Ting comes through again for us

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.