At my house, basic digital cable TV cost over $69 per month (plus taxes) and we watch maybe 10 of the 150 channels that they provide to us, meaning that we pay for many channels that we have no interest in. While the price of just about everything headed skyward, paid cable and satellite TV is sometimes one of the first things to go from someone’s budget - there are a lot of people who have taken the big step of getting rid of paid TV in their house and reverting back to antennas or no TV at all.

After losing everything, I went on a quest to find out how money really works, how I could get control of it, and how I could have confidence in handling it. I read everything I could get my hands on. I interviewed older rich people, people who made money and kept it.

Dollar Stretcher website, my husband and I were trying to pay off $10,000 of credit card debt, save for a down payment on a house, and become financially stable enough to provide for a baby. Our money makeover spanned years and included keeping a spending spreadsheet; canceling unnecessary services like