I have always marveled at all the things you can do on the Internet. The creativity that people express is absolutely mind boggling and the fact that the majority of it is free never ceases to amaze me.
The latest thing that I’ve gotten a lot of entertainment from is Facebook. You know it’s probably a site that is near death when 37 year old men are flocking to it, never mind the 60+ year old women. But the fact of the matter is, it’s GREAT!
For absolutely no charge, I have reconnected with a few people from high school and old neighborhoods. I now have a voyeuristic view of well over 200 people that I’ve often wondered about. I can be entertained playing “Mafia Wars” or spend hours looking through old friends profiles or searching for other lost friends and neighbors. The total cost of this is zero.
I also love to save money. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without the Internet when it comes to saving money. By making a large number of stores and people accessible to me, it has driven the prices down on many things I buy, including even my cereal (think: Amazon.com). by using the Internet to check prices, I have saved thousands of dollars.
I even use the Internet to help me lower the price of my Internet service. By checking out competitors to my cable company, I can use that knowledge as leverage to ask for a lower rate.
Could I live without the Internet? Sure. Would I keep it at the expense of many other things? You bet. I’d cancel my cel phones, Netflix, cable TV, Home delivery of milk, or just about any other non-essential service we use.
The Internet is pushing farther and farther in to my life and I’m gaining more and more value from it. I now have the Internet in the palm of my hand with my Iphone. With this I have saved even more money to help offset the cost of the phone and service. Whenever I’m looking at any sort of significant expense in a store I pull out my Iphone and use an application called “Red Laser“. It acts as a barcode scanner and then looks up all the online prices for the item it just scanned. I instantly have upwards of 10+ places to compare prices at. A friend of mine just used the same app to save $40 on a tv mount. He pointed out to the store that he could buy it online and they matched the price right there on the spot! It could have never happened without the Internet.
I’m also saving upwards of $10 a month on postage and checks. I no longer have to mail checks to the companies that I do business with. I save on checks and I save on postage, all because I use the online Billpay service (for free) at my credit union.
Not only am I saving money on the things I buy, but I’m also making money on the Internet. This blog brings in a bit of money, but even more importantly, I make my living over the Internet. I work for a large company and work from home about 95% of the time. I’m saving hundreds of dollars a month on fuel and wear and tear on my vehicle by not having to drive in to an office every day. On top of that, I’m improving my quality of life by not having to spend hours in traffic.
It’s almost a crime that I’m so diligent about calling to get my cable and Internet prices lowered every 6 months. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m getting so much value out of having an Internet connection, maybe I should just pay full price! Any chance that’s going to happen? Not likely…… :)