HomeFinanceMaking Your Smartphone Pay for Itself

Comments

Making Your Smartphone Pay for Itself — 7 Comments

  1. Hey John this is Steven Camp
    One of the big ways our Droids save us money is Wireless Tether! We basically use the Internet we are already paying for to be our Internet on our computer, Roku (equivalent), Tablet, and TV. You see we also utilize Netflix, Verizons, NFL Mobile (for football), and other free streaming. SOOO we don’t have Cable, Dish or any other TV service. No regular TV equal Better Christian Viewing as a good perk as well. So the phone is our TV, service it is our Internet Service and our phone service all in one. (We have no regular phones) If you were to piece together all of these services together it would cost you a bundle, but by doing it this way we save ≈1500 per year. To get internet service where we are in the Country would cost us $60.00 dollars per month. (720 per year) To get basic cable it would be $45.00 dollars per month. (540 per year) For a basic nation wide home phone number it would cost us $20.00 dollars per month. (240 per year) So we save appoximately 125 dollars per month by this alone. If you put that in tandem with your previous article your smart phone will be paying you to have it!!

    • Now I have questions Steve 🙂 I’m guessing you’re with a carrier that has no cap on data? Do you ever notice ‘throttling’ of your data stream as you use more? I think what you’re doing sounds great! I would love to cut some of the services we use but with a 4Gb cap on our data, we would get in trouble. Great ideas and great savings for your family!

      • Well yes and no. We do have unlimited data with Verizon because we are grandfathered in. Soooo that may work for some but not others. As far as throttling goes….. it hasn’t been an issue. Even if you do get throttled on 4G with only one bar…. it goes down to twoMbs per second. That is easily enough to run a steaming device. Now y’all might consider giveing Tmobile a look. They are Rapidly rolling out high quality 4G. They are doing a major overhaul right now…. calling themselves the uncarrier. Unlimited talk text and data for 70 a month. You can’t hardly beat that. In fact we may make the switch.

        • The wireless world is definitely an interesting and ever changing competitive market place. I think you know I was once in that industry. I’m amazed at how far things have come in just 10 years.

  2. Great article, Jon! I actually ended up making money the last time I upgraded my iPhone (from a 4 to a 5), but I’m lucky as I have an employer who pays for my cell service. I use most of the ways you talk about, but I don’t really scan bar codes anymore. I don’t know why – but it never seemed to give me any decent results when I did. Maybe the technology has improved since I last tried – you mentioned the last 10 years, but even the last 1-2 have been crazy in the speed of development!
    AB

    • Thanks AB! I get to knock off a portion of my cell phone bill for tax purposes under the special code of taxes for ministers, but that’s not near as good as having an employer cover the cost of the phone. I read this article today (http://moneysavingmom.com/2013/04/how-im-earning-80-in-free-gift-cards-every-month.html) that deals with various apps that can earn points that can be turned into gift cards and even cash. Mobile marketing is definitely going to be the big thing for the next few years. It’s no surprise that the research firms are developing all these apps (like Shopkick and Viggle) to research customers.

  3. Pingback: Blog Posts You Should Read TODAY! #1 | Aspiring Blogger