Search Results for: budget

Get Your Phone Service for Less with These Two Programs

April 8, 2019 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Phones. They’re a necessity for keeping in contact with others, having access to emergency services, and getting directions when you’re lost. Yet, if you aren’t careful, the convenience of a phone can cost you anywhere from $50 to more than $200 a month.

My husband and I have cut corners with our phone service, and we couldn’t be happier.

Ooma

save money on phones — Save Money with These 2 Phone Services

We chose Ooma for our land line. Ooma is a system that operates through our internet connection. We pay $14.99 per month, which includes call waiting, caller ID, and free long distance. Oh, and that free long distance? Apparently that means anywhere because my husband has been able to call his family in Japan at no extra expense to us. Sweet!

While we love Ooma and the price we pay, there are sometimes glitches with this service. For instance, when our internet goes down, we don’t have telephone access. Occasionally the connection is not as good as I would like. However, these inconveniences are not regular occurrences, so we happily stay with Ooma.

Ting

My husband and I have had cell phones for a few years, but they were flip phones from Tracfone. While they served us well for a few years, we got frustrated with Tracfone’s customer service whenever we had an issue. We also wanted to upgrade to smartphones.

When I won a giveaway for a free Ting smartphone, we decided to also get my husband one and switch our service over to Ting.

Ting is a unique company that charges based on the services that you use. Our average bill is $34 a month for both of us to use our smartphones. I love that price!

Billing is based on how much you use.

Each line costs $6 a month.

Up to 100 minutes a month costs $3. One hundred to 500 minutes is $5 per month. (This goes all the way up to $35 for 2100 minutes.)

Up to 100 text messages a month is $3. Up to 1000 is $5. (My husband and I primarily keep in touch during the day through texting, and we never get close to 1000 texts.)

Date is $3 for 100MB, $10 for 500MB, all the way to $20 for 2GB.

In addition, you can set limits on how much usage is available. I imagine this is very important if you’re on a budget or if you have a teen with a phone. You can ask for notifications when you reach a certain level of minutes, texts, or data. You can also choose to suspend service when you hit a certain limit or someone else on your bill reaches that point.

The best point? There is no contract with Ting.

We’ve had our phones for about 6 months now, and we’re pleased. In addition, any time I’ve had questions, their customer service has been fantastic.

Ting has also branched out to providing Internet service at the same great value. Unfortunately, that services is only available in a handful of towns in five different states. I hope my location is available for Internet service soon!

Have you tried either of these services? Did you like or dislike them? What do you do to keep your phone bill low?

The Importance of Fixing Things Sooner Rather than Later

January 10, 2019 By MelissaB 2 Comments

A few years ago, my brakes started making noise whenever I pushed the brake pedal. I procrastinated quite a while before I took the car into the shop because I didn’t have the money for the repair. However, because I waited so long, the brakes had worn down to the rotors, so my repair was much more expensive than it would have been had I come in right away.

But Wait! I Hadn’t Learned the Lesson Yet!

You would think I’d have learned my lesson, but no, I haven’t.

We own a minivan that is 11.5 years old and has 167,000 miles on it. A while ago, one of the back sliding door handles broke, so we could no longer use it from the outside. No worries. We simply herded all the kids in through the other side door. Was it a pain? Just a little bit, but we didn’t want to spend $200 to $300 on a door handle repair when we had so many other pressing expenses.

But, then the other sliding door broke. The wire coil started to fray, so we couldn’t open the door. The repair for the outer wire coil? A cool $900 to $1,000. Ouch.

So, we started opening the driver’s side door and reaching around to open the side door with the outside broken handle by using the inside handle. By now, we were starting to feel a bit, um, special, I’ll say, because of our unusual way to open the door. Still, we put off the repair because we had other expenses like a $210 garage door repair and a $90 air conditioning tune up along with a $900 deposit for braces for our son.

All was okay until the inside door handle broke. Now, the only way the kids can get in and out of the car is through the front doors. The special meter has gone up enormously, and even the kids are talking about how embarrassed the are to get in and out of the car. Now that the repair is inevitable, I called the shop to find out the repair will likely be $400 to $500 because they’ll have to remove the door and replace both the inside and outside door handle.

Lesson learned. When a repair is needed, make the repair. If you don’t, you’ll likely end up paying more in the future.

How to Get the Money Together

If your budget is tight like ours is, there are ways to get the money together to make a smaller repair immediately so you don’t have to pay more for a larger repair later:

Raid your emergency fund. This is the easiest. If you have an emergency fund, use the money and then rebuild the emergency fund as quickly as possible.

Have a pantry challenge for a week. We spend approximately $150 to $200 a week for groceries. By taking just one week to eat only what we have in the house and not going to the grocery store, we could have had the money for the handle repair before it got worse. Lesson learned.

Sell stuff. Everyone has stuff around the house that they don’t need or don’t use. Sell things at second hand stores, sports resale stores, or eBay or Facebook. You’ll be surprised how quickly the money will add up.

Do you procrastinate on repairs because your budget is tight? If so, like us, has that rationale ended up costing you more money?

How to Coupon for Healthy Foods

July 23, 2018 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Years ago, during the coupon craze, I bought my share of convenience foods that I could get for just pennies. Thanks to couponing and buying the deals, I was able to save a great deal of money on groceries. But over the years, I found that the money I saved wasn’t really saved after all. Instead, the money just went somewhere else—to the doctor.

I had high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and after a while, serious stomach ailments that required me to go see a specialist.

I eventually switched to a Paleo diet, focusing primarily on eating fresh fruits, veggies, and some meat. Since the change, my cholesterol is nearly 75 points lower, I no longer have high triglycerides, and my stomach is much improved.

I still try to keep the grocery budget trim, but it’s much harder to do so without using coupons.

Coupons for Healthy Foods?

Coupon for Healthy Foods — Couponing for Health

For years, I just assumed that there are no coupons for healthy foods, especially foods that aren’t processed, but that’s just not true. If you know where to look, you CAN find coupons for healthy foods.

Where to Find Coupons for Healthy Foods

The best place to start is the manufacturer’s website. Here are a few of my favorites:

Organic Valley—sign up for the mailing list, and you’ll receive coupons straight to your e-mail box.

Earth’s Best Organic—you’ll find coupons for baby items here.

Blue Diamond Almonds—sign up for their newsletter, and you’ll regularly receive offers

Whole Foods Coupons—you’ll find coupons for a wide array of products sold at Whole Foods

Other Ways to Get Coupons

There are other ways that I like to get coupons for healthy foods:

Facebook

Some companies will occasionally offer a coupon when you like their Facebook page. This is my favorite time to like the page. Also, companies sometimes post coupons on their Facebook page as their status update.

Write to the company

I admit, this sounds old fashioned, but I’ve had great success with writing to the companies individually. I will find the e-mail address of the company on the product, and then I’ll send them an e-mail. I usually let them know why I like their product and thank them for making it. My kids have food intolerances, so if the company makes a product my kids can actually eat, I thank them for that.

I don’t specifically ask for coupons, but more than 50% of the time, they send me coupons. Some companies are very generous and send several high value coupons. If you create a stock letter for this type of e-mail, you can send out several e-mails, each to different companies, in a relatively short period of time.

Of course, just as when you’re using coupons for processed foods, the best way to stretch your savings is to stack the coupon with the item when it’s already on sale.

While getting coupons for healthy foods is a bit more difficult than couponing for processed foods, you still can use coupons to lower your grocery bill.

What are your favorite strategies for lowering your grocery bill when shopping primarily for healthy foods?