Debt Total War

You can reduce your monthly communications costs significantly by bundling services with the same provider. We classify communications as:

• Internet Service
• Telephone Service
• Cable TV Service
• Mobile Phone Service

We got rid of our cable TV years ago but had for a long time our internet service through Shaw and our telephone service through Telus. By switching our phone over to Shaw and bundling it with our internet service we were able to save on average $25/mth which when multiplied over a year is $300.00. Now I’ll admit that we’re a little old fashioned in that we keep a “landline” phone when in all honesty we could get by just fine with Kana’s mobile phone (I also have a phone provided by work but if it wasn’t provided by work I would not have one). However, the point is that there are options when looking to reduce your monthly communications costs. You could get rid of cable and just have NetFlix.

I’ve never really seen the point in a smart phone…or GPS for that matter because I don’t like trusting computers (but that is another story). Let me digress a little….when Kana and I moved to Japan in 2004 we went to get mobile phones (this was before the iPhone which came out in 2007) and the sales person was going on about the camera, the video options, the texting….and I said “Kana could you ask her if it is a phone?”. Kana asked and the sales person who looking a little puzzled said “Yes it is a phone”. I said “Good let’s buy 2!”. I wanted a phone and I wanted the cheapest one…the cheapest one to purchase and the cheapest monthly rate.
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One of the biggest weekly/monthly expenses is groceries. Groceries are not optional without food you will die, but the price you pay for food can be optional depending on your location (e.g.: in cities there are way more choices than in the rural countryside).

Back in 2007 we made the choice to shop for groceries at our local Safeway because they had a member discount program and because we collected AIR MILES. This decision was also compounded by the fact that we bought our gas at Shell which also was an AIR MILES retailer and on the way to Safeway. The AIR MILES really came in handy over the years as we cashed in miles for a new vacuum cleaner, a king sized duvet, a home phone set, a DVD player, a Blu-Ray player and more.
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Once one comes to the sobering conclusion that they are in fact slaves to money and they need to declare “DEBT TOTAL WAR”, the question then becomes: “Where do I/we go from here?”.

The first step in unleashing debt total war is to understand where your money is going. This is best accomplished by creating a Monthly Summary. This is the first weapon in the arsenal of financial freedom.

We began a monthly summary in 2007 shortly after moving back from Japan. We were amazed at how poorly we understood where our money was going until we started capturing it and looking at it through the lense of a holy warrior. Suddenly our enemy’s finger prints could be seen…and of course, the enemy was us! When we looked at the numbers we were actually adding about $65.00/mth onto the credit card debt. Knowledge is power…and applying that knowledge to our monthly finances became very powerful indeed. During the course of debt total war we went from going $65 further into the hole to paying off $1000 of debt each month.
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