as an FYI, what do you think, this is why I want to do it, you know. This is something that’s pretty… I think “severe” is the right word. It does sound like a fun experiment – but do you want to go cold turkey like that? I know this is supposed to mimic the absolute worst, but I feel like since you “know” its not that actual situation, you’ll have that feeling in the back of your mind. But maybe I’m just too good at justifying lame purchases.

Whatever you do good luck!