Lazy Man and Money

Switch to Cricket Wireless?

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[Editor’s Note: The first time I published this, I found a bug in the WordPress publishing system where one typo can make the whole article disappear. Let’s give this another try.]

A year and a half ago, I wrote about the Best Cell Phone/Plan Savings Today. Nearly 18 months later, I still think the Nexus 5 on StraightTalk is extremely competitive. That phone cost me around $399 for a 32GB and StraightTalk is between $42-45 a month depending on how many months you buy at a time.

The cell phone industry moves fast and there’s more competition nowadays. There are bunch of Motorola Android phones that fall in the under $200 range (some even under $100). You have to be a little careful if you want LTE, the fastest data speed. I’m not sure sure if they come with full 1080P screens, but remember that Apple went “retina” with worse resolution quite a few ago. And if you don’t want to pay $399 like I did on a Nexus 5, you can get it on Ebay starting at around $250.

I’ve always be a fan of spending a little more money on the better phone. If you think about it, even spending $45 is spending $540 a year. You’ll pay more in service than for the phone, so a cost of an $50-100 shouldn’t break you. This is specially true considering that it was fairly normal to pay $100-$120 a month just for service as recently as 3-4 years ago.

What’s caught my attention is the Cricket Wireless’s new plans. They are offering a 2.5GB plan on AT&T’s LTE network with unlimited talk/text. The price is $35 if you give them a credit card to put it on autopay. My Straight Talk plan is 3GB, but everything else (even the network) is the same for that $42-45 a month. I rarely use more than 1GB of data, so the amount of data doesn’t matter to me. Thus I’d be looking at $35 with Cricket vs. $42-45 with Straight Talk.

A switch could save me $100, even $150 a year. That’s better than a poke in the eye, right?

I typically have the mentality of, “Why fix it if it isn’t broken?” There’s new sim card purchase involved, which is a few dollars. That’s a one-time cost, so it is still something that will be made up in a few months.

I’m a little on the fence of whether it was worth it until I realized that it would be around $250 a year because it is two phone plans (my wife and mine). That’s enough to swing me into action.

P.S. I know some people really like Ting. I think it has save families some money by sharing all the minutes, data, etc. However, I don’t like the idea of feeling like “the meter is running” when I use my phone. It is worth it to me to pay a little extra every month knowing that I’m not going to get surprised with a big bill. I think this Cricket deal makes Ting a non-starter for us.

Exploring Ultra Cheap Wireless Services

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The other day, I received an email from a public relations person for Scratch Wireless. Staying on top of the mobile carriers has been a hobby of mine since 2004 when I worked for location-based service start-up. However, I’ve never heard of Scratch, so I was intrigued.

Turns out their service is much like Republic Wireless which I wrote about before. Both companies have very cheap plans. They achieve the low price point by cutting some corners on service. For example, they both route calls through wi-fi when it is available. To do this they require phones with specialized software. You can’t just bring any phone to the network.

In addition, each service piggybacks on Sprint’s network. I had been a more-or-less happy Sprint customer for more than 10 years, but they don’t have great LTE coverage. If you are coming from AT&T or Verizon, you aren’t going to get the fastest data and the best coverage.

The public relations person explained how Scratch’s pricing works. You can purchase a daily pass for $1.99 or a monthly one for $14.99. The daily pass comes with 25MB of data, while the monthly comes with 200MB.

I think it is a raw deal.

I explained that I can’t figure out their target audience. I don’t know who buys cell phone service for a day. Am I going to tell my friends that they can only call me on Mondays and Wednesdays, because that’s when I have service? Of course not. If you need service 8 days of the month, you might as well pick up the monthly pass.

Paying less than $15 a month is a good deal, but the 200MB data limit is very low. For comparison sake, my $40 Straight Talk plan has 3GB, 15 times more, before it slows you down. I don’t use my data plan much at all, but I still top 700MB a month. I feel like I could blow through 200MB of data in 3 short YouTube videos.

So far Scratch seems like the kind of company that might be useful for my mother who mostly just makes calls if there’s an emergency with her cell phone.

However, there was one last thing that I didn’t like about Scratch. The service requires the use of a Photon Q Android phone. That phone was a slightly above average when came out in August of 2012. Today it is a dinosaur and it’s the only option. Quite honestly, I wouldn’t want to subject my mother to that phone experience even some of the time.

Republic Wireless has a plan a pair of plans that surround Scratch’s price point and features. Republic’s $10 plan doesn’t include any data. The $25 plan has unlimited data at slower 3G speeds. However, it does have the option to buy very new phones from Motorola… and they are cheaper than Scratch’s Photon Q.

Readers of my Best Cell Phone/Plan Savings Today article have recommended another low-cost wireless service called Ting. Ting’s model is that you pay for what you use. Don’t talk on the phone this month? Fine, pay nothing for those zero minutes. Didn’t send a text? Same. You can see Ting’s pricing here.

It’s a very intriguing idea and one that I thought I’d love. When priced out what Ting would cost me, the price added up quickly… and I rarely use my cell phone. For example, if I were to use 120 minutes (just 4 minutes a day), 10 text messages, and my typical 700MB of data, it would be $37 for the month. For $6 more, I currently get unlimited of all three on Straight Talk. I think Ting’s pricing gets better if you have more people and more devices sharing those buckets of minutes, data, and texts.

I can imagine being put on hold on a customer service call for 20 minutes and thinking, “This is going to start costing me money.” It’s really nice piece of mind to have unlimited minutes in that situation.

Lastly, there’s FreedomPop and it’s phone service. I think it’s one of the best values around. For $20/mo. you get unlimited talk, text, and data (slows to 3G after the first GB). For $79.99 a YEAR (not month), you get unlimited talk, text, and 500GB of data. The catch is that it uses Sprint’s data network for nearly everything, even calls. If Sprint’s coverage isn’t great in your area, you are out of luck. When I put in my address the website said I wouldn’t get coverage, but asked if I wanted to buy it anyway.

That’s a rather large “downside”, but maybe it works for you.

At the end of the day, I feel there’s too many trade-offs with each of companies. I’ll stick with Straight Talk which gives me unlimited everything for $43 a month. It gives me everything that the major carriers have, for a much lower price.

There’s a lot more out there than the big four (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint). I encourage you to explore these other options to see if they are right for you. Saving a few dozen dollars each month really adds up over the years.

Money Magazine July 2008 Highlights

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When I was going through my mail last week, I noticed something interesting. It seemed like I got a flier that was thicker than usual. Wait, it was this month’s Money Magazine. It feels like the slimmest edition of Money Magazine I’ve seen… yet, I happen to have the July 2007 copy handy and they are both the same 128-pages. So much for my conspiracy theory that advertisements were down and Money Magazine might be undergoing some financial issues of their own. Either July is just a light month in general or I’m just crazy thinking this copy was thin.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights from this months issue. If you have a copy, you can follow along with me. If you don’t, here are some of the things you might be missing.

– Save money on drug prescriptions with the advice on p. 19. The hint: go shopping at Wal-Mart.
– Women want to talk more about money (p. 20). True.com survey says that 33% of women want to talk more about money while only 21% of men do. This goes against almost every female I know who would rather have a root canal than talk about money. My wife fits in that group. What do men wish the talked more about… big suprise, but it’s sex.
– Frank Boucher, certified financial planner learned he could save money on baseball games by bringing his own food (p. 20). He could have learned this months earlier if he read my article on Saving Money at Baseball Games
– It’s only a good idea for a select minority to get the $100 unlimited cell phone plans that some providers are making available. (p. 26)
– Jean Chatzky says driving a little greener can save you money on gas (p. 28). Five Cent Nickel found out the same thing first hand.
– Interesting article about taking care of your finances for couples always on the run (p. 33). Maybe it’s just me because I’m experienced, but much of my finances take care of themselves most of the time. Online banking shifts money into almost all the right places. I pay credit card bills online, but I have a back-up set up with Chase so that they would get paid in full if I forget. About the only thing that I remember is to write the rent check.
– The Right Way to Take a Pension (p. 40). What’s a pension ;-).
– Are you paying your financial adviser 3% (p.44)? It seems that many are. This is one reason why I spent time to learn to invest myself. By limiting expense ratios and diversifying with exchange traded funds, I often pay closer to 0.5% in expenses. That adds up to a lot of money compounded over the years.
– Walter Updegrave says that your retirement number is a moving target. I came to this conclusion with my My Ever Expanding Retirement Goal.
– Inspiring entreprunal highlight (p. 53). I love reading about people starting their businesses and the troubles they have with them.
– How do you protect your idea from being stolen by a big company (p. 53). I’m surprised to see that it doesn’t mention anything about writing out your idea and sending it to yourself via certified mail. You’ll get a date stamp on the sealed envelope. If it has to go to court, handing the judge the envelope should be great evidence.
– Learn how artificial materials can be better than the real thing in your home (p. 62-64). If I was to redo my home, I would definitely heed all these suggestions. It looks like they’ll last longer and in some ways cost less to begin with.
– Invest globally with one fund (p. 69-70)? I say no, but I like reading about investments. You might not be like me.
– Invest in networking companies (p. 78)? Is it 1999 again?
– Six pages on Inflation (83-89), this is a major article in the issue. This is one my biggest financials fears. If I had to guess it’s probably yours as well.
– Pages 91-95 – Feature on People Living Without Plastic… This was the article that featured two personal finance bloggers I previously mentioned.
– Do you know your spouses finances? This a 5-page feature.
– College Loan article that I won’t read from pages 102-105
– Page 106 – OMG, full size, close-up picture of Suze Orman… If I had a mustache like the one she’s showing, I wouldn’t allow a close-up like that to be published.
– Page 107 – This Suze Orman article is the first one I’ve read of hers that was good. Check it out.
– A family looking for a simpler life quits their high paying jobs and moves out to the farm. What about their finances? Page 109-113
– Looking for a Home Security system? See the review on page 115-117.
– Getting a lightweight PC? Look for the round up on 118-119. They left out my Asus EEE.
– The last page is an article on carbon offsets. I didn’t find it that interesting.