Wednesday, September 19, 2012

My Prepaid Cell Phone Experiment Continues

Note: I had started writing this in June of 2011 but for whatever reason, never finished it.

I finally got sick of it; paying my cell phone bill. I thought, our parents had a $30-$40 home phone line while we were growing up and that was good enough for the entire family. Now, each member of the family appears to be paying twice that. I checked my cell phone history, going back to 2004 when I was with Sprint, and I've been suckered into paying more and more each year. I say "suckered," even though it was completely my own fault.

The Gradual Climb
In 2004, I was paying on average $51 per month after taxes for my own Sprint line. The annoying part of this was that it was a $40 plan with $11 in taxes! That's over 25%! In 2005, I combined plans with my sister and joined Tmobile, where we averaged a bill of $87 for 2 lines. In 2006, it jumped up to $124 for 2 lines (we must have added unlimited texting). And ever since 2007, it has been at $190 for 2 lines (we must have added internet for both phones). The only exception was that I worked for Tmobile during 2009 so I received a break on my cell phone bill, but as soon as I left, it jumped back up to $190 per month.

I think it's important to note that I've always used my phone for business, but even with that being the case, I've used it mostly for email and texts, and only about 400 to 500 cell minutes per month.

The worst part about it was that I kept adding features, without really thinking about it. I wouldn't add features like special ringtones or games, but even the basic stuff kept adding up. I felt like when a new feature came out, it would make my life easier or better. And when a new phone came out, I had to have it.

Comparisons
So finally in April 2011, I decided to take a good look at my cell phone plan. I looked at rival carriers AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. For what my sister and I both use (about 1,000 minutes combined, unlimited texting and 2 smart phones), all the competitors would have cost more. Tmobile is the cheapest as far as contract monthly plans go, although the trade off is a small network and a smaller selection of phones.

I started looking at prepaid plans on the internet. Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Metro PCS, lots of names came up. I even considered Tmobile Prepaid which my mom uses.

I noticed that Virgin Mobile carried an Android phone called the LG Optimus V. Tmobile has the same phone (although they call it the Optimus T) that they give out for free if you sign a contract.

It's a $149 phone with no contract at Virgin. It really got me thinking, why pay $149 for a really fancy phone AND get a 2-year contract, when I could pay $149 for a basic smartphone and avoid the contract? I decided to make the switch around mid-April 2011.

The Verdict
For 16 months, I loved it. I paid $43.80 every month, which was just $40 (for 1200 minutes and unlimited texts / data plus SALES tax (Not those annoying cell phone taxes that show up on your monthly bill). It felt great to be paying what I did back in 2004. You don't get the detailed bills at the end of the month that show how many calls or texts you've made, but I need to learn to let that kind of stuff go. The network, because it uses Sprint, actually seems better than Tmobile in some parts of Washington, like on my way out to Ashford. In the city, they're about the same.

Of course a basic $150 phone isn't as fast, smooth, or feature-rich as a $500 phone that you get for $100 to $200 on contract, but I still had an Android powered phone, could check my email, text, go online, use apps, and everything else. And you don't mind the teasing you get from friends, because you realize you're probably paying half what they're paying every month.

I liked the prepaid concept so much, that when my friend gave me his old AT&T iPhone, I got it unlocked and switched to a $30 T-Mobile plan that also offered unlimited texting and 5 GB of 4G data (of course, my iPhone only works at EDGE speeds but it seems to download at up to 250K per second which is good enough for email and browsing for me). Now I'm only paying $33 per month.

I know I'm skipping over a lot of details for the sake of keeping this as short as possible, but I'm mainly writing this to give people a nudge / wake up call about their cell phones. I paid over $2K per year for cell phone coverage at one point. Now I pay less than a quarter of that.

Newest Bathroom Feature?

I was showing a home the other evening and came across a bath tub that had no faucet or obvious way for the water to come out. Out of curiosity, I turned one of the knobs and all of a sudden, this thick stream started coming down from the ceiling. In my 8 years of doing real estate, I had never seen anything like that. Thought I'd share here on my blog.

This was one of those really upscale homes with expensive fixtures everywhere, so I guess I wasn't too surprised to see something new.