Hard to believe, but we have been 30+ days on Ting.

I have been anxiously waiting for taxes and fees. My research indicated that Ting charges no fees. But I know taxes can be quite high, but I thought they were mostly based on bill. So cutting our cell bill by 1/3 should decrease the taxes, right?

YES!!

Taxes: $4.59



Of course, our actual bill is $0 because we have several credits applied to our account. We will not have to pay anything for the first 3-4 months.

This bill is larger than I expect it to be for the long run, and to be clear is for FOUR cell phones. We split cell service with my parents.

Minutes: It would have only been $9 for 500 minutes. I presume some months we can stay around 500.

Messages: $5 is for the 100-1000 text rate. (Funny statistic: I texted the least of the group; my old foagie parents text more than me. Even my mom with her her old dumb phone - HA).

Megabytes: $13 pays for up to 500 MB of data. We really thought we would be using more data so this was a nice surprise. I think on an average month we will use less data than this month. Dh found out his speed tests use way too much data, so he stopped doing that. Accounted for at least 1/4 of our usage. !!

We are just shifting mindsets a bit because used to have unlimited data. If we go over on a big vacation or anything like that, we just pay for that we use. So, we have a lot of flexibility with Ting. Other than that, just trying to be more mindful of data usage and using the wireless for any big data.

I'd say the bulk of the data usage is mine, at work. I don't have wireless at work. Everyone else on my plan is retired and so mostly uses wireless.

Devices: We initially activated 5 devices because I was not sure which phone I was going to use. They charged for all 5 this month. Each device costs $6 per month.

This means all else being equal, that this bill would be $6 less next month. About $64. That would leave our half of the bill at $32.

That is officially a 68% cell phone cost reduction in our own household. Woot!!

When we add the kids it will just be $12/month for the two phones (they can use our hand-me-down phones). We've already decided we could cover the $12 but they can pay for their usage. Texts are the cheapest on Ting, so works well for teenage users. I think we have a few years to go, but glad we have a solid plan for the future, one that doesn't cost a small fortune.

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& this is Ting's nifty Dashboard:



It's easy to glance at and see how you are doing on minutes and data an so on, at any point in the month.

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I will copy and paste a bit from my last Ting update, and update the numbers.

Sprint Monthly Charges:

1600 minutes (calls to each other were not counted), unlimited text and data

$105 for first phone
$ 25 for second phone
$ 25 for third phone
$ 15 for non-smart-phone
$ 20 Taxes
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$190 - Our split was $100 per month


Ting Monthly charges:

$24 for 4 phones
$18 for 1,000 minutes (Large)
$ 5 for 1,000 Texts (Medium)
$13 for 500MB (Medium)
$ 4 Taxes
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$64 - Our split is $32 per month

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If you don't have Sprint, Ting sells new and used phones directly, as well as they help you buy compatible phones from third parties. (A personal shopper service).

They also have a service for selling your old phones. Overall, they try to make the switch as simple as possible.

Here is a referral for $25 off if you decide to make the switch: