Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Congrats Andrew and Laura!

Welcome Evie Jane Stacy to the world. Laura and Andrew became parents last night in Memphis, and we're so happy for them. Look at that hair!


If you were at our wedding, you may remember from his memorable approach to the dance floor. If you weren't at our wedding, where were you? Seriously?!?! You would rather do that than come to our wedding?

Thursday, October 9, 2008

A lesson in Frugality

Katie and I have been on a money-saving tear lately (except for buying a new car.....whoops) and it all started with a little tip from the Nunley. We were at their house and talking about Comcast and how expensive they are, and he told me that you can just call them and ask for a lower monthly bill, and they will do it.

At first, I was a little skeptical. But after some internet research, the approach was proving itself to work for others. So, unless you like paying more money than you should, you should pick up the phone and call your cable provider and ask for lower rates.

The way I did it was this:
- Call Comcast (either the local number or the toll-free 800 number)
- From there, I would recommend going into the "If you want to cancel service...."
The reps that answer the phone in that department are usually going to offer you more to keep your business with Comcast.
- Once they answered, I basically told them I thought I was paying too much and was thinking about switching companies. After less than 5 minutes of talking about where to trim, we have cut off $34 a month from our bill forever, and they also threw in a $15 credit for the next 6 months. I think they called it a "Customer appreciation" credit.

We lost everything between channels 100 and 200....saved us $16 a month. Sorry Encore, your movies just aren't worth it.
We also downgraded our internet package to something slower and haven't noticed a difference yet.....saved us $18 a month.

$50 bucks a month in our pockets for the next 6 months? I think so. If you have tried this, leave your story in the comments. If you haven't tried it, what are you waiting for?!?!


I think we're on our way....

Saturday, October 4, 2008

I think Hell may have frozen over

Because we actually bought a car!  After a long day of looking and thinking and looking some more, we finally did it, we bought a new (to us) car!  I really didn't think this day would ever come, but it finally has.  I really am still in shock that we actually did it, but I'm also very proud of us.  As you all know, we certainly did not enter into this lightly and we took our sweet time deciding on what kind of car to get, how much to spend, and most importantly when we would actually get one.  

We started out this morning around 10:30 and headed to Carmax to look around, test drive a few Pilots, and see how much (if any) money they would give us for Justin's truck.  We were presently surprised by their offer and felt that it would just be easy to sell it to them whether we ended up getting a car from them or not.  We saw a few we liked that actually turned out to be close to our price range once we calculated in the trade-in value, but we still wanted to look elsewhere.  We had seen one at Carsmart, "home of the half-priced car" and wanted to check it out.  So we drove to Hendersonville and were there long enough to find out that somebody else had bought that car early this morning.  They had one other really nice Pilot, but totally out of our price range and the guy we talked to was not even interested in trying to get us to look at it.  It's probably for the best, because we both would have really liked it and could have ended up spending more than we could.  So...we called Joe at Carmax and told him we wanted one there and headed home to get the truck ready to turn in.  Luckily, the bank was accommodating and we were able to go sign the papers to become "slave to the lenders" as Justin called it.  We headed to Carmax and picked up our new ride!  After taking it by the Farmer's and the Joneses' to show it off, we were finally home by 6:00.  Did I mention it was a long day?  

It was a long day, but totally worth it.  We have been blessed with the cars that we've had up to this point (despite a lot of the work that they've needed, they have gotten us to the places we need to be) and we are blessed with good jobs that allow us to be able to get a good quality car that will hopefully take us many, many miles over the years to come.  If you ever need a ride and are in the Nashville area, don't hesitate to ask.  It seats 8!