Maybe it’s just me… but I tend to ascribe value to time spent on pretty much everything.
Say a man is on £20* an hour. If he spends 6 hours on the internet comparing the prices of flights to save £25, in my books that is a loss of £95.

Here we are in the Phablet Generation. Not so much cool as a necessity for old eyes. That is the un-coolest thing ever. Photo: hardwarezone.com.sg
Let’s just say for the record that this same man, on £20* an hour, spends a further 10 hours (£200) researching a deal on “unlimited” data plans on 2 cellphones that cost £36 a month currently (£432/year each) and comes up with a deal for “unlimited” data for 2 new phones at £15 a month (£180/year each). That would be a potential savings of about £252 a year each. That savings of £504 sounds impressive until you subtract the time it took to sort it all out: Now our savings are down to £304 for the year, not inclusive of the 2 new handsets purchased to make it all happen. (Let’s not even talk about how much that cost…)
But we have cheap UNLIMITED DATA!
Only trouble is, these are not actually “unlimited,” in that you cannot toggle from your phone without being censured by a network suspension of 30 minutes minimum on account of you should not (according to the gods of “unlimited” data) toggle your phone to a computer. Ever. Goodness, if one did this, people everywhere would toss their routers out the window and toggle to their phones for … EVERYTHING. The internet would crash. The world would end.
So let us just suppose our hypothetical hero has saved his wife a bit of money on her phone (not inclusive of expensive new handset!), yet she has had to endure about £1,000,000.000 worth of grief on account of the other “deal” he has spent 20 hours (£400) researching: A new broadband provider.
Since hero and wife live in a rural location (I cannot, obviously, reveal the exact details of WHO I am discussing on account of the Data Protection Act and all), their previous broadband was provided by the national carrier, and though they were never able to achieve the stellar lightening-fast speeds of the in-town dwellers, they could at least upload photos to their blog or open their Facebook page in under 3 minutes.
So, whilst said NEW PROVIDER is charging £3 a month for the first year which will increase to £13 after the first 12 months (as opposed to the previous £15 a month with the national carrier, a savings of £144 for the first year and £24 for successive years), hero and wife are forced to endure internet speeds roughly on par with those of 1994. Otherwise known as “dial-up” speeds.
Now, that is time and energy well spent.
Mother Hen
*Not his real salary… Now, that WOULD be telling, wouldn’t it?
feature photo: Shutterstock
© motherhendiaries 2014 all rights reserved
My partner, Wild Thing, has a phone with internet access, which gives out a nifty whistle every time she receives a text and has coffee- and toast-making capabilities. However, since we live in the middle of nowhere, she can almost never get a signal. It took her the better part of a year to get whatever company she pays for the privilege of having it to reset it so that she can actually answer a call, because they were going straight through to voice mail. It needs to be charged up every time she walks to the store. (Okay, I exaggerate, but only slightly.) I haven’t asked how much the damned thing costs per month.
I have a phone that’s just a phone. I pay per call. Most of the time, it works and holds a charge from New Year’s Day till Christmas.
I do try not to gloat.
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Ellen you make me laugh! 🙂 Poor Wild Thing… all that technology, so little signal. Actually, my lack of toggle capability would not have been a problem if our router had a decent speed. But, having had my hand unceremoniously slapped by Giffgaff for daring believe it was possible to send an email via toggle, I am pretty disenfranchised with all technology at the minute. My Phablet is gorgeous, though. I can’t complain about that. Especially with these old lady eyes of mine. I can ACTUALLY read texts now. 🙂
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