By: Revanche

Net Worth: May 2014

May 15, 2014

Change from April: 2% increase

Change from January: 30% increase

It has been a very strange four weeks since the last update. PiC’s been swamped at work, working longer and longer hours. I’ve been swamped with work and juggling multiple non-work projects, some old, some new, none of which that I can actually talk about yet. But it’s all a lot of work and taking up so much brainspace while it doesn’t feel like there’s anything to report back. I’ve been saving money, spending money to make money, etc. Ye-up.

*

Abby’s post, Chocolate for breakfast, made me smile because in a lot of ways, that’s pretty much what’s happening here. I’m sleeping badly, working through the fatigue and just had a candy bar for breakfast because the recent heat wave has made my body swell up like Violet Beauregarde.

May itself has been a painful month, physically and otherwise. Two heat waves have my joints in total revolt, so I’m barely functional. Just barely. Mother’s Day always makes me even more antisocial than ever, but the day after I can usually remember the supportive, surrogate mother people in my life.

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Nevertheless there’s been some MONEY progress:

Insurance

– have gotten a whole array of quotes for all our policies and am just a couple decisions away from getting the whole thing sorted. Rates went up thanks to my dad making a bad decision after getting ticket, and some mysterious extra charge on PiC’s auto insurance that I have to get them to correct and refund the difference.

Investing

– have made huge inroads into research, thanks to a really really good friend helping me. Usually I fly solo on these things but I’m no fool, if someone’s an expert and willing to talk me through things, hell yes I’m going to listen.

Cutting cable

– it used to be for PiC but now that I use the tv way more, I’ve been looking for a good compromise since we don’t see a lot of the up to the minute shows anyway and the channels we do have are crap.

1) I roadtested the Google Chromecast HDMI Streaming Media Player on Kelly’s (Alterations Needed) advice, but it didn’t work out.

The price point was perfect ($30-35 on Amazon); the size and portability was exactly what I wanted (just a USB stick sized doohickey); and you can stream directly from your computer.  Set up was dead easy. However, for us, it would only ‘cast Amazon Prime from my work computer as my other computers are too old; I’m not yet prepared to add a streaming service (Hulu, Netflix) yet, AND upgrade our internet, the streaming speed couldn’t handle ‘casting or give us a more than half-decent picture. So while we would have started saving 1 month after cancelling cable, it wasn’t a good enough substitute.

2) I then roadtested the Roku 3 Streaming Media Player on Katie’s (@grlredballoon) suggestion and that has been 85% good. It was $90 on Amazon for the device and an HDMI cable; I don’t love the cable being visible but the device itself is tiny. It was very easy to set up and I can stream just from Amazon Prime now, and choose to add whatever other service in six months after the device has paid for itself and actual savings have been recouped.

Comparing the numbers against each other, it may seem like I’d still be saving more with the Roku at $30+$10/month for any streaming service right off the bat but I don’t think it’d resolve the internet problem; the Roku has hiccuped a few times but not with the frequency that the Chromecast did.

Cable: 34/month = 408/year
Chromecast: 35 (device)+ 10/month (streaming service) = 155/year + internet upgrade
Roku: 90 (device) + 10/month (6 mos streaming service) = 150/year

I’d love to upgrade our internet to something that’s actually good but the cheapest non-Comcast, non-AT&T option that I’ve found runs $170/month which is far too rich for my blood at this point.

I’ll settle for saving $200/annually for the moment and worry about the internet later.

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Eventually, this month-long horrors that is my worthless barely functioning shell of a body experience has to settle down… eventually. *grump*

I hope you’re all having a much much better time of it than I!

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