"I live on $710.00 a month, what exactly am I supposed to cut?"

[sofa king]

150. I dissent!

I've actually done that, and it's totally worthless. Internet access at libraries is often limited to an hour or less per person per day. It's difficult or impossible to save information you have gathered there, and you wind up paying for printouts you wouldn't need if you had your own Internet access. Ten pages of job applications printed at the library every day will add up to more than an Internet bill per month. Their hours are never your hours.

Having Internet access is the only way a person is going to get a high-paying job these days. It can provide critical information which allows one to further education, study a potential employer, edit resumes and applications, gain solid weather reports un-hyped by television ratings, navigate ever-shrinking mass-transportation routes, replace an ailing or shut-off phone, and entertainment comes along with it as well.

The Internet is the only modern convenience which can provide one with most of the other services a poor person must have in order to have a chance to leave poverty. A cell-phone won't do tha alonet; cable television won't do that at all; sadly, a dog probably won't do that, either, but hell if I'm going to recommend giving up a pet.

An Internet connection at least provides one a chance to defray the cost of the service, too. One can sell t-shirt and coffee mug designs, or do all kinds of other low-payoff work which can defray the costs.

Throw the Internet overboard, and you lose all of that. I say throw everything else overboard, first.

I make about ten bucks less a month than the OP, and I'm living a pretty decent life right now, but it is because I have long since gone up without a net and I'm only coming down once. If I get sick, I'm dead, so there's no point saving up for that last rainy day; if I lose my job I'm homeless in a month, no two ways about it. Doing that allowed me to get a drivers licence and a car after a year of saving and another year of paying, and that turned out to be the most extravagant and useless expense I've incurred in that time. I would ditch the wheels for the Internet, if I had to make that choice, without a second thought.