Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Get Your Phone Service for Less with These Two Programs

By Leave a Comment

Phones.  They’re a necessity for keeping in contact with others, having access to emergency services, and getting directions when you’re lost.  Yet, if you aren’t careful, the convenience of a phone can cost you anywhere from $50 to more than $200 a month.

My husband and I have cut corners with our phone service, and we couldn’t be happier.

Ooma

save money on phones
Save Money with These 2 Phone Services

We chose Ooma for our land line.  Ooma is a system that operates through our internet connection.  We pay $14.99 per month, which includes call waiting, caller ID, and free long distance.  Oh, and that free long distance?  Apparently that means anywhere because my husband has been able to call his family in Japan at no extra expense to us.  Sweet!

While we love Ooma and the price we pay, there are sometimes glitches with this service.  For instance, when our internet goes down, we don’t have telephone access.  Occasionally the connection is not as good as I would like.  However, these inconveniences are not regular occurrences, so we happily stay with Ooma.

Ting

My husband and I have had cell phones for a few years, but they were flip phones from Tracfone.  While they served us well for a few years, we got frustrated with Tracfone’s customer service whenever we had an issue.  We also wanted to upgrade to smartphones.

When I won a giveaway for a free Ting smartphone, we decided to also get my husband one and switch our service over to Ting.

Ting is a unique company that charges based on the services that you use.  Our average bill is $34 a month for both of us to use our smartphones.  I love that price!

Billing is based on how much you use.

Each line costs $6 a month.

Up to 100 minutes a month costs $3.  One hundred to 500 minutes is $5 per month.  (This goes all the way up to $35 for 2100 minutes.)

Up to 100 text messages a month is $3.  Up to 1000 is $5.  (My husband and I primarily keep in touch during the day through texting, and we never get close to 1000 texts.)

Date is $3 for 100MB, $10 for 500MB, all the way to $20 for 2GB.

In addition, you can set limits on how much usage is available.  I imagine this is very important if you’re on a budget or if you have a teen with a phone.  You can ask for notifications when you reach a certain level of minutes, texts, or data.  You can also choose to suspend service when you hit a certain limit or someone else on your bill reaches that point.

The best point?  There is no contract with Ting.

We’ve had our phones for about 6 months now, and we’re pleased.  In addition, any time I’ve had questions, their customer service has been fantastic.

Ting has also branched out to providing Internet service at the same great value.  Unfortunately, that services is only available in a handful of towns in five different states.  I hope my location is available for Internet service soon!

Have you tried either of these services?  Did you like or dislike them?  What do you do to keep your phone bill low?

Save Money on the Grocery Budget by Reducing Food Waste

By 1 Comment

Behind a mortgage, groceries are often the second most expensive line item in the budget.  If you’re looking to save more money this year, a good place to look is to reduce the grocery budget.  But don’t stop there.  Make sure to also look at the other side of the grocery budget—reducing food waste.

Whenever you waste food, you’re essentially dropping money into the garbage.  Instead, learn to reduce your food waste to stretch your grocery budget even further.  Here are some of my favorite strategies:

Save Money by Reducing Waste
Save Money by Reducing Waste

Look at your calendar before you shop.  Do you have a busy week coming up?  If so, don’t plan labor intensive meals; you just won’t have time to make them and you’ll likely have food go bad before you have time to cook it.  Instead, make some meals on the weekend to eat during the week when you’re busy or plan simple recipes and buy simple ingredients.  Rachael Ray’s Week in a Day is a great springboard for finding recipes you can make on the weekend to enjoy all week long.

Alternatively, you can choose simple meals to make on busy weeknights.  Fresh spinach can be sautéed in minutes.  Paired with a microwaved baked potato and a simple meat like a polish sausage that can be cooked quickly, and you have a fairly healthy, inexpensive meal.  Another option is to keep frozen vegetables on hand to cook quickly and pair with an easy meat and minute rice.

Buy foods your family likes.  Too often, people buy a bargain that turns out to be a waste of money because their family won’t eat it.  Buy the foods that your family will eat, not the foods that are a bargain.

Use leftovers!  Do you eat leftovers?  Some people don’t like them, but I love leftovers because they offer me one meal I don’t have to cook!  Eating leftovers can be a great way to stretch your food dollars.  If your family refuses leftovers, try to cook only as much as your family will eat in a meal so you don’t waste extras.

Create new meals with the leftovers.  Another idea is to creatively repurpose leftovers.  For instance, if you cook a whole chicken or buy a rotisserie chicken, keep the leftovers to turn into other meals like chicken enchiladas or chicken noodle soup.  Thanks to the Internet, you can find plenty of recipes for reusing leftovers.  Some chefs, like Robin Miller of the Food Network, specifically look to make meals out of leftovers to help you better utilize your time and food.

Utilize the freezer.  One of my favorite ways to reduce food waste is to use the freezer.  We recently bought a large box of individual serve guacamole.  I still had 8 left close to the expiration date, so I put them in the freezer, and now we just pull them out as we need them.  Many meals that you make and don’t want to eat all at once can be frozen for later use.

What are your favorite strategies for avoiding food waste?  Do you waste a lot of food or a minimal amount?

 

When Your Frugal Life Can Cost You More Money

By 3 Comments

One of the tenets of a frugal life is learning impulse control.

Are you running errands and want to drink a soda?  Just wait until you get home.  Instead of paying $1.00 for a can, you can have one that you bought in bulk for .10 a can.

Are you excited to see the latest movie by your favorite actor?  Don’t pay $10 or more per ticket; just wait until it comes to DVD and check it out from the library.  Or watch it on Netflix or Amazon.

Often, when it comes to frugal living, simply waiting can save you money—a lot of money.

Your frugal life can cost you money
Your Frugal Life can Cost You Money

However, the same impulse that prompts frugal people to wait can also end up costing them a lot of money, if they’re not careful.  The key is knowing when it’s good to wait vs. when you need to take action.

Car Repairs

When it comes to mechanical car repairs, waiting will almost always cost you money.  For instance, a few years ago, I heard a squeak when I pushed on the brakes.  However, we didn’t have the money for a costly repair, so we put off the repair while we tried to generate more money.  While we waited, the brakes continued to deteriorate, so a repair that would have only cost a few hundred dollars had we taken care of it quickly, turned into a repair that cost several hundred more.  Ouch.  Lesson learned.

However, for non-mechanical repairs, waiting or just not fixing them can save you money.  Our electronic sliding door on our minivan has been broken for a few years now.  (The cable is frayed.)  Repairing it would have cost $1,000+.  Since the van has nearly 200,000 miles on it and is 13 years old, we opted not to make that repair.

Home Repairs

Some home repairs can be put off, but most of them, like car repairs, need to be attended to in a prompt manner.  If they are, they will cost much less money.  Case in point?  We hated our kitchen faucet.  It was very low, and it was hard to use when washing pots and pans.  We wanted to replace it, but didn’t have the money.  Well, this summer, we learned that the faucet had been leaking.  There were actually three leaks dripping under the sink because the previous owner had duct taped (!) one of the pipes under the sink.  The plumber replaced the faucet and changed the pipes under the sink.  We would have had that expense regardless of when we replaced the faucet, but had we taken care of the faucet earlier, we would have saved ourselves the water damage repair underneath the sink.

Living a frugal life and waiting for most things in life can save you thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of dollars over your lifetime, in some cases, waiting will just cost you more.

Do you tend to put off home and car repairs because of your frugal life, or do you attend to them promptly, knowing they will likely cost more money if you don’t?