We Saved $2,700 With One Money Saving Technique

What if there was a money-saving technique you could use today to save an extra $100 a month? How about an extra $200 or more?

For you, I, and a lot of other people out there, that extra few hundred bucks a month would be huge. It can pay a bill (or two!), it can buy groceries, it can pay down your credit card balance…

…or you can just let it accumulate in your savings account and bring peace of mind…

But I don’t want to just talk to you about a hypothetical ‘what-if’. This money-saving technique can really save you extra cash. My wife and I were able to save an extra $230 a month by doing just one thing!

And for sure you can save money by doing it as well!

So what’s this special money-saving technique? Well, it’s something you already know about…

It all boiled down to being critical of our excess spending and lowering our monthly expenses…in this case our cell phone bill specifically.

This is how it went down…

Related Post: Frugal Cell Phone Plans That Actually Save Money.

Getting Sucked In…

When I signed up with my old carrier I didn’t just need a cell phone plan…I also needed two new cell phones.

As we all know, cell phones aren’t built to last forever and the price of phones is increasing all the time.

So, I was thrilled to find a lease one phone get on free promotion.

Along with the new phones, I also signed up for the unlimited data plan for my two lines. I mean, I use my phone to listen to Youtube, Pandora, even talk radio. I figured unlimited data was the way to go.

Aaaaaand I needed to sign up for an international calling plan. After all, my wife has family in Cuba and in Spain so international calling was a requirement for us.

And of course, I was also sold on the phone insurance.

After all of that, plus a smorgasbord of taxes and fees that I was never able to fully understand, my monthly phone bill averaged around $260 a month

(or $3,120 a year)!

More than that, if something unexpected happened (like a family emergency overseas) our phone bill would be even higher if we needed to make extra calls. In fact, one month we paid around $300 just for our cell phone bill!

Maybe you’re in the same boat. But even if your bill isn’t as much as our was you’re almost certainly paying more than you have to for your phone plan if you’re with one of the big companies.

Related post: 15 Useful Techniques to Lower Your Phone Bill!

Searching For The Right Company

As you might imagine, paying that amount of money every month made it more difficult to build our savings.

Eventually, we decided that enough was enough and that we needed to cut our phone expense as much as possible.

To do that we first needed to pay off the lease on our phones. That cost us a pretty penny, but we believed it was worth it to lower our monthly phone costs.

Next we created a list of the things that really mattered to us, like data, international calling, national coverage, availability of phone service while traveling abroad and of course PRICE!

We then looked around to see which companies could provide those services and for how much.

In the end the company that best fit our needs for the cheapest price was Mint Mobile.

Data

As I mentioned earlier I use my phone for the radio, Youtube, Pandora and a bunch of other apps. So my assumption was that unlimited data was absolutely necessary for me. But it turns out that it wasn’t.

In this day and age WiFi is everywhere. In our workplace, at restaurants, in the gym, at the library…pretty much anywhere you go. So why not take advantage of it?

Ever since I switched over to mint mobile I’ve made sure to connect to the WiFi wherever I am have noticed that I don’t usually exceed 1GB of data usage per month. So my cheap, low data plan with Mint Mobile provides all the data I need.

International Calling

Since my wife’s family is out of the country, international calling was completely necessary for us. This necessity caused us to believe that our phone bill was going to be huge no matter what!

Part of the reason we were with our big carrier in the first place was that we believed the big carrier provided the best price for international calling.

But this wasn’t the case. After doing calculations it turned out that Mint Mobile provided a cheaper price per minute (for the amount of talking we did) than we found anywhere else.

Another thing we love about Mint Mobile is that we prepay for our international minutes.

When you don’t prepay, there’s a danger that you’ll talk more than you intended to and end up with a huge surprise when your phone bill comes in.

But when you prepay, you know exactly how much you’re going to spend and when you run out of minutes, you’ll know!

Related post: Never Pay For Cable Again: 28 Must Have Alternatives.

National Coverage

Mint Mobile is powered by T-Mobile’s network so it’s national coverage is excellent for us.

Also, Mint Mobile’s plans provide unlimited nationwide (U.S.A.) talk and text and provides free calls to Canada and Mexico!

Unfortunately, we don’t have family in Canada or Mexico so we can’t take advantage, but maybe you can!

Availability of Phone Service Abroad

Another thing we wanted was to be able make calls from abroad (specifically Spain and Cuba).

Fortunately, Mint Mobile allows us to prepay for international roaming when we need it…

…unfortunately, Cuba isn’t included in the international roaming plan.

But this wasn’t unexpected and we can easily get around the Cuba limitation with a Cuba sim card.

Price

In terms of price, Mint Mobile is by far one of the cheapest phone plan that I’ve come across for the service provided. Even Mint Mobile’s most expensive phone plan was cheaper than I’ve seen from the big carriers.

The cheapest plan is $15 for 3GB per month (which I signed up for) The next plan was $20 for 8GB per month, then $25 for 12GB per month.

Related post: 7 Effective Tips on How to Save Money From Salary. 

Making The Switch

So after researching the factors above we decided that Mint Mobile provided what we needed for the lowest price.

We were so excited when we saw how much money we would be saving compared with our previous carrier. We almost couldn’t believe it. An extra $230 per month or $2,760 per year!

What To Do Now?

After saving money on our phone bill the hardest thing we had to do was decide what to do with the extra money we found ourselves with.

Well, using it to make extra payments on debt is one thing that we’re definitely doing, but we’re also putting a part of it towards savings.

And if you’re into skill building and raising your income then you can invest a little in yourself with skill learning platforms such as SkillShare.

Wrap-Up

The most powerful money saving technique out there is to be disciplined about searching for expses to lower.

And this one is an easy one.

If you want to keep more of your money and you’re paying more than $15 a month for your phone plan then you definitely want to look into switching over to Mint Mobile.

They have everything you could want in a phone plan for a fraction of the cost of the major carriers.

Once you make the switch all you’ll have to do is decide what to use all that extra money for!

Cheers!

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