A Money Saving Tip

I am sure most of you already knew about this, so this post if for the one person out there who didn't. I've known about it for awhile because my daughter is so abusive to her cell phones, I just kept forgetting to post about it.

I do not like cell phone contracts. I think they are awful. I don't like the fact that they can pretty much do whatever they want for two years. The beauty of the American free market is, that if someone pisses you off, you simply go somewhere else. With cell phone contracts, you have completely lost that power.

The way they get you is that when your kid breaks their phone, or drops it in the bathtub, or the school parking lot, etc., the only way you can get an affordable replacement, is to sign a new contract.

"Hey lady, you wanna pay $300 or $50?"

"Gee whiz, Mister, I don't know."

So if you have 4 cell phones with a family plan, 2 years equates to a lot of money.

So next time your kid drops that expensive cell phone into a puddle on the way into school, just go into the store of your choice and purchase one of those over-the-counter, pay-as-you-go phones. Take the SIM card out of the wet or broken phone and pop it into the cheap one.

It does have to be the same carrier, though. For example, if you use AT&T, it has to be an AT&T pay-as-you-go-phone. The last time Emily dropped hers in the rain, I paid $69 for the replacement at that one store that gets all the bad press (you know the one). Then she took her wet, non-working phone and laid it out with the back off, hoping it would dry out. The next day, she transferred her SIM card back to the "wet" phone and VOILA! it worked! Now she keeps the cheap one as a spare.

Here is a picture of my "tricked out" cell phone cover John got me for Christmas. You can't really tell it from the pic, but it really sparkles. It looks like it is covered in diamond dust. I really like it. I like sparkly things. Sometimes I hold it up to my mouth and say, "Let me see your grill. Uh huh, your grill."

One more little rant: Any time you sign a contract, you have lost your ability to exercise your power of the free market. There is a particular pet clinic (I'll let you figure it out) inside of a particular, extremely large, pet market chain, that is trying to do this to people. They try to high pressure you into signing up for their "wellness plan" by showing you all the money you will save. I don't like it because if they don't treat you or your pet well, you can't switch to another vet. So, we decided to go somewhere else...but that's just us.