Monthly Archives: October 2009

Sharing My Goals (Part I)

Written by in Goals
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I am a big fan of Google and all their applications and services (all free!), so I try and use and learn about each service. Recently, I’ve gone through Google Tip Jar, which is “is a collection of money saving tips submitted and ranked by the web community.” There are several different categories to choose from, and people post their money saving tips and others vote on their favorites.I’ve noticed that most of the highly ranked tips are from popular personal finance sites such as The Simple Dollar, but the tips look pretty solid. The one that really resonated with me comes from Mike P. of Old Town, ME:

When you’re starting out with a new diet or workout routine, have an end goal in sight, but don’t work towards it in the beginning. Instead, create small, short term, achievable goals that will allow a sense of accomplishment once completed.

As part of setting goals for the rest of 2009 and beyond, I’ve realized that the best way to achieve your goals is to set small goals and work hard to reach them. If it takes too long to reach a goal, we often forget about them. If they are too broad, we don’t know which part to focus on.

I’ve had a hard time coming up with my first financial goals. Other than ‘saving money’ and ‘getting rich,’ I haven’t had much success in coming up with short-term goals that I can constantly have in mind so that I can impact my life in a helpful way.

Well, using thinking similar to the quote above, I have been able to think of some goals and I’d like to share them with you…tomorrow.

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How to Negotiate with Wireless Carriers

Written by in Cell Phone, Customer Service, Negotiating
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A few months ago, my brother went over his text message allotment (200) as part of our family plan, and I thought this was an abberation, so I increased his text messages to 1,500 for the month. I didn’t want this to continue. With overage charges being 20 cents per text message over 200, it was not worth it to rack up $20 in charges for texts 201-300, so he was put on the $15, 1,500 text message plan. This was the first time he was going over his limit considerably, so the following month, I decreased him back to the 200 message plan for $5.

This month, it turns out that his texting again went over his limit, and halfway through the month he was already at 200 texts. So, it was time to make a change. I had a 1,500 text message plan for $8.99 that was put on awhile ago with a special code that has since expired. Finally, my father uses 10-15 text messages per month ($2-$3) and my mother usually calls 411 and gets text messages sent to her phone, but does not know how to access them ($1).

I called up AT&T to complain about the plan we were on, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi, I have a problem. We have a line on the account that uses about 400 text messages per month and your plans only give us options that do not fit our account. Can you help me find a solution?
Customer Service Representative: I’d be happy to help you. Unfortunately, the only plans we offer are 200 messages for $5 per month and 1,500 text messages for $15 per month. I see that you have 1,500 text messages. I recommend the unlimited text messaging for the whole family for $30 per month.

Me: That’s silly, I would save money by just adding $15 to his account. Together we’d be paying ($15 + $8.99= )$24, which gives us more text messages that we would need for less than $30. I’m very unhappy about this situation, and we don’t have the money to spend another $15 on text messages. I know that Sprint has other options for us, can I talk to someone who can help me cancel the account?

Customer Service Representative: One moment, I’ll transfer you to the Customer Retention Specialist.

Me: Thank You.

Customer Retention Specialist: Hi, I understand that you are considering leaving AT&T and I hope I can help you. let’s take a look at your account…may I suggest the unlimited family texting for $30 a month?

Me: No, that doesn’t make sense for us. It would be more beneficial to pay for $15 for that line, but that seems unreasonable when he’ll only be using 400 text messages.

Customer Retention Specialist: I understand. Well, there is not much we can, we don’t offer plans with text messages between 200 and 1,500 messages.

Me: Ok, well it seems like Sprint has the plans I’m looking for, so as much as I like AT&T, if you can’t help me, maybe it’s time to switch over.

Customer Retention Specialist: Well, we don’t want that. Let me see what I can do to help you.
(After a 5 minute silent hold, she returns) Thank you for waiting. What I am able to do is reduce the price for 3 months. We can offer you the unlimited package for $30 and we will pay for half of that.

Me: That doesn’t really help me, that’s a very short term solution. What will happen in 3 months? I’m going to have the same problem. Is there a way to make that a year? That would be a lot more reasonable.
Customer Retention Specialist: I don’t think I can do that.

Me: What about 9 months?
Customer Retention Specialist: That’s still something I can’t do, unfortunately.

Me: Well, then 6 months would be good.
Customer Retention Specialist: Let me see what I can do. (After another silent hold, she returns.) Hi, thank you for waiting again. What I can offer you is either 8 months of unlimited text messages for half price, or we can do 4 months of unlimited text messages for free. Which would you prefer?

Me: OK, that sounds pretty good. We’ll go with unlimited text messages for 4 months.

I went with 4 months for free because I figure in 4 months I will be able to call back and negotiate a slightly better plan. It took 30 minutes, but we were able to save $8.99 + $15 my brother would have needed + $3-$4 my parents spend. That’s a savings of about $27 a month. Over the first 4 months, that saves $108! Not bad.

Now, I realize that I will lose my $8.99 text message plan, but with my brother returning from overseas in 10 months and heading off to college, we’ll likely need unlimited text messages for the whole family anyway at that point. Hopefully I’ll be able to negotiate that down from $30, but either way, I am happy about the money we are saving.

Right now, we use about 2,200 minutes as a family (4 lines) and get unlimited text messages for a nice low price of….$79.17 per month, plus taxes. And of course, we don’t have phone insurance. That’s less than the monthly cost of one iPhone on the cheapest plan (450 minutes) with a text message plan. Not bad. Not bad at all.

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BillShrink Review

Written by in Budget, Saving
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I was alerted to an online service a few days ago, BillShrink, and decided to check it out. The site advertises itself as an objective way to look at your bank accounts, credit cards, phone bill, and gas prices, to see where you can cut your spending and increase your savings. Sounds great, no?

Results:
Well, I decided to see what the site would say about my phone plan, and after entering some basic information about my current usage and my phone plan, it gave me a list of results, showing me which plans would save me money, and which would not. They showed that the 2,100 minute AT&T plan would cost me a lot of extra money, as would the 3,000 minute and unlimited plans. Not very surprising considering that I have a 1,400 minute plan.

However, it did surprise me that it showed that my same 1,400 plan would cost me an additional $5,200 over the next two years. Taking into account the fact that I get a discount through my employer, and that’s more like $4,000. Woah! Of course, I get some free text messages, which is not standard, but it was shocking to see how off they were. That’s a little disappointing and it shows me that this site needs to make some improvements before being considered reliable.

The Savings/CD portion of the account is a little more useful, but as with all bank accounts, future interest rates are hard to predict, so while it says I can earn an extra $80 in one year by changing to an account with a higher interest rate and investing $200 a month, only time will tell whether my ING account can be beat in the next year.

As for the Credit Card section, it shows that my Bank of America Visa Signature is in fact the best card for me and that no other cards would save me money.

Suggestions:
Since they are able to recommend specific plans for various carriers, they should implement a way to simply select the plan you are on. By comparing your plan as opposed to your estimated text message and minute usage, comparing plans would be easier and the entire process would be faster.

Conclusion:
It seems like this site is great in theory, and for some people it may save them money. For beginners, it sounds like a good tool to get started by cutting costs, but for those who have already started to tighten up their finances have probably already cut costs of their wireless service and open a savings account with a higher interest rate.

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Google Voice Can Save You Money

Written by in Cell Phone, Saving
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A few weeks ago, I found out about Google Voice, another service by Google. It has a lot of great features that are very useful and can potentially be used to save a lot of money. I signed up immediately, paying a few bucks on Ebay for an invite, and have been blown away by what I’ve found.

The Basics
As Google so eloquently puts it:

Google Voice gives you one number for all your phones — a phone number that is tied to you, not to a device or a location. Use Google Voice to simplify the way you use phones, make using voicemail as easy as email, customize your callers’ experience, and more.

Google Voice allows you to conveniently use one number for all your phone calls and text messages. They provide you a new phone number of your choice and it helps you manage your contacts and conversations. A few of the most important features are listed below:
For calls, Google Voice lets you choose which phone should ring (or multiple phones) based on the time of day and the caller. You can initiate a call using your phone, by dialing YOUR Google number, or through the website, which would ring your phone.

Text messages can be sent directly to your phone, but are also stored on the Google Voice site, similar to emails in Gmail.
You will have one public phone number than you can give out and not have to worry about whether you want someone to have your cell phone number. Simply block, automatically forward, or allow whichever numbers you want.

Voicemail can be customized for individuals or based on caller groups, and users can elect to read voicemail on the site or their email rather than listening to them.
There are loads of other features, and I encourage readers to look browse and see what really appeals to them.

How it Can Save You Money
While all of these features are nice, why is this on my blog? Well, Google users have been thinking of ways to use Google Voice and I’m going to present a way to save money each month by using Google Voice.

All Google Voice calls are placed by calling your Google number from your phone, and then dialing a friend’s number (When placing a call through the site, simply type their number in and pick up your phone when it rings). Because of this, if you use your cell phone, you will no longer be saving by using your network for free minutes. However, many cell plans now have free calling to a certain number of out-of-network numbers.

For example, T-Mobile has Fave-5, Sprint has Pick 3, and AT&T now has A-List, which allows calls to any 10 out-of-network numbers. If you have this feature, add your Google number to your plan, and use your Google number exclusively, you will no longer be using any of your limited minutes. So instead of having a 3,000 minute phone plan, you would be able to decrease your plan to 1,400 and use your Google number (And save $40.00 a month!).

It’s really a fantastic service, and as it grows, people are coming up with great new ways to utilize the free application.
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