Living
How to Setup a Home Security System
I’m not going to lie to you. There are a myriad ways to set up a home security system. This post is merely an attempt to save you the time and pick a system that has worked for us – SimpliSafe. Clearly, if you live in the United States and are fairly close to an urban area you’ve been inundated with offers for free home security systems. In our case, every time we received an offer we soon started wondering “Are we safe?”.
If anything, these “Free Home Security System” offers forced us to do our homework. We did our research only to find out that these so-called free offers were essentially three-year contracts with hefty fees for breaking out of the contract and with very limited capabilities for expanding or enhancing the security system without a contractor. Yet, we also found out that there was a benefit with using a security system – lower home or rental insurance and perhaps most important of all – piece of mind from the sense of safety.
After months of reading home security system reviews from various consumer magazines and lurking on home security system forums we decided to take the plunge and invest in the SimpliSafe home security system.
I’ll cover the steps for guiding you through the process of buying the system, not that you need my help, since the SimpliSafe website is intuitive and their customer service even better, but below is the SimpliSafe system we received:
Each piece in the system was customized and pre-programmed by SimpliSafe to our exact wants and with the simple goal of ensuring that you can set up your home security system in under 10 minutes.
Twine Floor Lamp
I had been pining over this lamp for over a year, trying to decide if it was a good idea to spend $200 on something I’d only seen online. When I started seeing it all over the place on TV I figured it was “a sign” and decided to just go for it – and I am certainly glad I did. I love, love, LOVE this lamp! It is even better in person than on the website. The lamp shade is a bit bigger than I expected but looks fantastic in my living room. The only thing I would change would be the cord that hangs down the middle of the base, it just sort of looks like they didn’t know where else to put it. Aside from this small detail everything else is wonderful and I highly recommend the Twine Floor Lamp to anyone trying to add a little extra to their room!
Downsizing a cell phone bill
For the past year, we’ve maintained three cell phones in a two person household. Initially the work phone was a perfect addition to my constant need, a.k.a handicap of checking e-mail 24 * 7. I’m working on that, but my handicaps are good stories for another day. However, after reviewing our cell phone bill it was clear that we were paying for a cell phone plan that was more than what we needed to use. Using BillShrink we were able to compare plans from various cell phone vendors and in the end concluded that switching to a pre-paid plan was the best option for us.
From spending $40/ month on a post-paid plan and barely using all the minutes, we switched to a $10/ month pre-paid plan. The great thing about making the switch now is that most cell phone vendors allow you the ability to port or transfer your number between different vendors as well as different plans.
If you haven’t taken a look at your cell phone plan in the last 2 years, now may be a great time to start shopping around.