Do you want to hate my guts or what? Beautiful sunny weather here. Barely using the heat.

It's not all roses. Drought drought drought. Our lake is 17% of capacity (it looks fairly non-existent at the moment). The weather is just a mess everywhere, isn't it??? Ask me again in summer when we have no water.

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I did get to move the needle on my savings, after all. $16 savings interest hit this week. I added it to my sidebar.

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For whatever reason, my auto insurance decreased 10%. Woohoo! I just saw the online bill - I will get the detailed bill in the mail. & try to figure out what decreased. What's interesting is we drove the van to Vegas, AND gas prices have been fairly low, so I do not think it is likely to be a "low mileage" thing. We have overall been saving a lot since we have been reporting our actual mileage. But yeah, will see what the bill says...

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Ting Update!!

We should get our second "bill" tomorrow. Still paying with "credits" for a few more months.

Here is how January shook out:

We used way less data and minutes.

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
$ 9 for 500 minutes (Medium)**-we used 350 minutes
$ 5 for 1,000 Texts (Medium)**-we used like 150 texts
$13 for 500MB (Medium)**-we used 300MB
$ 3 Taxes
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$54 - Our split is $27 per month

**You can use however many minutes, texts, data you want. There are different tiers, and then reasonable fees if you need more than the XL tiers. Last month, for example, we had used the large "minutes" tier.

73% savings for the month of January

You could maybe call this "100% savings" because dh won a $50 credit this month.

I did double check and dh and I would use the same medium tiers for everything, if it was just us, and so we are saving a decent amount going in with my parents. It is only $6 per line to add a line and to share in the same data and minutes.

I think this is where our average bill is going to settle. Vacation and unusual usage, aside.

That is going to be so nice when the kids get cell phones. I have a friend who is probably not a great candidate for Ting, today. (Probably will be eventually). BUT, she was intrigued as far as a "kid's first cell phone." The referral possibilities may be quite huge with having a 10yo kid. I got to rack up those referrals! I imagine it's the kind of thing parents will be talking about too. Our friends tend to be budget minded, so they will be comparing notes on cell phone plans, and so on.