Kim is changing jobs and what used to be her personal phone is now associated with a bunch of clients from her existing job. We decided to just get a new phone number for her. The rest of our family is on Ting so adding another phone to that account is just $6 per month plus whatever minutes, text and data she uses. Our bill is normally $40 per month for three phones, so that will probably go to $50 per month for the four phones.
I hop over to the Ting website (http://ting.com) and then click the “Shop” button. The Motorola E4 Plus is on sale for $150 which includes either the CDMA or the GSM Ting card. In just a few short days, the phone arrived yesterday. It took me a while to figure out how to get the back cover off of the phone. SIM card and Micro SD card installed and booted up the phone. I made the mistake of running the phone OS update before I activated the phone. This took about 45 minutes to get the update done.
I logged onto our Ting account and they made it easy to activate the phone and it was super easy to make the first phone call. I had to enter some of the values to get Text and Data working on the phone, but that only took a few minutes. It’d be frustrating to some people if this was their first time having to do this, I must say.
The phone works and is far better than Kim’s previous phone. We’ll finish getting it set up later tonight. It is cool to have Ting as a communications choice. By the way, the GSM network is using the T-Mobile network and works well in our area.
Financial advice: For all things in life, beware of the high monthly bills. They will eat you alive. In the realm of phones, do you really need an all-you-can-eat unlimited plan? Can you reduce your phone bill from $75 per month to $25? What could you do with $50 extra per month *after-tax*! That would be an extra movie, or dinner out, or … ahem … good retirement money. Check out Ting and other lower cost communication companies to help get your finances in order.