Cell Phone

Joe and I sat down to figure out our budget last year when we knew that we would be beginning Graduate school. We discussed options for slimming down our expenses to decrease the financial stress that we would be under and one of the ideas that we came up with was getting rid of one of our cell phones and just sharing the remaining one. Crazy!! Everybody needs a phone. Or so we thought. Since switching to a single cell phone we have become so much less dependent on it! One of the first things we notice when we downgraded was that whoever wasn't using the phone suddenly didn't have access to the time. This was an easy fix, we both got watches. After that we were worried about how to stay connected with one another through out the day. After doing some research we discovered that we can send text messages to one another's email accounts and vise verse. Usually when we are apart from each other, Joe is at school and I am at home. Since both places have a computer we can stay connected pretty easily. The cell phone is usually left with whoever has plans to be running around town that day. As the weeks have gone by, we have gone from always questioning each other about where the cell phone is to forgetting about its existence most of the time. Two or three days can go by where it stays on our dresser because neither of us thinks that we need it when we go out. It might seem kind of strange, but we really feel like there is a level of freedom associated with not being so dependent on cell phones. Especially now that many cell phones now come with features that allow you to stay connected with all of your internet resources. It is kind of amusing to watch our friends when they come over, and see them scanning through facebook while we are playing games or checking their emails during dinner. They do not even seem to realize that they are fiddling with their phone while they are doing it! I  can definitely understand how handy internet access would be, but really now, does anybody need access to twitter 24/7?