Is the internet a luxury item?
Did you see the story about the 9 and 7 year old protesting the price of gas? It turns out their cable was the victim of family budget cutbacks due to the needed funds for the gas tank.
And while I admire the girls for their actions and realizing the severity of gas prices, I want to applaud the Vance family for taking more action than just using their car less.
The gas prices of today give me heart palpitations and sometimes, after I fill up the car, I don’t drive for an entire day thinking it will help keep some money in our wallet for a while longer. We take the bus more, drive in a more efficient manner, and try to pile all our errands into one big trip so we can lessen our car use. But what do you do once you have done everything you can?
Unfortunately it means taking a look at your family spending and seeing where you can cut back so you can still pay for the necessary things like shelter, food, and clothing. If that means cutting the cable, then so be it. In my mind, television is a luxury item.
Sure we use it and use it often (it is on right now), we enjoy the luxury of television. But if it comes to paying the cable bill and paying the grocery bill, I think cable is going to go. How many people think of it like that? How many people will ditch the Tivo, Netflix, or even the (gasp!) internet in order to rearrange their financial priorities to fill their gas tanks and pay the bills?
We used to swap luxuries in our house. During football season we had cable and used dial up for our internet. After football season was over, we went back to high speed internet and dropped the cable to extreme basic.
Let me know, do you think the internet is a luxury or a necessity? I am still on the luxury side of the fence. I haven’t utilized it to the potential of earning a paycheck from it and there is enough free wi-fi within walking distance that I could check my email every day if I wanted to. While I enjoy having answers at the tips of my fingers (thank you IMDB and Ask.com) I think my life would not suffer for lack of internet access.
Sure, our family would be sad to have to wait for updates and pictures, but I think (I hope) our families would respect our desire to pay the mortgage versus having access to 24 hour a day HGTV and YouTube.
So tell me: is the internet a luxury or a necessity?
June 25th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
In our house it’s probably a necessary luxury. I use it all the time for work and my husband uses it for school. Do we HAVE to have it? No. Would I cancel my service. No Way.
We haven’t had cable for well over 6 years. I rarely miss it.
June 25th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
If you have kids in the upper elementary grades or beyond and live in the boonies like me, it is a necessity. So many home work projects revolve around using the internet anymore. And some of the teachers ask that reports and essays be emailed to them. Sort of hard to do that without the internet. TV is absolutely a luxury but the internet I don’t believe is. Now that isn’t to say that it isn’t used to goof around. But without it I can think of at least one school project that we would have driven 45 minutes to a big library to find the resources to. Yep, necessity.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:20 am
It’s definitely a luxury in our house, even if paid blogging is my part-time job. There’s wi-fi available nearby, I have access to the internet at work, and if push came to shove and we needed extra money, the internet would be one of the first items on the chopping block.
editors note: I accidentally deleted this comment (sorry Corrin!) but I had it in my email so I c/p it back in.
June 26th, 2008 at 9:35 am
It’s definitely necessary for us at this time in our lives–with Tim about to start grad school, and me working on my dissertation.
But we live without cable, and it’s not so bad. We use Netflix, going to one of the lower plans when money is tight. It’s a luxury, but it’s really nice to have.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
if you’re not doing work that pays on the internet, it’s a luxury. you can always go tp dial up, which is cheaper, but does the same thing
how have we cut back? we go out to eat a little less, we make sure we use leftovers, i’m driving a little less, and on our big trip we’re about to take, we’ll look for other ways to save…cheaper snacks (bring them), or not pick up extra souveniers, etc… i’ve cut back on getting my smoothie once a week after my workout..saves $5.00 a week, $20.00 a month, which equals half a tank of gas…we’re cutting back by making our food budget go a little more, buying more generic, and buying in bulk or less spendy meat cuts…all the tiny cut backs don’t hurt, and they cover other higher costs going up
June 29th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Internet is not a luxury for my husband and I. We make enough online at this point that it pays for our cable internet, cable, and phone service.
Plus, it is our whole entertainment budget, so it’s a pretty good value on the whole. We don’t go out to fancy places to eat, rarely go to the movies, and don’t “shop” for excess cloths or other items.
Now, if it came down to it, we could go to basic cable instead of digital with DVR. Oh, how I would miss DVR. Sorry, dial up isn’t an option. Who has the time to waste.
The thing we do to save money that shocks most people is that we do not have cell phones. Not even prepaid. We don’t need ‘em.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:43 am
I just caught up on your blog since our computer was fried last week and we were without internet for about a week! This post made me smile.
I came to understand that the internet is a luxury for us. It was really really hard to do without and it would take a lot of adjustment and some sacrifices but we could do without it if we needed to.
The things that I missed the most:
- On-line bill pay and budget tracking
- Skype (being able to webcam at any time with my parents living in Holland)
- Pandora music channel
What I learned:
- It is easy to replace catching up with peoples lives through blogs or facebook or whatever with a good old-fashioned phone call. The truth is that much of what we perceive to be intimacy with people really isn’t because it is a one way conversation. I had some great phone chats with people last week. I even had the extra time to make some cards and send them the old-fashioned way, via mail!
- It is easy to waste so much time on the internet. I spent a lot of extra time with Aaron and my boys last week, that’s a good thing.
If it came down to food or the internet - the internet would go.