Beating Broke

How We Save Money With Ting as Our Cell Phone Provider

July 27, 2020 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

For the longest time, my husband and I had simple Tracfone flip phones in case of emergency. We mainly used them just to keep up with one another, if necessary. We didn’t even have texting. But then my husband found it necessary to have a cell phone for work. We didn’t want to be strapped to a cell phone provider who would charge us a hundred dollars a month or more, so we decided to go with Ting, which has no contract requirement. I love to share with people how we save money with Ting as our cell phone provider because it helps us maintain a modest budget.

How We Save Money with Ting as Our Cell Phone Provider

We’ve upgraded to smart phones. We can now text, call, search the internet, etc. just like most people in the United States. However, by using Ting, we’ve found several ways to cut our costs.

Basic Ting Services and Charges

Ting is a provider who charges based on your usage.

Phone Line Charge

Each line that you have on the plan costs $6 a month. So, for my husband and I, there are two lines. We pay $12 a month for these.

Talk Minutes

There are also base rates for the minutes that you use to talk on your phone.

1 to 100 minutes = $3,
101 to 500 minutes = $9,
501 to 1000 minutes = $18, etc.

Texts

And there are base rates for texts.

1 to 100 texts = $3,
101 to 1000 texts = $5,
1001 to 2000 texts = $8, etc.

In addition, you will also pay taxes and regulatory fees monthly.

Limit Our Usage

Since Ting is basically a pay as you use provider, we try to limit our usage to keep our bills low. From October 2019 to February 2020, our monthly bill averaged $63. The highest bill was $84 in October when I was traveling, and the lowest was $46.

Once the pandemic hit and we began to stay home most of the time, our monthly bill dropped to $30.

If you want to focus on keeping your bill low, you can set up usage alerts, such as an email sent to you once you use 450 megabytes, so you don’t go over the 500 megabyte limit before moving into a different charge rate.

You can also enable settings that don’t allow you to make any more texts after a certain number, etc. This is very helpful if you have teens on your plan. This allows you to keep their usage within the confines of your budget.

Basic Phones

Ting also sells phones. My husband and I try to go with the most basic model available. The current phones we use cost less than $200 apiece. (We bought them during a sale Ting was having.)

We also use a cell phone case to keep our phones in good shape. My husband and I have both dropped our phones, but they were not damaged thanks to the cases.

Final Thoughts

While we wanted more modern cell phones, we didn’t want to pay a lot for them every month. The strategies given above are how we save money with Ting as our cell phone provider. Ting is not in every area, but you can see if they’re in your area by entering your area code on their website.

How to Survive Being Broke

July 20, 2020 By MelissaB 3 Comments

Many of us have been broke. It’s not a fun place to be. You may feel depressed and desperate, but recognizing that you won’t always be in this position is imperative. There are steps you can take to live a more comfortable life financially. Until then, here’s a primer on how to survive being broke.

How to Survive Being Broke

If you’re broke, you must take care of your immediate needs first.

Short Term Action to Take

Maintain a Positive Attitude

Many people who are broke become depressed. They don’t see any way out of their situation and can’t imagine a future where they’ll be in a better position.

To successfully beat being broke, you need a positive attitude. Research stories of people who were broke and went on to become successful and much more comfortable financially such as Erin Brockovich (played by Julia Roberts in the movie Erin Brockovich) or Chris Gardner (played by Will Smith in the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness).

Remember that life can change quickly. You may be broke now, but you likely won’t be in the same position in five years or even two years.

Live on Beans & Rice

How to Survive Being Broke — Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash

The next step is to trim your expenses as much as possible. Since food is often the largest monthly expense behind rent, that’s the best place to start. You may love to eat salmon and steak, but now is not the time to do so. Now is the time to eat the proverbial beans and rice. For instance, when my mom and dad were first married and broke, my mom would buy one pork chop, pound it flat, and then split it between the two of them. Once they had two kids, she would buy two pork chops and pound them flat to make four servings. Now is the time to stretch your food as much as possible and buy the least expensive food you can.

Choose Your Friends Carefully

What financial position are your friends in? You’ll want to find friends who are mindful of their money and not spendthrifts. When my husband and I were first married, we were broke.

Some of my coworkers invited us to go with them out to eat. The other two couples were both financially comfortable, and they chose a Mexican restaurant. To my dismay, there were no prices on the menu. We ended up spending too much that night, even though we tried to make frugal choices. It was just an expensive restaurant. We couldn’t go out with my coworkers again because we couldn’t afford their lifestyle.

If you try to maintain friends who are in a better financial position than you, you may never become financially comfortable.

Entertain at Home

Just because you’re broke, you don’t have to give up your social life. Instead, change the way that you socialize. Instead of going to a bar or restaurant and spending a lot of money, invite friends to your home. Have a potluck at your house or have a game night. Once a month my parents used to have their friends over in the summer for a volleyball night. Be creative. You’ll find there are plenty of ways to socialize without spending a lot of money.

Find a Hobby That Pays

Sometimes when people are broke, they have a lot of time, but not much money. If that’s your circumstance, find a hobby that pays. For instance, my uncle started a small side business for athletes at his former high school. He would comb through micro fiche to find all of the articles for a particular year about the high school football team. He’d print these out and bind them all together and sell them to the athletes. He made some money on the side, and the former athletes had a scrap book of all the old newspaper clippings from their glory days.

Other ideas might include gardening, crafting and selling the product on Etsy, doing genealogy research for someone, building web sites for others, etc. You’re only limited by your imagination in what you can do.

Long Term

When you’re broke, you may immediately think just of the short-term, but you must also think of the long-term. How will you get out of this situation so you’re not broke your entire life?

There are several important steps you should take.

Earn a Degree

If a degree would help you secure a better job, than look into taking college classes. When you’re already broke, you may feel like you have you have no time or money to do so. However, if you don’t take steps to improve your situation, you’ll remain broke for much of your life.

I had a friend, Becca, who was raising her niece and nephew. Money was tight, but she prioritized her education. She took one or two classes a semester, putting in much of her study time early in the morning or at night when the kids were asleep. It took her many years to get her degree, but she did. Now, she lives a comfortable, middle class life and has a professional job.

Learn about Finance

If you don’t already have a solid background on personal finance, now is the time to learn. This doesn’t have to cost any money. You can borrow books from the library, take free finance classes online, and read blogs. Learn all you can about managing money. I’m not just talking about ways to save money, but ways to build your emergency fund and invest so you don’t end up broke again once you get out of your current situation.

Final Thoughts

How to survive being broke is a challenge for many people. However, the first step is a mental one. Realize that you’re currently broke, but you won’t be broke for the rest of your life. You can make both short-term and long-term changes to improve your life and vastly improve your financial situation. Many, many other people have done so. Learn about those people and take concrete action to improve your current situation.

How a Pay Cut Has Affected Our Finances

July 13, 2020 By MelissaB 1 Comment

The pandemic has hit many people financially. While millions of people have lost their jobs, there are also millions who have taken a pay cut. Our family is very grateful that my husband has both kept his job and been able to work from home the majority of the time. However, he did experience a significant reduction in salary.

How a Pay Cut Has Affected Our Finances

Essentially, my husband’s pay cut brought his salary back to where it was six years ago. When we found out the pay cut was coming, we immediately took action.

Practice an Attitude of Gratitude

Before I even set to work altering our budget to adjust to the new income level, I practiced an attitude of gratitude. Yes, having a pay cut will make managing our money a bit more difficult, but my husband still has a job. That job, together with my freelance work, still provides enough money to support our family. The job still provides us with health care benefits and money in our retirement accounts.

This mind set helped me start to tackle the new budget and think of it as a challenge rather than a struggle. Even with less money coming in, we’re still in a good position. That alone is much to be thankful for.

Eliminate Extras from the Budget

Next, I looked at the subscriptions that we have. I had an eight dollar a month subscription to an exercise site. Sure, it’s not much per month, but I really didn’t need that subscription. I’ve found plenty of work outs for free on YouTube.

I also had a subscription to a foreign language app for another $7.99 a month. I deleted that and instead signed up for Duolingo, which is free.

We had about six monthly subscriptions in our budget, and we cut about half of them.

Find Corners to Cut

After I eliminated the easy fat from the budget, I set to work finding corners to cut.

Reduce the Grocery Budget

How a Pay Cut Has Affected Our Finances — Photo by Maria Lin Kim on Unsplash

I had raised our grocery budget in March when it was hard to find groceries in the early days of the pandemic. Now, I cut that back. I also changed the meals that we eat. Instead of having meat at every single dinner, I’ve instituted a two-night-a-week vegetarian meal. For the other nights, I try to mostly pick meals where meat serves as a condiment rather than the main star. For instance, we’ve enjoyed bean soup with one slice of bacon crumbled on top per bowl. By doing this, we’ve found some new recipes we really enjoy.

Reduce Other Budget Categories

We used to have a travel fund line item in our budget. That one is now gone. Not only is it difficult to travel safely with the pandemic, but we simply don’t have the money to travel now.

Likewise, we had a spend category for my husband’s interests and mine as well as activities we did with the kids. I didn’t want to eliminate that one entirely, but I eliminated it by about 75%.

Increase Some Budget Categories

As strange as it seems, while I was slashing budget categories, I also found a few that I thought prudent to increase.

Emergency Fund

Despite the budget cut, I still make emergency fund savings a priority. Even though our money is tight, life still goes on. Over the next few months, we will likely need a car repair. We’ve already had an $800 home repair during the first few months of the pandemic. We will likely need to see the doctor or buy medicine.

I want to continue to save for emergencies and recurring, irregular expenses. If I slash those categories to make our budget a bit more comfortable, then when the expense pops up, we’ll have no way to pay it. That would cause us to go into debt, which we both want to avoid at all costs.

Kids’ Allowance

This may sound strange, but I chose to increase our kids’ allowance. We have always had our kids’ allowance directly tied to the chores that they do. Since we’re home so much now thanks to the pandemic, I increased the number of chores that they do. (Our house gets much messier when we are in it 24-7.)

Why did I increase their allowance when money is tight? Simple. Now, they have their own money and their own budget. For instance, my daughter wanted to buy some paints, a paint-by-number kit, and some yarn to keep herself busy with crafts. She used to ask me for those items, but now that she has a larger allowance, she will pay for those items herself. Now, I don’t have to be the bad guy saying we don’t have money for the items. Instead, she (and our other kids) get to pick and choose what they want to buy and what is most important to them. They’re in control, not me.

Ramp Up Other Work

As soon as we learned about his upcoming pay cut, I set about increasing my work. My husband’s income provides about 80% our monthly income. While increasing my work load won’t make up for the decrease in his salary, it does make up for a bit. An increase in my work load makes the budget a little less restricting.

Find Other Safety Nets

I mentioned to our financial planner that my husband was getting a pay cut. He let me know that for the year 2020 only, I could withdraw from our retirement account without facing the typical 10% penalty IF our pay was cut or we got COVID-19.

I don’t plan on using this option, but I do appreciate knowing that the option is available should we desperately need it.

Final Thoughts

How a pay cut has affected our finances is pretty dramatic. However, we’re still financially sound. We’ve taken the important steps to continue to live within our means and weather this storm. Most of all, we’re grateful that he still has a job and that he has the flexibility to work from home.