Tag: football

5 Steps for Maintaining a Healthy Relationship While Dealing with Financial Difficulties

Dave Johnson1 Comment

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Quick Update: This serves as my final apology of the week for the wonky schedule in posting over the past few days. I’m back from New York now, and next week should return to a totally regular cadence and format. Thank you!

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I often feel weird writing this blog. The reason being is that I am in a pretty decent amount of debt, and yet I’m writing a blog that essentially gives advice on how to deal with debt. It’s like a person who was born with their arms taped to their body giving advice on how to throw a badass fastball, or a person with nothing but a loaf of bread in their hands trying to give guitar lessons on how to properly shred.

What I am decent at however is marriage and maintaining a long and healthy relationship, so let me get someone to cut this tape off of me so that I can eat this bread and we can get started!

My wife and I got married at a very young age, and in August we will celebrate our 24th year of marriage. If you factor in the 3 years we dated, we’ve been together a LONG time!

We know that we’re in this for the long haul, no matter what. One of us will most likely need to put the other in the ground (we all know I’m the one dying first) and that’s the only thing that will put an end to our relationship in any kind of physical way.

So regardless of how we might bicker or fight at times, we know that neither of us are going anywhere. We love each other a great deal. We are soulmates.

When it comes to finances, and being in a less-than-ideal financial situation, it’s bound to put some stress and pressure on a relationship. There is going to come a point where the money is finite enough and you both see the importance of a particular way or thing to spend it on, and that leads to conflict. Conflict in turn leads to… “healthy discussions.”

We have had many such “discussions,” and the fireworks that go right along with them.Read More »

The Ballad of Satellite Television

Dave Johnson3 Comments

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The woman in the Billing department sang a totally different tune. That first lady was singing the sh*t out of “Kumbaya,” and now I was speaking to a woman who was singing me Slipknot tunes. She told me that she couldn’t reverse any of the charges, and that I owed the full amount on the bill. That was it.

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I’m a HUGE NFL football and Seattle Seahawks fan. I was born right around the time that the Seahawks were first introduced into the league in the 70s, and I remained a fan all throughout our really tough years right into our super competitive years of late.

See… I’m even doing that “our” and “we” annoying thing where I speak as though I’m actually part of the team I root for.

Being an NFL nerd, I subscribed to a particular satellite service provider for 15 years because they offer NFL Sunday Ticket, which is an exclusive feature of their service that allows me to watch every game on Sunday, and not be restricted by just the games offered in my particular market.

The satellite provider has always been fantastic to me. They’ve always put forth great customer service, and I have honestly had no complaints about their services at all for the past 15 years.

Until I decided to cancel…

Back in January when we really put the hammer down on solving our debt crisis, we took a look at every single bill and cut everything that we didn’t absolutely need. One of the first things to go was satellite tv, because even without the pricey NFL Sunday Ticket package, our bill was over $200 a month.

I was still somewhat hopeful that our financial situation would miraculously improve enough to keep satellite, so instead of canceling the service entirely, I took them up on their offer to temporarily suspend the service until July. This meant I did not have a bill at all, and that in July the service would just turn back on and I’d keep watching.

But then something odd happened… I realized I didn’t really mind not having satellite TV.Read More »