New Passenger on the iPhone Bandwagon

I've been doing a pretty horrible job at keeping up with my blog. It isn't for lack of motivation or ideas, it is just lack of time.  I spend all day at work in front of a computer screen, the last thing I want to do when I get home is write blog posts. I'm having a ton of trouble keeping up with my movie blog also. I never wanted to have to put a lot of effort into my writing for either of my sites, and I am definitely struggling.  I've been doing this thing lately where I will start a post, but not have time to finish it.  When I come back later to complete my thought it seems totally stupid and I just scrap it.  I have been working on a post about The Social Network for almost 2 weeks now.  Every time I come back to it I end up deleting 80% of what I had.

Anyway. This week something happened that was a long time coming.  I finally signed up to pay for a cell phone data plan.  I have been avoiding it for the last several years, but it can be avoided no longer.  We are in a time in which a cell phone data plan is not required, but it sure does make things easier.  I will say that the idea of paying $25 a month extra makes me physically sick. I hate thinking about it, so I choose not to.  The mental anguish I am going through might be offset by the joy that I am getting from my new phone.  However, I did not get a phone.  My wife's phone crapped out this week so we went to the AT&T store and got her fixed up with a new shiny iPhone 4.  I still have a dumb-phone, and will at least until the iPhone 5 comes out.  We have both had iPod touches for the last 3 years, so we are pretty well ingrained into Apple's iOS ecosystem.  It would be tough for me to go with an Android phone, but I am definitely considering it. However, if the rumor is true and iPhone 5 has a 4" screen my decision will pretty much be made. I will be all over that.

It amazes me how many people have busted out their wallets and handed over a ton of cash for these data plans. A lot of people who have no business taking on that extra expense are lining up to give away their money to Verizon and AT&T. We haven't had a cent of debt for well over 3 years (except for our house). We haven't even had to make a car payment... and I am just now feeling okay with paying the extra dough for a data plan. We live comfortably, but also very frugally. The cheap-ass penny pincher inside of me is really struggling with the idea of bringing on any additional monthly account debits.  Don't even get me started on how big a ripoff text messaging is.  It gets me so fired up that even though we are paying $25 for a data plan, we have to shell out even more money for a few megs worth of text messages.  That is one of the biggest scams that is still somehow legal.  There are other options out there, but I will resign myself to being one of the sheep and paying the wireless companies way too much for poor voice quality and over-priced data plans. My stomach is starting to hurt just writing this post. At least I know I have a lot of fellow suckers to keep me company.