Reduced my cell phone bill by $60 a month

[SimpleLife]

Saving me $720 a year. Had been thinking about doing it for a while, finally went to do it since I had the day off today (made a list of things to do today to save money, run errands, etc.)

Took about $15 minutes. Originally I thought I had to buy a new phone, but after some online research I saw that I could use my existing AT&T phone with a new $5 SIM card. Service was switched seemingly instantly. Just rebooted my phone and bam, it was on the new plan.

Saves me $60 a month (would have been much more but I had a discount through my employer). Unlimited talk, text and data (though it throttles down to a slow as heck speed after the first 1.5 gigs. Meets my needs just fine.

[jacob]

The pertinent fact you left out is: How much are you now paying?

[GandK]

And which plan did you choose?

[cmonkey]

I pay (in one year) just over what you save in one month.

If you count Skype, then I pay double in one year what you save in one month. Unlimited talk (through skype) and data (wifi-only). Texting is useless.

You can do better.

[Ego]

I just bought this one...
http://www.hsn.com/products/lg-ultimate ... ne/7848060

A year of service, 1200 minutes and 1200 texts for $99.95.

I downloaded the google voice app (free texting and voicemail on wifi) and the Skype app (free calls on wifi) so I'll probably use 500 minutes for the entire year.

[startbyserving]

I'd love to reduce my phone bill by $60 per month! Anyone know a carrier that pays $59 /mo for you to use their service?




***Okay perhaps that isn't fair anymore. I was paying $10 per year with T-Mobile* for the longest time. However, after work bought me a phone, I let it lapse by accident. (And lost $40 in airtime I had accumulated. Add that to my true cost of employment?)
On second thought, I do still have my personal Google Voice number which I use frequently. Which carrier will pay me $60 per month to use their service?

*T-Mobile prepaid (Gold) is $100 first year, $10 additional years. My Motorola Razor outlived my 8+ year use of T-Mobile. There are other cheap options now, but since I already had momentum/ sunk cost it was tough to beat $10 per year.

[vexed87]

It's all about prepaid plans! I don't get why "normal" people think they need unlimited plans. Is it even possible to use an unlimited amount of minutes to talk? Have these people got nothing better to do? It is especially amusing when my colleagues use the 'unlimited' plans as excuse to justify blowing £50/month on a 24 month iphone plan, don't forget the iwatch for quickly previewing texts...

Just buy the damn phone outright and call your friends with facetime audio!

My plan is 1p per mb, 2p per text & 3p per mb of data (with 100mb free every time I top up a minimum of £5.)

The trick is to use wifi wherever possible to send texts via free services (email, whatsapp, facebook, imessage, skype etc). If I absolutely have to send a message, I'll enable mobile data temporarily to send out a message via the free services (small amounts of data costs fractions of a penny...) otherwise I delay responses until I am in range of WiFi. I'm near WiFI 95% of the time (I'm either at work or at home!) Ironically, I rarely use my phone to make calls and lately it seems to be a device that companies can spam marketing to my e-mail inbox 24 hours a day, not sure why I even leave it switched on... in theory I could just use e-mail all the time, but there are the rare occasions I need to call a taxi etc, plus there's the just in case scenario where if my bike broke down 9 miles from home I might need SO to pick me up, so I need the phone on me at all times.

I have turned drawing out my credit into a game of how long I can make my free data and initial £10 credit last. So far I am just over 3 months in and have £8 remaining!

slightly OT, but strictly speaking, there's no reason why I couldn't revert 100% desktop based e-mail communications, I'm tempted repeatedly but have found it hard to make that leap of faith. If Edward Snowden is to be believed, then GCHQ and the US equivalent, the NSA have capabilities to use smartphones to track, listen in on and spy on us with cameras even when smartphones are "switched off". Maybe that's enough to stop me replacing my current smartphone and return to dumbphones for good.

[GandK]

It's all about prepaid plans! I don't get why "normal" people think they need unlimited plans.

You might need something like that if you ever use your phone's hotspot as your main connection to the Internet.

This is our family's scenario: we spend roughly 30% of the year on the road, frequently in areas where there is either no WiFi or very unreliable WiFi because we prefer to be out in the boonies when we travel. But G doesn't stop practicing law when we hit the road. He has to be able to perform certain tasks on the road in order to stay in business, including manipulating large files, sending and receiving faxes electronically, and occasionally viewing lengthy evidence videos (security camera footage taken at crime scenes and the like). So we need reliable, constant access to the Internet for him. We therefore have a 10 GB data plan that's shared between our two phones. We usually then use my phone as the hotspot so he can conduct business with his own phone unimpeded. And this is cheaper for us than what we used to do: have a cheap phone plan, then get an additional mobile hotspot for him.

The good news is that our Cadillac phone plan is a business expense. The bad news is that even with the tax write-off, it's not cheap. But we would rather pay the tax of having it so we can travel/live the way we want.

[SimpleLife]

$40 a month is what I pay now. I use my phone for work. I don't expense it (tried) since I live close enough to work to drive (did for 2 years) but now get to work from home. I have not been to the office in months. This saves me $40 A DAY using the IRS guidelines.

It's great that others have plans that cost .20 cents a month with a combination of skype and google voice, but I need normal phone service for professional reasons. Otherwise I have to go to the office again.

[Scott 2]

I'm using republic wireless to work from home in a similar situation. Bill is about twelve dollars a month. Several other people on my team are doing the same.

[SimpleLife]

Details girlfriend...

Nevermind I'll just visit their website.

[vexed87]

It's all about prepaid plans! I don't get why "normal" people think they need unlimited plans.

You might need something like that if you ever use your phone's hotspot as your main connection to the Internet.

Actually, I also used to use my own unlimited plan for hotspot access as I don't get a broadband connection being 6 miles from the nearest telephone exchange. My point was that typical consumers probably don't need unlimited everything for their typical usage, it's an effective marketing hook for the (bi)annual upgrade crowd.

Now the unscrupulous UK mobile network cartels have eliminated all unlimited hotspot tethering plans in the name of profit, I'm forced to go with 10GB prepaid portable modem for my laptop net usage which is sufficient, albeit a lot less than unlimited!

[OldPro]

Cellphone bill comparisons from one person to another are pointless unless you have an identical situation.

If you are a FIRE wannabe who is still working, your situation is very different from someone who is retired obviously. It also differs depending on what country you are in since what is available differs from country to country.

I do have a couple of questions for you in your situation though SimpleLIfe. Does your employer not provide you with a phone? Why are you paying anything at all? If you actually NEED a phone for work, then I would expect your employer to provide it. Or, expensing it through your own company if self-employed.

Sounds to me like you need to look at how you work rather than how you pay for a phone. If you went self-employed and worked from home as a 'consultant' for your current employer, you could expense the phone as well as a lot of other things and save more than $60 a month.

[SimpleLife]

Cellphone bill comparisons from one person to another are pointless unless you have an identical situation.

If you are a FIRE wannabe who is still working, your situation is very different from someone who is retired obviously. It also differs depending on what country you are in since what is available differs from country to country.

I do have a couple of questions for you in your situation though SimpleLIfe. Does your employer not provide you with a phone? Why are you paying anything at all? If you actually NEED a phone for work, then I would expect your employer to provide it. Or, expensing it through your own company if self-employed.

Sounds to me like you need to look at how you work rather than how you pay for a phone. If you went self-employed and worked from home as a 'consultant' for your current employer, you could expense the phone as well as a lot of other things and save more than $60 a month.

I just explained this...I have the option of working from home...since I am a reasonable drive from the office, I don't have a reason to expense my phone when I elect to WFH. I much prefer WFH, it sucks MUCH less than going to an office daily. Also, it saves me almost $40 a day not commuting. So, changing how I work will just cost me more...

[zarathustra]

I am claiming the amount for 3G on my cell plan for my taxes (the upgrade required for that) in my taxes. I use republic wireless. I consider the $12.xx for the basic plan an expense I would pay normally and the upgrade for 3G as claimable since I only have because of my job and the requirements of being reachable in the case of a site outage/incident. Pretty sure that is legit.

[OldPro]

I didn't suggest changing WHERE you work from SimpleLife. ie. WFH. I suggested changing how you structure your working relationship. ie. self-employed consultant vs. employee.

Years ago, when I had to work for a living, I arranged to bill my services as a consultant for the last couple of years. I still 'worked for' the same company but I registered my own company and billed them for my time. That change made a big difference in what I could legitimately claim as a 'business expense' vs. personal income tax deductions as an employee.

I live in Canada so there are differences obviously but I could claim my car purchase and running costs. I could claim a phone line (landline, pre cellphone era), I could claim a room in my home as an office, etc. etc. All I am saying is that it may be worthwhile looking at being self-employed vs. an employee.

[ether]

Congrats!
In the end you have to be happy with the service, using a free VOIP program works for some but not others.

[SimpleLife]

Congrats!
In the end you have to be happy with the service, using a free VOIP program works for some but not others.

Yep. I recently saw someone on MMM complaining that their cheap RW phone service was awful and dropped during an interview, etc. Of course everyone there rushes to defend the cheap phone service that is "just as good" as the cheap service with main stream carriers. Yes, they may use the same equipment, but that is clearly not translating into the same QoS, judging by the generally poor reviews of carriers such as Metro PCS, etc.

If your $1 a year phone plan with Squirrel phone works for the 2 calls you make per year, great! I work...from home...and use my phone daily for several hours of conference calls each day, text messaging, etc. I rely on it DAILY, and when I go out camping or hiking. The $1 a year phone plan is not going to cut it for my use, hate to break it to the one uppers. I merely posted because it was a huge discount from what I was paying while still meeting my needs.

[Scott 2]

My experience with republic is the problems happen when handing off between WiFi and cell. I find disabling one of the two networks makes the call very stable. I am normally working at my desk, next to my wireless router, with very few other devices active on my network. Conversely, in hotels, it's best to disable the WiFi, voice quality suffers on a crummy network.

I have also observed the moto g does not behave well when loaded up with apps. I disabled everything nonessential to maximize battery life, and I think it may be a factor in my positive experience.

[C40]

I'm lucky right now. Work gives me:
- iPhone 6
- Unlimited everything + data hotspot

I use it for all my phone and texting and internet (even in places with free wifi, I just use my phone). I use a shit-ton of bandwidth at times. I'm definitely not looking forward to the huge mobile data reduction I'll make in retirement, but it will probably be good for me. I waste too much time on useless parts of the internet.

I'm guessing that once I quit, I'll usually have a pre-paid plan and use a really low amount of minutes. Assuming I'll have internet service at home, I'll use the wifi for calling and texting. (plus free wi-fi out and about). I'm just not exactly sure what I'll do post-retirement and while traveling. There's a good chance I'll end up with a $100/month plan from Verizon or some cheaper company that uses Verizon's towers.