TING

I've had a couple people ask me about our phone plan, so I'm going to try to type out some details about it here that can be used as a reference. In February we switched over to a new company called Ting. They use the Sprint network. With Ting you basically pay for what you use. There is no such thing as "Free" over there. But for people, like myself, who enjoy not paying for other's indulgences it works.

Things you might not like about Ting:

• No free nights or weekends
  
• No free in-network calls
  
• No free calls to your family
  
• No free calls to anyone else on your plan
  
• You basically get charged double minutes to talk to someone else on your plan
  
• No free calls to check your voicemail
  
• No free or discounted phones (their selection is not great right now, but should improve in a couple weeks)
  
• The iPhone is not available with Ting

Things I enjoy about Ting:

• No contract, we can ditch them any time we want.
  
• My $29 a month phone bill -- for 2 lines, INCLUDING taxes and fees!

You can just visit their website if you'd like more information at Ting.com But here's my run-down of how it works: You pay $6 a month per phone that you want on your plan (that makes it $12 for Brandon and I). Then you choose a plan for your minutes: we chose 500 minutes, which adds $9 on to our bill. Remember these are SHARED minutes, so he and I combined have to stay under 500. But it's no big deal if you do go over your minutes, they just bump you up into the next bracket and charge you that price. Although I've noticed they do seem to have a small buffer. Our first month we used 529 minutes, but they didn't charge me extra. Maybe that was just for the first month, but I haven't gone over since so I'm not certain. Then you choose your text messages. They are pretty cheap. We've never gone over 100, so that's $3 there. And then add data if you'd like. If you use a lot of data this is where it can get expensive, but we only use it in case of emergency. We have access to a lot of Wi-Fi, so it's really not necessary. We signed up for the Small package, which is 100 Mb for $3 a month, but as you can see on our bill if we don't use it they give us a credit. Then our taxes and fees are a flat $5. They always keep it nice and round. So... $12 + $9 + $3 + $5 = $29. For 2 cell phones, with texting. Sure beats the $65 we were paying before with no texting, and no ability to use data if we wished -- and, that was with a company discount. So... here's my last bill to take a look at.

And if it's something you ever decide you want to try, or know somebody it would work for... make sure you use my referral link! SIGN UP HERE.