Posts Tagged ‘finance’

Comcast Treated Me Right

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’m in the process of cut­ting what bills I can.  Cable tele­vi­sion is one of those things that we con­sider a lux­ury, not really nec­es­sary to sur­vival.  We watch a lot of TV via ser­vices like Hulu now anyway.

So I called Comcast and after a few notices about how I shouldn’t worry about the dig­i­tal con­ver­sion and a cou­ple of menu options,  I got a very cour­te­ous sup­port per­son.  I told her I wanted to can­cel my TV por­tion of my pack­age but keep the internet.

“Sir, may I ask why?”

“Well, unfor­tu­nately, I was laid off from my job on Friday, and I need to cut costs as best I can.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said, sound­ing really quite gen­uine.   She looked at my account and made a sug­ges­tion that I should  go to a basic pack­age which would be about $16 a month.

“How much of a total sav­ings would that be, I’m kind of bad at math while on the phone,” I said.

“One moment,” she answered.  But before should could give me the total, she added, “You’ve been a good Comcast cus­tomer.  I’m going to lower your high speed to $19.95, but only for six months.  So your total bill would be $40.93.”

“Thank you so much,” I said.  “Hopefully I will find a new job in the next six months.”

“I know it’s hard out there,” she said. Then we pro­ceeded to have a chat about her son-​​in-​​law look­ing for a job as well, and then she told me that I really should watch American Idol tonight, and seemed excited that she had saved me the abil­ity to do so.  I laughed politely and thanked her.

The first part was nice, noth­ing unusual. Just a reten­tion spe­cial­ist doing her job.  But when she took down my high speed inter­net to $19.95 for 6 months, just to help me out, that’s where I was impressed.  All told, my cable bill went from $106.23  to $40.93, for a sav­ings of  $65.30  for the next six months.  And we just lose some TV chan­nels we weren’t watch­ing much of  anyway.

Thanks, Comcast.  You’ve made my day a lot bet­ter by hav­ing done this. I appre­ci­ate it, and if you folks would just stop mess­ing with BitTorrent traf­fic, you would have a life­long customer.

My Plan to Survive the Financial Apocalypse

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Did you know you can buy a 3500 square foot home with 20 acres, three ponds, and a fruit tree orchard in Kansas for under $200,000, and still be a short drive from Kansas City?

So here’s my ten­ta­tive plan if we see a new depres­sion.  This plan is pred­i­cated on my abil­ity to keep my own job at least for a while… but if things turn bad every­where and I’m employed, I am lean­ing towards buy­ing good prop­erty out­side Kansas City and set­ting about grow­ing all our own food.

The orchard would be edi­ble through the sum­mer and then any­thing we don’t eat, we’ll can.  We’ll plant an acre or two of veg­eta­bles.  Chicken coop for meat and eggs.  A cou­ple of pigs.  A cow for milk and a cou­ple of beef cows. To sup­ple­ment, hunt­ing and fish­ing, for as long as that can be done.

I’m a total farm nerd and I had no idea.  It’s almost excit­ing to con­tem­plate try­ing to grow my own food, or at least a good chunk of it.

Anyone I know who’s look­ing at home­less­ness, fam­ily, friends, whatever–they would be invited to stay at the Tolbert Farm.  It’s not a com­mune if there isn’t reli­gion involved, right?

In all seri­ous­ness, the events of the past few months have hit home for me the impor­tance of a local com­mu­nity that could be self-​​sufficient.  The bail out seems to have done noth­ing to the stock mar­ket.  I sup­pose those com­pa­nies are able to still make pay­roll for a while, but how much fur­ther do we have to fall?  How much higher is unem­ploy­ment going to climb?  I don’t feel like we’re through this by a long shot.  Nor do the American peo­ple to judge by the ques­tions last night.

What are your plans to sur­vive a depres­sion?  Are you think­ing about it?  Is it a ridicu­lous idea?  Am I overly para­noid? Maybe.  But I was read­ing arti­cles about this credit melt­down over a year ago and shar­ing them with friends and won­der­ing what was going to hap­pen.  Those arti­cles turned out to be true, or if any­thing, to under­es­ti­mate the problems.

Writing more than ever feels like a lux­ury.  Hell, blog­ging feels like a lux­ury.  Electricity.

Right now, I’m keep­ing my head down.  Trying to pay off our remain­ing debt as fast as pos­si­ble.   And keep­ing the above pos­si­bil­ity in the back of my head.  I’ve read too much post-​​apocalyptic SF not to look at this sit­u­a­tion and try to think about what to do if it gets worse.