Last landline in America

So I have a thing about being thrifty. I hate spending money. If I weren't married, I'd have died years ago from lack of food or something silly. I think my wife's willingness to share trivial things like her leftover Papa John's is why I fell for her. I'd never would have bought something that luxurious. $5 for a mere meal seemed too much when I was used to living on 1)rice, 2)oatmeal, 3)Brita water, and 4)coffee, where $5 would get me through a week. I actually may have only went grocery shopping once while in grad school. My parents brought foodstuffs when they visited a few times. A six pack of toilet paper lasted me the entire year.

I may be exaggerating, but I seriously didn't eat anything that could spoil. I was lactose intolerant after a year from not eating anything dairy. I remember thinking I was going to die from gas around my birthday, and it was because of an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. I had a borrowed mini-fridge, a microwave, a toast-r-oven and a coffee maker. My kitchen was a card table in the corner of a 12 by 12 room that used to be part of another apartment but since had a private entrance to a hallway and its own bathroom, the connecting doorway to the main apartment was boarded over.

Rent was $249 a month, including utilities except for phone and water. My neighbor paid my electric bill since he had the main portion of the apartment from which my was sealed off. I had free dial-up internet and I got a few stations with the rabbit ears. I didn't own a car. I walked everywhere. I don't think I had my bike there.

Not much to remember. Makes me wonder what J was thinking when she said yes to my proposal.

Anyways, I've adjusted to spending money on things deemed reasonable by J. We don't spend much on frills when you consider we spend less than $40 a month on DSL, Netflix, and Sunday Paper. We have a landline that is roughly $31 month after having gone up a few times in the past 6 years, but we bundle our dumb phones and DSL to where we don't pay a too hateful amount. We need phones. With children, it's best to have a landline in case of an emergency.

I frequently get the urge to shop around for cheaper plans, but  I usually find myself saying I HAVE the cheapest plans without going a flaky route like StraightTalk or whatever those Walmart phone plans are.  I will check out Clark Howard and see what he says, but he says some sketchy things at times.

I remember him saying something like there's an app that turns a iPod into a phone through Google Voice. It was a while ago, but it popped into my head the other night and I looked into Google Voice and set up my own number.

I was really bummed that it appears that you have to OWN a phone to use the damn thing, though they give you a number that can be used for forwarding to any phone. I might be missing something but I was hoping to just use wi-fi to make calls like I saw a guy use a MagicJack app on his tablet.

Regardless, the Google Voice number is local which got me thinking, and I figured that I could forward to my parents phone thus making a call to their house a "free" local call and not use minutes from my cell when I call them. It works, so I can call them guilt-free whenever rather than only on weekends(they are asleep well before peak hour end).

Hmm... I wonder what I would be like if I'd never married. It's a scary thought.