I Didn’t Call T-Mobile to Save Money
And Why I’d Rather Buy Cherries
This isn’t a post about spending less money.
In fact, it’s about the opposite.
I don’t want to spend my life debating every $30 purchase. That’s exhausting.
I want a life where I can say yes to the things that matter without hesitation.
Ironically, one of the best ways I’ve found to do that is by paying attention to the recurring expenses that don’t.
Yesterday I was outside working on our shed when my phone buzzed.
It was the usual text from T-Mobile letting me know my monthly bill had been paid.
Except this time I noticed something.
The bill was $215.
For the past couple of years, it’s hovered around $185 for four phone lines and our home internet. Somewhere along the way, the price had quietly climbed another $30 a month.
Thirty dollars doesn’t sound like much by itself.
If someone asked whether your phone service was worth another dollar a day, most people would probably shrug and say yes.
But that’s the wrong question.
So I started thinking about that extra $30.
Thirty dollars is a special movie night out with one of my daughters.
It’s the palm nailer I’ve been eyeing on Facebook Marketplace that would make building our shed just a little easier.
It’s two bags of those deep red cherries my daughter loves when they’re finally in season. We somehow fly through those in about twenty-four hours.
It’s the co-pay for another doctor’s appointment that helps my partner better understand her HRT treatment plan.
It’s ice cream for the whole family on a summer evening.
And don’t get me started on how much ice cream costs now, or I’ll become the old guy reminiscing about how much cheaper everything was when I was a kid.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just $30.
It was resources that no longer had the job I would have chosen for them.
Not because T-Mobile was doing anything wrong.
I had simply stopped making the decision.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been writing about the idea that money is a resource. Every dollar is part of the bucket we’re filling with our time, attention, and work. The goal isn’t to hoard the water. It’s simply to keep unnecessary holes from forming so we can use that water for the things that actually matter.
Economists have a name for this. They call it opportunity cost.
It’s the idea that every dollar spent on one thing is a dollar that can’t be spent on something else.
That’s true.
But I think it misses something even more important.
Every dollar also represents time.
Somewhere along the way, you traded a piece of your life for that money. You spent an hour teaching, fixing roofs, caring for patients, writing code, driving a truck, answering emails, standing on your feet all day, or raising a family. Once those hours are gone, they’re gone.
That’s why I don’t see $30 as just $30.
I see it as resources that have an opportunity to move my life in a direction I actually care about.
So I called T-Mobile.
First came the maze of automated menus.
Then the chatbot, which was remarkably efficient at confirming I had a phone bill.
Every few minutes the hold music reminded me that I could probably solve my problem faster by using the app.
The app, of course, was what had convinced me I needed to call in the first place.
So I put my phone on speaker, slipped it into my pocket, and went back to working on the shed while the hold music became the soundtrack to my afternoon.
Eventually I heard a real person’s voice.
It’s amazing how quickly another human being becomes your favorite feature of a technology company.
I simply asked if there were any promotions or plans available that could lower my bill.
She looked through my account for a minute.
“I think I can help.”
Those might be the most valuable four words I heard all week.
Fifteen minutes later, my bill had dropped from $215 to $170 a month.
That’s $45 every month.
That’s $540 every year.
If you invested $45 every month from age 20 to 65, you’d contribute about $24,300 of your own money. Assuming long-term market returns similar to the historical average, that could grow to nearly half a million dollars.
That’s one of the most remarkable things about investing. Small decisions, repeated consistently, become very large outcomes.
Ten years ago, that’s probably the part of this story that would have excited me most.
I still think it’s incredible.
But these days, what excites me even more is what that $45 can become today.
That $45 has a new job now.
It has been reassigned.
And this time, I was the one who chose it.
That’s what financial responsibility looks like to me.
Not squeezing every dollar until life becomes smaller.
It’s making sure the resources you’ve worked hard to earn are moving toward the life you want to build—supporting your priorities, solving your problems, fueling your passions, and making room for play.
Today it’s a phone bill.
Tomorrow it might be insurance, a streaming subscription, a forgotten membership, or something else that’s quietly grown without you noticing.
Every recurring expense is making a decision for you.
Every time you lower one, you get to make that decision again.
One leak doesn’t empty the bucket.
But enough tiny leaks eventually do.
I don’t want the water in my bucket disappearing through holes I never intended to drill.
I’d rather pour that water where it helps something grow.
Today, I’m fortunate enough that I don’t have to think very hard before spending $30.
One of the reasons that’s true is because I spent years paying attention to recurring expenses that didn’t deserve my resources.
Not because $30 was going to change my life.
Because I didn’t want to give away resources that could help build the life I actually wanted.
Thirty dollars is never just thirty dollars.
It’s a small piece of your life.
The question isn’t whether it’s worth spending.
The question is whether you’re the one choosing where it goes.