to get, or not to get that is the question of today.

So. As many of you don't know, or may know, we use Cricket for our phone service. This has worked out well for me for the past 8 years as they have unlimited almost everything. I don't know many people outside of Utah, so I didn't need long distance, and the phones have worked well every where. Well.... almost everywhere. The house we live in is located in a cul-de-sac. It's not even a big cul-de-sac, but it seems to be the dead zone. It's been hard for us to get calls, make calls, continue calls. It's like a vail is over the entrance and once past the entrance all Cricket service is subject to the whims of fate. If a cloud goes overhead the call drops. If I move two feet to the left, the call drops. If I sneeze, the phone goes silent and if I don't get my head back in place, you guessed it. The call drops. I have put up with this simply because Cricket service was cheap. really. We have a "house" phone. It's with vonage which we have been with for over 5 years. Oddly enough I have discovered that customer loyalty means nothing I guess. In the past years the price of the Cricket has gone up slightly (who the hell still charges $5.00 a month for voicemail?). And Vonage has gone up slightly too. (taxes). I think companies should follow the insurance companies and give some sort of discount for every year you are with them. Anyway..... So a month or two ago, (time slips away from me these days), our good friends the Poens, decided to get new mobile (I still call them cell) phones. They went with Sprint and got really nice phones. Dan says to me: "Hey how come our phones don't do that?" meaning Internet etcetera. I said: "because we don't pay $150.00 a month". But... that got me to thinking. We pay $96.00 a month for Cricket, and $36.00 a month for Vonage. That is: $132.00 a month. If we went with Sprint, (where we could get cool phones), it would only be a difference of $18.00 a month. With Sprint, we both would have nationwide calling (I currently do not have long distance w/Cricket as it's an additional $5.00 per month), unlimited mobile to mobile no matter what carrier the other person is with, and ta-da! Internet access. I figure that right there is worth the 18 bucks. then my good friend Jill told me that our work offers a discount. So hopefully that will bring the price down even farther. We know because of the Poens that Sprint service is excellent in our house/cul-del-sac. So I am happy camper. We get rid of Vonage and Cricket, and get nice cell phones. BUT, the hard part is of course the shelling out money for the new phones. $300.00 for two Evo Shifts. Plus you need accessories. We both would like Bluetooths. And covers. The next item to decide on is out TV. We currently have comcast. I HATE paying that much for TV that I don't use. By this I mean, I watch up to 20 channels. I don't watch them constantly, but I like certain shows on each channel. However in order to get those channels I have to pay $63.00 a month BEFORE the fees and taxes and charges for equipment. Total Bill for TV portion is about $102.00 a month. It just seems ridiculous. So I have been researching getting satellite. I think I have decided going with Dish Network. They have a deal for $50.00 a month for the package that will give us the channels we like, for 12 months, and then it goes up to $70.00 for another year. But we get the equipment for the service for free, and it's only a small fee to upgrade the equipment to DVR. I estimate I can save about $20.00 to $30.00 a month for the first year, and break about even for the second. We will still keep comcast for our Internet, as Dan really likes the broadband, but we need to cut costs somewhere. Now I just got to come up with the funds to get all this started.......