Day Seven

I have had an email account with Earthlink for over a decade. When everyone was changing over to "free" email addresses at yahoo, gmail and the likes, I stayed firm with Earthlink. They offer this program called Earthlink Mailbox which is similar to MS Outlook. I liked that I could send and receive emails and have them be stored in this nifty program for later "offline" reading and responding.

Well, a few weeks ago, I got a new computer because my "old" one was being rather pokey... and Dell had a really good offer. (Remember when computers used to cost almost the same as a small car?)

The new computer has Windows 7. The Earthlink software is not compatible with Windows 7. I tried setting up the MS Outlook program installed on my computer to download my messages but, alas, I've been unsuccessful with getting it to work.

I spent a tortuous 30 minutes chatting up a technical assistant via online the other night, trying to get him to help me figure out why it doesn't work. Bottom line, nothing he told me to do works.

So, I decided that I'm not going to pay them $20 a month for a service that doesn't work. Tonight, after work, in a fit of frustration after having my email program shutdown three times while trying to send one blinking email, I chatted up another agent and asked them if they had anything that allowed me to just use their webmail service and keep my earthlink email address. They said yes -- for $5 a month.

So I downgraded. That's $15 a month in savings. The pitfall is that I no longer have the luxury of composing emails offline. But, $15 is $15.

If you're keeping track, with the $12 a month I'm saving on cable, I now have $27 a month to put towards my goal of being in a different "place" a year from now. (A year less one week, if you want to be technical.)

I bought a lottery ticket for tomorrow's mega millions jackpot. I brought home all of my personal belongings from work in anticipation of the win and eventual spontaneous resignation from work so that I can buy a sailboat and sail the world.