The cold snap is still with us

We had had a few days of snow this winter which is more than we have seen for a few years now. Personally I love it when it snows especially when everything grinds to a halt, and fondly remember the heavy winter snowfalls we used to have when I was a kid.
Winter for me is a time of cosy fireplaces, heated mattress pads, and hot drinks with the occasional excursion into the garden to play snowballs or build a snowman. Now that I live reasonably close to the coast, we rarely get snow, and when it comes it is often gone within hours.
We are still experiencing some winter cold, but the chance of any more snow is getting slimmer by the day. The only drawback to the cold for me is the aches and pains of middle age which are accentuated by the winter, and relieved with the afore-mentioned heated pads.

Twittering - what's it all about??

I finally found where my twitter/dNeero activation code was nestling on my dNeero profile (this will look like pure gibberish to many of you I have no doubt...), and am a fully-fledged twittering dNeero-ite now... Hopefully this will open up opportunities to drive my dNeero earnings relentlessly towards payout - rah!
If you are a twitterer, you can twitter me at username 'livewyre' - there's always something new, but I fear I might be getting too old for this brave new world....

latest activity

I seem to be back on track with paid postings now and will probably announce earnings of around $100 again this month. I was delighted to find that I had earned some affiliate money this month on another website, but will have to get some more under my belt before payout. Surveys have continued to generate a little, but I haven't had anything from dNeero from a while (and I have not yet reached payout!!). I even joined twitter in an attempt to get some more opps from dNeero, but nothing came of it...
In other news, I fitted my 'new' CPU last night and am pleased with the results so far, I am probably going to pursue a 'previously enjoyed' motherboard to significantly upgrade my 'spare' PC with the CPU I have just replaced... I have been having a lot of problems with my internet connection 'hanging' for quite a while now, so I bought a new network card from eBay (other PC's on the network had no such issue) and fitted it the same time as the CPU. It certainly seems to have fixed the problem, but it's one of those intermittent faults, so I won't really know until I have had a week or so with no further problems.
So all I need now is some advice on how to use twitter - do you use it? what is the most effective way of using it?

I turned down $100..

This week I was offered $100 via Text Link Ads at Linkworth, but as I was not happy that the adverts were appropriate for my website, I turned it down... This was definitely one of the best offers I have had, but the links would have had to be site-wide and I was reluctant to promote the subject of the link.
I have always had a policy for what I will and will not promote, and I would add that any links that you place on a site for revenue should ideally be in line with the general content or niche of your site. As a rule, off topic adverts are not likely to find you anyway, and I am still puzzled that I received this offer - but the fact remains that your visitors (if you are geared towards serving your visitors) would accept contextual adverts, but be less tolerant of off-topic adverts.
I have openly advertised my blogs for links, but have always advertised them as niches requesting niche links, I always think that random links somehow 'dilute' your content and the authority of your site.
I am sure there are plenty of paid bloggers who think I am crazy to turn down $100, and the fact that I have written about it demonstrates how much it pained me to turn it down. I am not sure that I would have turned down the link had it been for one of my blogs, but I think it's important for a website to maintain integrity if you have an 'audience' to serve. What do you think - Is there anything you wouldn't do for $100???

My internet spending

Of my two 'constructive hobbies' that I have recently talked about ie. computer-renovation and house-renovation, I have discovered an easy way to work out which is closest to my heart. Simply... which do I spend the most money on? hammers or instrument screwdrivers?, flooring joists or blank CDR's?, industrial clamps or computer RAM?
Unsurprisingly, my purchases indicate that playing with computers is more important to me than fixing up the house for the family. Although it is fair to say that when there are big bucks to be spent, it is the house that generates bigger one-off bills.
I remember buying decorative wooden coving for our dining room, the first room that I fully renovated (the one that I took the floor out of...), each length was about £30 and I think I used 5 lengths in all making this a very expensive project...especially when my wood-working skills leave so much to be desired..

My off-line pursuits

Anyone who reads my posts (if you can filter out the ads... ahem) will have an impression of someone who is always pulling their computer apart - which is true. But I am not limited to puling computers apart, oh no - in my 'spare' time I pull my house apart too!
Our house is still in a state of being 'done up' (you might be forgiven for thinking it had been 'done over'!) for the best part of ten years... In that time I have done quite a bit, but the things that remain undone are mostly very visible, whereas of the work that has been done, much has been invisible.
For instance, one of the first jobs that I undertook was the re-wiring of the house - you can't really see the results but at least the house was safe from that point on, and we now have enough outlets for all the appliances (I do believe that there are actually more than twenty five sockets in our kitchen!!).
We have aimed for wood flooring throughout by sanding down the original floor boards except where there were tiles (kitchen and hallway). The original tiles were evocative of the age of the house but were just too broken up and we have replaced both kitchen and hall tiles (admittedly we had a tiler in to do the floors, I wasn't allowed to have a go myself!). There was a point where I removed the carpet from the dining room, noticed some woodworm-eaten floorboards, so removed the floorboards. It then became obvious that the under-floor joists were also in a sorry state, so I took those out too until there was nothing left!! It took me about eighteen months to get around to putting it all back with brand new joists (I have the photo's somewhere...)
We are about half-way done but hopefully next half won't take another ten years .....

I crossed the line..

I got carried away, I actually spent some money out of my own pocket.... I was looking for a CPU upgrade for my main desktop and got involved in an eBay bidding fracas which extended beyond my Paypal means. I had to raid my current account to fund my purchases, all for a measly extra 400Mhz processor speed. I am now torn between going the whole hog and buying another motherboard (one that will hold 4GB as opposed to my current 2GB max) or raising enough funds to pay something back into my current account.
After the purchase, I checked my Paypal this morning, and would you believe it? I have been paid £20 overnight (thank you 'TheAdNetwork') and that would probably have been enough to cover the excess...
I think I need to be more disciplined and maybe see if the replacement CPU works, then I could put some money back into the bank before waiting until my earning are sufficient for a new mobo... I am not a patient man....and can ill-afford to be spending money made in the 'real' world when my Paypal money dries up.

Technology and Upgrades

I certainly do a great deal of shopping on the internet nowadays and this type of activity has grown considerably in the last year or two. One of the reasons is having access to funds that can be freely moved around the internet either via a credit card, online current account or good old Paypal. Having this type of financial freedom, a freedom that can cross currencies without difficulty, gives us all access to the latest technology at rock bottom prices such as the deals available on Cyber Monday or any one of many online stores.
I find myself browsing around these stores looking for prices comparisons on a range of products for which I have already an idea of cost, and it is not at all unusual to watch the price of these items dropping on an almost daily basis. I always tend to look at prices for USB memory sticks, hard-drives and SD cards, this type of technology is forever being superseded by newer higher capacity memory, hence 'last months' high spec memory is constantly being confined to the bargain bin.
If upgrades and technology in general interests you, the best thing you can do is sign up to an email notifier from one of these sites. I get an email every week from one of my favourite sites that gives me an overview of the latest bargains and I inevitably end up browsing their site for my old favourites.

More free software

I am delighted to be able to post again about free software that we can all find a use for. There was a time when shareware and freeware was 'clunky', unprofessional and hard to get to grips with. The range of freely downloadable applications is impressive and very often hard to tell from software that would cost a great deal.
I mentioned Syncback in the previous post about creating a back-up drive for my laptop, and I am happy to report that Syncback appears to offer all the facilities that I could possibly want for keeping my backup up to date.
The only drawback with this software that I can see is that backup of each folder needs to be scheduled as a separate job. Admittedly I have not spent a great deal of time playing with the settings, but I could not find a way of backing up multiple folders in the root of a hard-drive in one go. That said, once you set up the backups you want, you only need to schedule them and then you don't need to revisit the set-up screen ever again....
My task was to make sure that two folders (My Documents, and my web files) were updated on a daily basis on weekdays. In my case, the backup drive mirrors the hard drive exactly, so all I needed to do was select the folder I wanted to back up, set the destination and decide what sort of backup I wanted. The software allows for synchronisation as well as backup, so every possible type of backup is available. You can update from the destination, synchronise changes in either folder or as in my case, just look for updates to the source drive and copy them to the destination. Once the backup was configured, it just remained for me to schedule the task. Hourly, Weekly, Bi-weeekly, Monthly etc... tasks can be scheduled in an easy to use screen that has lots of options for stopping the back-up if the battery is in use, stopping the backup if it exceeds a set time etc. etc...
All I can say is if this does exactly what it says on the tin, I will be very happy with my latest piece of free software, if not, I'll be sure to update this post...
If you want to go looking for this, I would try searching for 'Syncback' and download it from the '2brightsparks' website. Naturally, they have paid-for versions too, so look out for the free version...

UPDATE 18/03/09 - I have now found the function for copying specific folders from a drive, the only drawback I can now see is that if you have multiple drives, you will need to create a separate backup profile for each drive (small amount of pain for excellent results). I now have this software running effectively on both a laptop and a desktop. I have also learned a lesson in backing up 'My Documents' IE. make sure you use the path which starts 'C:documents and settings', then select the specific 'my documents' for your profile - this seems to work far better than trying to select 'My Documents' as a source folder. Also I had to be careful how I selected the paths to make sure I was not saving folders within a folder of the same name, duplicating the backup within itself - turns out this is really easy to do when you're not paying sufficient attention to what you are doing...!

Online clothing for UK shoppers

The economic climate being what it is at the moment, there is no doubt that the companies that survive will be the companies that offer a good service at a good price. One of the best ways to be able to offer a good price is to have an online store which means a saving in overheads compared with a high street store. Passing those savings on to your customers will be the key to success as belts get tightened for at least the next 18 months or so.
Divine trash is one such entity a uk clothes shop offering savings online over the high street. After all, there will still be a demand for brands such as French Connection and Fenchurch even if the clothing budget has been dramatically squeezed.
Online shopping is here to stay as we see the demise of some of the major high street names, the best online stores will have a combination of:

• Great pictures which will make you feel that you have the clothes right in front of you
• Great prices which will appeal to the limited budget
• Great service which will keep you coming back for more.

It's not that an internet store-front is easy, you have to work hard to make it appeal to the internet shopper, but it a lot cheaper to make an appealing website than it is to build an appealing shop. We are so used to internet surfing now, that secure ordering online is set to become part of our everyday life.

What price a blog-post?

Well at the risk of being seen as a complete Pariah by Google, I admittedly have on the odd occasion blogged for cash... But the question is how much cash should we demand? The days of great paid blogging rewards were brief in my experience - I don't know how much John Chow commands these days, but I thing the glory days are a thing of the past since Google took a dim view of paid blogging. I have always argued that paid adverts are part of the internet and Google itself sells advertising space on it's search results. I think there is room for bloggers to sell space if there are willing buyers without having to have their PageRank automatically wiped, but then what do I know??
On the subject of how much, I guess you have to factor in what you could make if you spent your time doing something else, and how desperate you are to make a few bucks. I have drawn the line at overly-demanding posts at less than $5. I would probably do text-link for that much, but not a time-consuming post with three links and 200 words...
How about you? what are your limits??
I am encouraged that Blogsvertise appears to have come back on line this month offering the chance to extend beyond the $60 that I made in January. I am feeling the pinch and have seriously considered funding my eBay purchases with my 'own' money this month. I remain hopeful of the return of paid posts to keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed - It's not so long ago that I was taking out $100 a month AND spending $100 a month on eBay toys...

Power to the shopper

A search engine that crawls on line stores like Google crawls websites, that ShopWiki, the site that is revolutionising on line purchasing. Many shopping sites give results from advertisers who have paid for an entry, ShopWiki trawls anything and everything for sale on the Web.

From sports and movie collectibles to some of the latest technology, your search can contain anything that is available on the internet today.

Some of my relatives are particularly keen on military memorabilia and I am always looking for appropriate gifts at Christmas an Birthday times, but where can you shop for this type of thing securely? Some auction sites have this type of merchandise, but they are a bit hit and miss. If you need to buy a present, then you are better off going to a website that specialises in the type of present that you are after.

You can refine your search by colour, brand or by price by simply using the controls at the top of each results page. My relatives are particularly interested in British and American militaria, so I selected the ‘brand’ of ‘Allied’ which gave me a selection of very suitable books.

Along with the shopping results, there are ShopWiki buying guides where appropriate giving information related to the search that you have done, like this one to help you if you are looking to buy toys such as collectible toy soldiers.
All together ShopWiki is a first-rate resource, not only to find what you want quickly, but to give you all sorts of helpful support to make your shopping experience fun and stress-free.

Great free software find...

A while ago I had a copy of Norton Partition Manager to try which I found to be very effective, but I've found some free software which is just as powerful called EASEUS Partition Manager 3.0 Home Edition. This software is just the job for copying your boot disk (which is what I wanted to do) among other tasks.
My aim was to create an exact copy of a lap-top hard-drive, and this is how I went about it:
I purchased a laptop hard drive from eBay - with the same specifications as the original drive - same capacity and speed.
I purchased a 2.5" hard-drive caddy with USB cable also from eBay.
I downloaded EASEUS free software.
There was change I had to make to my original plan, I had expected to be able to copy the drive whilst it was still in-situ in the laptop. Now, the software was happy to do this by closing down Windows (I use XP pro). However my laptop wouldn't reboot with the USB caddy attached, I have had a number of peculiar experiences with the USB ports on this PC... and whatever I tried, there was no way that I could complete the task in the way I had hoped.
My 'fix' was to get another USB caddy, take the original laptop drive out of the laptop and connect both drives to a desktop PC with the free software.
Once the drives were plugged into USB 2.0 ports (they don't seem to work on older ports..), the software was able to see the original drive and the new empty drive. I selected the 'copy disk' wizard, old drive as the source (even though it had partitions, one as FAT32, one as NTFS), new drive as the destination.
After a couple of hours, the program had run it's course and I had a perfect bootable copy of my original drive. I replaced it in my laptop and powered it up - to my delight it booted straight away, after loading Windows it needed a reboot, but after the reboot it was indistinguishable from the original.
What was the point? you might say, well the laptop is about three or four years old and I suspected that the hard-drive may be on it's way out - This way I have a brand new drive in place without the hassle of having to re-install an operating system. Not only that, but if there is a catastrophic failure of my hard drive, I have an exact bootable copy on standby. My plan is to keep this spare drive in it's USB caddy and update 'My Documents' and other data folders an a weekly basis by just dragging them across (or I could use more free software 'SyncBack' from '2brightsparks' to automate this task). Every so often, in the same way that you might set a system restore point, I plan to copy the complete disk again so that whatever happens I can carry on working with exactly the same settings.
I am considering carrying out similar procedures on my desktop(s) next, after all with the advent of 1.5 & 2TB units, hard-drives are fairly cheap. One step I haven't mentioned is to make sure your drive is in optimum shape before copying it - this would include most of the steps covered in the system restore point link above (delete unwanted files, run CCleaner, run chkdsk and defrag).

Going nowhere fast...

Right now, I am in the final stages of ridding myself of a credit card debt which has been hanging over me for a few years. As a consequence, there are a range of things that have been part of my purchasing patterns of the past that are no longer on my shopping list...
That list includes

• A small wine cellar that I had my mind on creating and had intended to heep stocked with some favourite tipples.
• Holidays abroad
• Our own car (relying on a company car and public transport is our current mode...)

I often think about what car I would have given the choice, would I go for a 4x4 or a family car? Will I ever be able to create a wine cellar from some of my favourite Australian wines? Will our next holiday be with Vegas vacations, will we ever get to go back to Malta or New York or Southern France?
I reckon it will be about four months or so before the credit card debt is completely cleared, after that I hope to answer some of these questions...

Why do I blog?

I don't tend to write much about my personal life and my reasons for blogging, yet in the blogosphere it is important to engage with your readers and tell at least a little of your story. I am by nature more of a private person, but thought it would be fitting to talk about my reasons for blogging.
I started blogging initially because I was getting into web site design and wanted to get some back links for a website - my first blog started as a kind of website building and SEO blog. After that I heard about being paid to blog and that intrigued me to the point where I had to find out if anyone could do it. This is how the Munny4Hunny blog began - as an investigation into online earnings. Roughly 2 years and about $2000 later, the blog has it's own domain but has seen quite a few changes in the paid to blog arena.
I was interested in paid to blog as my wife had decided to become a stay-at-home Mum, so we were reliant on a single income. I was interested in building up a bit of spare cash (Munny) so that we might be able to treat (Hunny) ourselves occasionally. The last four years or so have seen us turn around our financial situation as a family through neccesity. It's funny how when you are both earning, you don't worry so much about credit card bills... Since becoming a single income family, my credit card debt has shrunk from about £6,500 to around it's current level of around £600 - it won't be too long before it has disappeared and I can start saving money... This has been helped enormously by having a small online income - It doesn't pay any large bills, but it does supply a small stream of cash for those little purchases that otherwise eat away at your savings - To be fair a large proportion of the earnings are spent on computer bits and bobs, but if I didn't pay for them this way, I would be spending money that would otherwise be paying off the credit card.
That's a bit about me, feel free to leave a comment (I do follow...) and say why you blog, or why you would like to blog - or even why you don't...

Saving money while holidaying

To be truthful, over the last few years of frugal living, holidays have been pretty much at the back of my mind, but everyone needs a break. We have been investigating all the ways to holiday without spending a great deal, and you might be surprised to find there are a few ways to save on your holidays.
The recent holidays we have taken have been rentals like the beach vacation rentals available on the internet, although they have been a little closer to home... This Summer we are holidaying on the cheap again - one of the advantages of rentals is that you can accommodate friends and family, we will be taking advantage of a family rental this Summer - my parents will be footing the bill. Another tactic we will be exploring is Tesco vouchers which can be exchanged for weekend hotel vouchers at four times their face value. Some of these deals seem really great, so I hope to be enjoying some top quality accommodation on the cheap this Summer too.

Home security gadgets

The development in technology means that humble householders can have access to security technology that only a few years ago would have only been available to film stars and super celebrities. The kind of systems that would have been the toys of millionaires about thirty years ago are available on the internet now for a few dollars.
Whether it be hidden spy camera gadgets, multi-camera closed circuit television, GSM and text-message alarm systems, remote switches for household circuits... all these things and more are now a couple of clicks away and at only the expense of a few dollars. The rate at which technology is founded, developed and marketed is astounding. The rate at which it then becomes affordable to the general populace is equally astounding.
It does make you wonder where all this development is going to take us, the good thing is that it won't cost us much to find out...

Make some savings

In this tight financial climate it makes sense to try and make savings wherever you can. My list of priorities for savings have included:

• Searching for the best deals on power (domestic electricity and gas)
• Using the car less than normal
• Looking for the best deals on auto insurance quotes
• Making my own lunch rather than buying lunch and snacks every day

In fact every way in which I spend money has been examined and pared to the bone over the last few years, my ultimate aim is to be debt-free and start building up some money for the future. I have managed to limit my 'frivolous' spending to the extra money that I have made online.
We have to 'treat' ourselves from time to time otherwise we lose focus on what we are trying to achieve - much of my online earnings go into Paypal, so I tend to limit spending on myself to things that can be purchased with Paypal funds, mostly via eBay.

Spend, spend, spend...

I read an article the other day which spoke about the way in which we are so willing to spend on technology and it really rang true with me (although I don't go to the extremes with spending in this particular area). The writer was an IT professional, but was writing about his personal spend rather than work-related, and this is the gist of what he was saying, but from my own perspective:

The basic requirements of a home PC are email, word processing, spreadsheets and internet browsing and like many people, my adventures into full-blown PC ownership started between ten and fifteen years ago. My PC configuration of approx 13 years ago was something like this: An 8GB hard-drive partitioned into 4 x 2GB (!!!this was the factory settings!!!), 300MHz PII with 64MB RAM and Windows 95 with a dial-up 56k modem. This mighty machine cost £1200 ($2000).
Actually, I still have this PC (in bits) though nothing of the original is retained in the casing. I recently started a project to renew every part of the old machine just to see if I could do it. It now has a motherboard which cost £10 from eBay which has a CPU that runs at a mighty 500MHz, has 384MB RAM and a 20GB drive complemented by a 120GB drive (all bought from eBay) - the only thing still in use is the casing...

This ancient machine is my 'backup' in case of catastrophe, my main machine is a more respectable 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM with a 160GB drive and a 320GB drive with a 250GB external drive - To be fair this one was given to me, but without drives and with 512MB RAM. The point of all this is that once I am settled with a new PC, I start to look at how I can make it better. The reason for this is that PC's are expandable in all sorts of ways, and there is this desire to have the best spec available even though it may not be totally crucial. After all the main things that I use the PC for are email, word processing, spreadsheets and internet browsing IE. exactly what they were thirteen years ago. We seem happy to spend a LOT of money even though we have not really improved things a great deal. Admittedly money spent on broadband has seen some significant returns in the way the PC is now used, and hard drive size allows us to store huge amounts of data, our PC's run faster, but the bang-per-buck is very difficult to justify when you look at how much people (blokes in particular) actually spend on their PC's.

Now I am a skinflint, a meanie and a user of second-hand technology so to be fair I have probably spent less than most, and if I'm totally honest, I only really spend money that I have generated from internet earnings, so I feel justified... but the fact remains that we can pour money into these bottomless pits and feel that we are getting good value. This 'value' is distorted by the comparisons that we make.
Yesterday you may have had a total of 160GB hard-drive space, today you spent £80 and have a total of 66oGB hard-drive space. If you had waited for 6 months, you could have had the same thing for £30 probably... yet you still feel a sense of value because you can remember when a 500GB hard drive would have cost £500. I'm starting to think that maybe that is the crux of the matter, the fact that we place a value on something, then can see it get cheaper almost daily until we can resist no more and end up buying it, regardless of it's real value in terms of what it can offer us.

Of course, one of the reasons that you can get such a cheap hard-drive is that someone else has felt the call of a 1TB hard-drive (even though they don't need it..) and is prepared to sell off their 'previously enjoyed' 500GB drive to make room for the new shiny 1TB drive. Ebay is the driver behind this culture of replacing old with new and passing on the old so that it becomes new for the 'followers', the 'early adopters' are forging the way whether it be for components or for a complete PC. The idea that I can go out today and buy something for £300 that is far more powerful that the equivalent thing I bought for £1200 thirteen years ago is a compelling argument on it's own.. Do I need it? Well no, but it's ONLY £300...!

Shopping on the internet

In these times of uncertain financial status and dwindling reserves and profits, it's good to know that there are bargains to be had. Whether you are thinking about buying Gucci watches from an online store or are browsing eBay for the latest gadget, the internet will be one place where trade is likely to increase during the financial crisis. The cry from internet traders is likely to be akin to Jim Callaghan's (British PM) famous 'Crisis, what crisis?' uttered nearly thirty years ago.
I have found that in particular, prices for technology 'toys' are not lowered on the high street as frequently as they are on the internet. The internet responds quickly to pressure form the global market, the high street generally only responds to pressure from another high street retailer just down to road.
The plain fact is that if you don't at least do an online price comparison for your purchases, you could be missing out on huge savings.

Earnings January 2009

As the face of paid blogging continues to change, we are ready to disclose blogging earnings for the opening month of 2009.
There were few sources of funds this month, some PayU2blog, more than usual from Adsense giving a total of just about $60 for the month. This has got me thinking about how I want to approach paid blogging for the future. I have just renewed two domain names so I am committed for a further 12 months, but am open to changing tactics and maybe switching emphasis. I really want to make time to explore some affiliate earnings, but am finding that i don't have enough time to devote to making the appropriate changes. I have another blog that I am working on in the background but honeslty have paid little attention to it this month. The overall picture is very different to two years ago when comfortable earning could relatively easily be made.

I am very probably a bit lazy in my approach to earnings as my pal Rachel on the TurnOnePoundIntoOneMillion blog is still making good earnings spread over many earning channels. I am happy to concede that I am lazy in relation to online earnings and am choosy about what programs I will use. I have the excuse that my offline income and general family welfare has to come first, so my blogging has to fit in around these priorities.

I am also keen to explore non-blogging online earnings which are as important to me as the blogging earnings although I don't usually report them here. I have reached payout with Adsense again this month, most of this revenue stream is from non-blogging activity although I have found that spread over a number of niche blogs, Adsense is becoming a more significant element in blog-revenue. My investigations into affiliates will be mostly non-blogging sites, but at the same time I will have an eye on anything I may be able to place on a blog.

Every so often, we have to look at the projects we have cultivated and cut out those that are not flourishing - I am notoriously bad at doing this, wanting to give every avenue a chance to blossom. The reality is that in order to pursue a defined goal, things that detract from the main goal need to be sacrificed. I am not saying that I will give up on paid blogging, but I am saying that I will need to work out a strategy to optimise revenue. It turns out that of the four blogs I regularly update, that I am actually 'interested' in continuing two of them - this means that I would be interested in these topics regardless of whether I was being paid. Unfortunately these are not the blogs which make me the most money... and I remain 'interested' in generating revenue even if it's only $60 a month ($60 goes a long way on eBay).