I’ll be the first to admit that this journey of revamping how I handle my finances, and trying to save money, is well… painful. I recently sent my brother a meme that was captioned, “I think the universe knew that I’d be too bloody powerful if I could do math.” Math scares me, and money is one of those things that I’ve always found deeply stressful. Like, it makes me cry or want to avoid it stressful. Put all of those things together and anything that involves money or financial contracts feels highly intimidating to me, and like the really stressful kind of adulting that I CAN do, but I never WANT to do. I’ve been doing a lot of that kind of adulting lately, while navigating the beginning stages of a career transition, and the associated costs of registration in a new profession, and so on. All that to say, my stress level in that area has been high, and my wanting to tackle it has been low.
I’m working on it, though, and today I went shopping for a new cell phone plan with my brother. I’ve stayed with the same phone carrier for over a decade, because I just hate negotiating and change that much. Conversely, he’s gotten good at that particular task, and offered to help me. So I basically tagged along as we toured the mall, stopping at the various cell phone kiosks, while he asked some basic questions and got some quotes for a plan where I’ll bring my own phone, since my current iphone is not yet in need of replacement.
After all that, we settled on a prepaid plan option that is saving me roughly $40/month over what I was paying with my longtime service provider. It means I have less data (but still more than I use in any one month), but has the upside of making my phone usable for the occasions every year or two where I travel to the United States to spend time with friends. When we finished shopping, we sat in the food court and talked through a couple other big decisions I have on my plate right now financially, and then I came home and took some action steps based on our conversation.
It was that kind of day – an adulting kind of day – but I feel accomplished, and like this win, though small to medium in the grand scheme of my financial situation, and like the other bits and bobs I accomplished today, and the like the reading project I wrote about in my last post, are wins that might actually add up to meaningful change, and that tiny bit of light and hope in the midst of a challenging situation feels amazing today.
Lisa From Canada 