Hey everyone!
Mat and Danielle here from Exploring Alternatives.
In this video, we're going to talk to you about how we've been living without cell phones
for 5 years.
It might sound a little bit nuts that we haven't had cell phones for 5 years but it is true.
Before we sold our house and started doing all these big lifestyle experiments, we started
off with some really small ones like getting rid of our cell phones.
So 5 years ago we decided we wanted to save more money and we owned a house so we couldn't
really get rid of that expense at the time so we tried to think of other smaller ways
that we might be able to save money and our cell phone bill...we each had one and combined
it was costing us about $130/month which was pretty expensive when you added it up at the
end of the year for us because our money was already pretty tight at the time.
So we thought, let's just get rid of both of them, we'll cancel them and see what happens.
Yeah, see how it goes.
And then we'll set aside the money that we're saving from not having cell phones and then
at the end we'll start accumulating a little bit of savings.
And it was actually kind of a scary thing to do because we were really attached to our
cell phones.
We used them a lot and we were really used to having them in our lives.
Especially, I mean you were even crazier than I was.
Danielle couldn't leave the house without it.
She had had a cell phone for so much longer so it was a big decision to make.
It was kind of tough.
I still remember the first day that we walked out of the house without our cell phones and
we just felt really naked.
We just thought, what if we need to look up something.
What if we need to look up the bus time for, you know, for us to get home or...
if we need to call each other to meet up.
So before cancelling them we came up with a few different plans to make sure that getting
rid of our cell phones would work.
We decided that we would just get really good about planning and communicating together.
So we would make plans and then let's say we were going to meet up somewhere, we would
have a plan B just in case that didn't work.
Ok we'll go home if we don't see each other or we'll meet here.
And basically our idea was that we would just...we still have computers and we have an iPod touch,
and with those we can always hook up to WiFi in cafes or wherever.
And we can still communicate like that and so when we make plans with ourselves or with
people we just plan ahead of time and use emails and messages in Facebook to communicate.
And then there's always that backup like, if it doesn't work out, don't worry, no one's
going to be upset.
And I think just planning that ahead and knowing we wouldn't get upset if things didn't work
out because we couldn't text each other or call each other.
That just made it a lot easier.
Looking back we probably should have had that conversation with our family and our friends
because I think they found it really frustrating to have us just kind of cut communication
with them without you know, explicitly saying these are the alternative ways that we want
to communicate with you.
But it's been 5 years now and we're working it out.
We rarely need phones.
Yeah, now we're really used to not having it.
We almost never think about it.
Every once in awhile if we're trying to find a friend or trying to find each other we think
oh, it would be nice right now if we had cell phones but most of our lives now, we've completely
forgotten that it's even a possibility for us.
And it's been totally fine.
And what's amazing is that it's...we calculated that it saved us, in 5 years, approximately
$8,000 CAD.
Which is a pretty huge amount of money.
Yeah it's pretty impressive how much money we've been able to save without too much sacrifice.
Like you said, we don't really notice it that much anymore.
And if we ever do need a phone we can use a pay phone or a friend's phone or Skype.
We've got all kinds of alternative ways that we can communicate and we'll probably make
a video about how we live without a cell phone in case someone else is interested in that.
But we're not really trying to convince anyone that they should get rid of their cell phones
because we loved our cell phones when we had them and we can recognize how convenient they
can be if you have kids or if you have a job where you need a phone.
Of course not everyone can get rid of them.
It's just...we just wanted to show you some examples of small things that we've done over
the years to help us spend less money and to have more freedom, and be less tied down
by responsibilities like a regular monthly cell phone bill.
Thanks for watching this video, we hope you liked it.
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