I’ve been making a conscious effort not to worry about every last penny (hence the name of the blog) and instead tackle large recurring charges. The most success I’ve had has been with AT&T. To show how much we have saved, here’s a breakdown of how much we pay and how much we save:
- AT&T Family Plan 700 Minutes 200 bonus minutes per line (800 total; added by customer service representative)
- Unlimited Text Messages for the entire family (added by customer service representative; expires in 4 months)
- 1700 rollover minutes (1,000 added by customer service representative)
- 18% employee discount
We use about 1,600 or 1,700 minutes a month as a family, so right now, we are dipping into our rollover minutes slightly (only 22 last month). When those run out, we’ll have to upgrade to the 1,400 plan, or get more rollover minutes added.
Here’s a breakdown of how much our cell phone bill would be each month if we paid for all of our features. They are the cheapest plans and features to cover our usage:
- AT&T Family Plan 2,100 minutes – $109.99 for 2 lines + 2 additional lines @ $9.99 each
- Unlimited Text Messages – $30 for the family
This comes out to about $160 + taxes.
Our bill this month? Less than $75 + taxes. So I save about $85 a month, which over the course of one year, comes out to over $1,000 in savings. That’s a lot for just a few minutes of research and a couple of phone calls.
