This month I took a hard look at money coming in and money going out. The money going out exceed the money coming in. Thus, opening up my schedule to freelance editing clients. Then I went back to one of my rules from The Little Finance Book That Could: determine “wants” versus “needs.” A couple things immediately came to mind.
First, DVDs from Netflix. As much as I love getting them, I halved my Netflix bill by dropping that part of the service. We’re keeping streaming because the Husband uses Netflix streaming almost every single day. Thus, it is worth the cost.
Second, my Verio email/website account. This one is definitely a “want.” But it is also very hard to give up. I’ve had this account longer than I’ve known most of my friends—since 1994 when it was owned by a different company. Verio took it over in 2001 (I think). I’ve kept this account all that time. Over two decades.
But, I don’t really use the email or the website anymore. I have my own domain, www.jenniferbrozek.com, for the website and I use yahoo and gmail for my email addresses. The email address has been mostly used for the other accounts I’ve had for so long: Amazon, my bank, PayPal, etc… All these important accounts that, for the most part, I’ve already added 2nd and 3rd email accounts to.
In essence, my Verio account is like me having a paid storage locker filled with once needed books I never intend to read again, but it looks good on reference papers. Occasionally, I glance in it to make sure something important didn’t get lost there but otherwise, it’s useless to me. I’m just being a digital packrat. Or digital hoarder.
There’s a lot of emotions wrapped up in an email / web account I’ve had longer than all my nieces have been alive. At the same time that’s $300/year I don’t need to spend. So, I took a lot of time yesterday officially shifting the accounts to other primary email addresses I use on a daily basis.
This included a lot of swearing as my Live ID was also linked to the old email address. When I opened it up, it forced a merge with Skype which then locked me out of both. Yeah. Not fun. Luckily, the Husband was able to fix most of it remotely and finally fixed Skype by uninstalling and reinstalling it.
Now, I get to spend the next couple of weeks making sure that nothing important, that I’ve forgotten about, is linked to the Verio account and remind everyone (once more) to shift my email to one of the email accounts I actually use. Then, before the end of the month… I cancel the account.
It’s weird. It almost feels like I’m breaking up with someone. Untangling everything, dredging up old memories and forgotten lore. Having second thoughts then letting reason prevail. When I hit the “cancel” button, I can only hope that I didn’t leave something important behind to be lost to the digital void.
