Update on saving money, new celluar service

So we switched to common cents cellular which is now virgin mobile paylo. David & I got identical Kyocera phones. He likes his, I hated mine. He does a lot of texting with work and it IS a good phone to text with. It does take good photos as well. BUT you have to purchase a MINIMUM of $20 every 90 days or loose them. If you make the purchase they do roll over but I cannot use that much in the allotted time.

$20 = 285 minutes =4.76 hours

I just do not use a cell phone that much. So it was NOT a good deal for me.

So I used up the time left by sending a bunch of photos, then we just let the phone expire. The good thing is we have an extra phone in the event that David's phone dies.

So I took back the tracfone that was lost and replaced. (Did I tell you that story?). The replacement tracfone is now the kids dedicated phone for when they do riding or whatever.

The moral of the story? Investigate thoroughly. Don't be swayed by the 'flashy' new gadget. Newer is not always better; in fact you may like newer worse than you like older. (How's that for a wonky sentence?)

Money Savers part 2

As we continue to search for ways to cut expenses we have found that sometimes you have to spend some money, upfront, to save money.

This was true of our  change in ISP's and is also true in our mobile phones.

Common Cents Mobile is a prepaid cellular service with the low per minute price of $0.07, (7 cents) per minute AND the round down.  So if I use my cell phone for 1 minute 59 seconds I have only used 7 cents!!

To be totally honest, we did have to purchase a new phone when we had a perfectly good phone already. The old phone will be used by the kids until the minutes are all gone and then, well I don't know what then.

Davids phone came today.  It is a Kyocera with a qwerty keyboard.  Since he actually uses his mobile and texts quite often for work, this was the best way to go.  He should be able to port his number and then we can transfer any remaining tracfone minutes to one of our other tracfones. 

Seven cents per minute vs 25 cents per minutes is a big savings.  I have always been able to find promo codes to use with our tracfones, but the lowest price I can remember paying was 9 cents.  And since I cannot guarantee 9 cents per minute every time I need to purchase minutes, the change in providers was worth it.


Leave a comment and let me know how you are cutting expenses.

Money Savers we are doing

The budget is tight and our kids are growing.  Groceries are going higher and gas is, well gas is awful.

So where can we cut spending?  This month we have dropped our land line and changed ISP providers  cutting this bill in HALF.

And we did not sacrifice speed or quality. 

How can this be?

We tried Magic Jack  http://www.magicjack.com/1/step2.asp on a 30 day trial and liked it so much that we bought the equipment and paid ahead for 5 years of service.  If we move it all goes with us and we don't have to change phone numbers. 

We brought our unlimited phone service down to about $2 a month.

So far so good...

Then this past weekend after we had trouble with TWC's internet service, we bought Clear internet service. http://www.clear.com/ The modem arrived to day and we got it hooked up to 2 pc's and ran some speed tests and even on the voip phone, downloading a large file and looking up info on the 2nd pc, our speeds were wonderful.

The ISP service is about $45 a month.

Now if we could just spend less on groceries.

That is my goal for May.  Cut way back on food expenditures.  I have a real problem with grabbing fast food.  So this will take some planning.

Plan meals at home.
Use leftovers better
Plan for snacks
Plan for meals taken with us for running errands etc.

I also want to try to drink nothing but water for the month of May.  That will be hard especially when I am nauseous with a headache.

I'm going to take it 1 day at a time.

Frugal Meals etc...

Everyone knows that prices are going up. That's just the way it is. So in my effort to help make my hubby's hard earned $'s go as far as possible, I am looking for ways to cut expenses where I can. For me the #1 place to look is FOOD.

I am terrible about planning a menu. That is bad. We end up going to the store more than once per pay period, and we end up eating too much fast food.

So after today's trip to Aldi, and not getting a whole lot, I revisited a website that I've been on before.


Let me introduce you to:


http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com

This site has a lot of printable menus, as well as recipes, shopping lists, dieting info. Head on over and check it out. If you do, let me know what you think.