Last year I began writing a series of Monday Money tips that chronicled steps that we were taking to save money.
Time for an update, and this time it’s about cellphones.
After buying a Samsung Galaxy S3 in 2012, I had buyers regret.
Not over the phone, it was fantastic. No, I didn’t like the fact that my monthly cellphone bill was around $170 for one smart phone and one dumb phone. So I sold the Samsung, and went back to my original Droid. And we also switched to a prepaid no-contract plan. Page Plus became our cellphone service, but actually we were keeping our Verizon coverage. Page Plus is the only 3rd party prepay Verizon service provider. A friend of mine had them for years and would brag about only paying $30 a month. I was able to drop our monthly bill to $85 a month.
This summer the ancient cellphone my wife had been using bit the dust.
First I dug out my old Motorola Razr and we had it activated, but it only lasted a couple of weeks before the screen went bad.
She visited our local Page Plus Dealer and he sold her a used phone for $30 that she really likes and she’s all set. Her monthly bill continues to run $29.95.
Meanwhile,my old Droid was just not cutting it. I took a position this year managing the social media for a huge internet retailer and my phone’s operating system and memory capabilities were lacking for the work that I do. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all were just too much for my phones old Android FroYo Operating System.
So I had a plan to upgrade my phone to at least the Android Ice Cream Sandwich Operating system, or go with an iPhone.
(A quick primer on Android Operating Systems… They have numbers and they have fun names. More info here).
But I didn’t want to spend more than $200 on a phone and I wanted to stay with a no-contract deal.
Nearly impossible. It was around May when I brought this up to my wife and she said my Fathers day gift would be the phone.
But when Fathers day came in June, I wasn’t ready yet.
I was not finding what I wanted:
Smartphone for $200 or less with a modern operating system that provided good coverage and could handle the features I needed for my Social Media job.
In our part of the world, Verizon beats Sprint and all the others for coverage. I watched as my co-workers with AT & T and Sprint would not get a signal at their desks. Our offices are in a rural part of Indiana, about 35 miles from where I live. I needed my phone to work both places and in between.
I did lots of research including shopping for used phones, asking about Sprint coverage, etc. I was considering switching to Boost Mobile but my gut was telling me no. Stick to my guns. Buy a phone under $200 that I could use on Verizon that met my other criteria. Used phones were risky, even though my wife just bought one, she spent $35, not $200 and saw it in person.
One day, I discovered Verizon was offering pre-paid phones at Walmart. This summer I did my research and found the LG Lucid phone was being offered by Verizon as the LG Optimus Exceed.
The phone was available in limited quantities at Walmart, Target and Best Buy. So limited that the weekend I decided to pull the trigger, there was only one in town at one of our local Best Buy stores. I spoke to my wife, and then bought it.
Price was only $129.99.
Network is Verizon
Droid Operating System is Ice Cream Sandwich.
Yes it can handle the apps I need to use for Social Media and also the Navigation App with Google Maps that we use when traveling sometimes.
I did buy the $70 prepay plan from Verizon for at least the 1st month which is $15 more than I was paying with Page Plus. This $70 plan includes double the data and I can switch to a $60 Verizon Plan if I’m not using all the data I get with the $70 plan. I can also decide to switch back to Page Plus anytime.
The comparison between Verizon and Page Plus:
Verizon $60 plan includes 2 GB of data. Page Plus offers the same for just $55, which is what I had.
Verizon $70 plan includes 4 GB of data. Page Plus offers a $69.95 plan that includes 5 GB of data.
Both offer all of this at 3G, not 4G speeds which I can live with.
Lessons learned include doing research, which I tend to do anyway and have patience.
We put the phone to the test this past weekend on an out of town trip using the navigation and maps to find our way down dark country roads in the rain and it worked like a charm. Battery life on all the smartphones I’ve had have been poor, but I was able to keep this one going buy plugging into my car charger.
So we find out this month that the government has the capability to use “secret courts” to get permission to read our emails and listen to our phone calls.
Depending on whose version of the details you believe, this is either a total lack of privacy and we should be outraged or, it’s harmless and so what.
But the government isn’t the only one who has records on you.
Let’s continue with a Monday Money slant to this topic of Big Data.
Saving money and wise spending has been the focus of the Monday Money series I began last year when my wife and I decided to see how much we could save with a few changes and we found over $3000 a year we could trim.
Yesterday I did what I usually do over the weekend, make a trip to a local grocery store to buy stuff for my lunches. When I was a kid my parents were coupon clippers. We’d buy stuff if we had a coupon and save 5 cents. Double Couponing was the rage as stores would battle each other to get your grocery money. We would end up eating all kinds of stuff that we would not have normally bought because we had a coupon.
These days stores still accept coupons but many have switched to a store card. Kroger owns most of the grocery stores where I live (including Scott’s) and so I have a Kroger card. These plastic cards are offered by my drug store, coffee shop, gas station, and a few restaurants too.
My advice is to use them…wisely.
For example,my most recent grocery total was $83 before they swiped my card. I like to wait until they’ve rung up everything before I give them my card, so I can see the total on the screen and then watch it drop. This weekend it dropped 26 bucks. a 30% savings. This weeks total included several items that will last a month or more.
I also earned some points to save ten cents a gallon on my next fill up at their gas station which will result in another 3% savings.
Doesn’t sound like much, but this is free money*.
Here’s the *disclaimer…
The only way this works is you have to buy stuff that you would normally buy, or it’s a good substitute. A couple months ago I bought cans of soup that I don’t buy regularly, but hey, it’s soup and I am eating those 10 cans at the rate of one per week for lunch. I selected “healthy” versions with lower salt, less calories, and flavors that I would like.
In other words, don’t buy a bunch of crap that you don’t need, just because it’s on sale.
The other part of this *disclaimer, you are giving up some of your personal information when you use one of these cards. They are tracking your spending habits. They know we have a cat. Last year they sent me coupons for free cat food because they know I buy it regularly.
Bottom Line. You can save money with those store cards if you shop wisely and don’t care about the big data collection that everyone is doing anyway.
In the next couple of weeks, my car will become indistinguishable.
My official Indiana issued ScLoHo licence plate will no longer be displayed on my back bumper.
When I renewed my plates this month I opted to go with the standard Indiana plate.
It will save me about $50, which can go to other, more important items in our life.
How and why did the ScLoHo-mobile come about?
In 2011, I was preparing to leave the radio world that I worked in for 20 years to move into the internet world full time. It was my social media identity as ScLoHo combined with my marketing and sales experience that made that career jump possible.
Financially, I could justify it as my step-daughters car was no longer my responsibility so I took some of the money I would have spent on her plate and upgraded mine to a vanity plate.
The original ScLoHo-mobile was a “classic” Mercedes that I had for about 7 years until I was tired of putting money in every few months to keep it on the road.
Last summer I went back to an American car, a “classic” Pontiac Grand AM GT.
The last ScLoHo-Mobile
I use the term classic to signify that these are old cars. Each were at least 8 years old when I bought them.
There’s a lesson for each of us to consider, even if you never bought a vanity plate for your car.
What’s going to happen to that $50? I really don’t know. I am not looking to spend it on something else that I want, so it just became another bill I didn’t have to pay this year.
Our priorities change over time. The things we value change. Sometimes our spending habits need to be reexamined to see if they still match our values and priorities.
Seems like nearly every week there’s something that comes up that I can turn into a Monday Money story.
Would I rather spend $200 or $10?
That was the choice I made last week.
The ScLoHomobile which I bought last year came with a turn signal problem.
Last summer when I went to a repair shop, they told me it was part of a recall and I should contact a dealer.
Now this car is a 2001 Pontiac Grand Prix and Pontiac’s are no longer being made.
However Pontiac’s are a General Motors product, so if you have one, or an Oldsmobile which was also discontinued recently, just head over to a Chevy dealer. Which is what I did last summer.
But first read the rest of this story before you give anyone any money.
The recall had expired but the dealer could get the part and fix the problem.
$200 and a few hours later I had working turn signals again.
Then a couple months ago, I noticed that they were not working all the time. Again.
Sigh.
I waited to see if it was weather related.
It wasn’t.
Last Thursday while driving to work, I discovered I had no turn signals.
I started searching online again and found this video:
Even though this was a Grand Am and my car is a Grand Prix, I was ready to tackle the job.
I’m not by any means a mechanic. I don’t even change my own oil. But this looked simple enough.
Saturday I drove down to a junk yard where I knew the owner and told him (Tony) what I was looking for.
He actually had one already removed from a car, told me to check to see if it solved my problem before I paid him.
I took removed part of the dash, as described in the video, plugged in the used part and everything worked.
After giving Tony $10, I drove home and completed the repair in 20 minutes.
Which would you rather spend. $200 and a couple hours or $10 and 30 minutes or less plus learn a little something too?
When you are deciding between buying two things, do you ever consider a third option?
I’m thinking of a very specific third option :
Buy item A
Buy Item B
Don’t buy either A or B
This Monday Money article is about saying no.
When I first went grocery shopping with my wife several years ago, i noticed what i thought was a particular habit.
Right before checking out, she would go through her shopping cart and pick something that she was not going to buy and take it out, put it back on the shelf before she paid for the rest of her stuff.
This practice of saying no to something that she wanted, helped her develop the self discipline to say no to getting everything she wanted.
This was her version of option 3.
I was looking last week for an item for work and spent 20 minutes comparing option A vs. option B. Neither was exactly what I was looking for and not going to be a solution to the problem I was wanting to solve. So I walked away and decided to wait.
Over the weekend, I went to a different store and spent less and got exactly what I was looking for. It was considerable less than what I would have spent if I bought from the first store.
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