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Leta
Lovin' The Homestead
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- May 19, 2011
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Okay, I spent pretty much this whole morning on the phone with AT&T and Verizon, and they both said that coverage was "spotty" out there. And the prices they quoted me were INSANE! $110 per month after all taxes and fees, with data caps and a two year contract! Yah, thanks but no thanks, think I'll pass!
DH is really against dial up, but I think I've figured out what we are going to do. He works on a college campus, so he is under a wifi cloud all day. He has an iPod Touch, which we initially bought for him text for free at work (which has been great, BTW. It really saves on the cell phone minutes, and on gas. I text him things like "buy dogfood on your way home please" and it keeps me from needing to drive very much.) He'll just have to get used to checking his email and FB status there, and looking up fly tying patterns at lunch, LOL.
I found a dial up service (it's supposed to be "high speed dial up", whatever that means), called TurboUSA. All their call centers are in the U.S., and I like that. If you prepay, it's $90 for the whole year, no caps. I know, dial up is very slow, but it is a basic connection that I can use for email and other text-only stuff.
Right now, we have a LifeLine cell phone. It is my emergency only phone for when I'm out. It is free to us because I barely use it and never go over my freebie minutes. DH also has an emergency only $10 TracFone. We spent $80 or $90 on minutes a year ago, and he still has almost 200 left. We just don't use cell phones that much.
But, we are going to need a honest-to-goodness landline out in the township, so I think I'm going to drop the LifeLine cell service and apply the LifeLine discount to our home phone, which means the home landline will cost us $15 per month after taxes, no long distance.
So I think what I am going to do is to upgrade my cell phone. (DH can keep his fancy iPod and basic phone. I am mean.) TracFone has the best coverage out there, at least according to my friends. TracFone has smartphones now, and if you get a smartphone, they come with triple minutes- meaning instead of $20 buying you 60 minutes, it buys you 180. If you web browse, it uses up double minutes. The cheapest smartphone they have is $50 (free shipping!). Then, I know even if I use it to browse the web, I won't spend more than $20 every three months on it, or $7/mo. I would primarily browse to get on Google Voice and call my landline when I needed to make a long distance call, because Google Voice long distance is free. That would cost me about 11c in TracFone minutes each time I made a long distance call, so even if I made a long distance call daily (unlikely), it would still only work out to 60 minutes, leaving me 120 minutes of voice per month for emergencies, which is far more than I need. Plus you can buy more TracFone service right from your smartphone without any data charges, so even if I went over, I could just top up and I would know that I was only spending $20, rather than getting some heart-stopping bill a month after the fact. And that way I wouldn't have to mess around with prepaid long distance calling cards, which are kind of expensive anyway.
So I'm pretty sure that's what we're going to do. Right now, we spend $29.50/mo on this stuff- $20/mo for DSL, and a prorated cost of $7 for DH's cell phone and $2.50 for home phone. In the township, we'd be paying $36.60/mo- $15 for a landline, and the prorated costs of $90 per year for dial up and about $160 per year for mobile services for both of us. So while we will be sacrificing speed and quality of internet services, we will have the basics covered, and it will only cost us an extra $7.10 per month over what we are paying now. And the one time extra $50 for a fancya$$ phone. But no contracts! That is key.
I don't think I'm going to go with any sort of satellite TV service. They have cheap prices listed, but they all want a two year contract and they all have hidden fees and taxes and cost at least $10/mo more than what they advertise. We might do a DVD by mail service. If we do move and go without broadband, obviously we will drop Netflix streaming and Hulu+, which cost us $16/mo. For that price, we can do 3 DVDs at a time by mail, which would be adequate.
No contracts, net cost increase of $7.10/mo... I can live with that. And it's only supposed to be a year until DSL is available. I think this is a workable situation.
DH is really against dial up, but I think I've figured out what we are going to do. He works on a college campus, so he is under a wifi cloud all day. He has an iPod Touch, which we initially bought for him text for free at work (which has been great, BTW. It really saves on the cell phone minutes, and on gas. I text him things like "buy dogfood on your way home please" and it keeps me from needing to drive very much.) He'll just have to get used to checking his email and FB status there, and looking up fly tying patterns at lunch, LOL.
I found a dial up service (it's supposed to be "high speed dial up", whatever that means), called TurboUSA. All their call centers are in the U.S., and I like that. If you prepay, it's $90 for the whole year, no caps. I know, dial up is very slow, but it is a basic connection that I can use for email and other text-only stuff.
Right now, we have a LifeLine cell phone. It is my emergency only phone for when I'm out. It is free to us because I barely use it and never go over my freebie minutes. DH also has an emergency only $10 TracFone. We spent $80 or $90 on minutes a year ago, and he still has almost 200 left. We just don't use cell phones that much.
But, we are going to need a honest-to-goodness landline out in the township, so I think I'm going to drop the LifeLine cell service and apply the LifeLine discount to our home phone, which means the home landline will cost us $15 per month after taxes, no long distance.
So I think what I am going to do is to upgrade my cell phone. (DH can keep his fancy iPod and basic phone. I am mean.) TracFone has the best coverage out there, at least according to my friends. TracFone has smartphones now, and if you get a smartphone, they come with triple minutes- meaning instead of $20 buying you 60 minutes, it buys you 180. If you web browse, it uses up double minutes. The cheapest smartphone they have is $50 (free shipping!). Then, I know even if I use it to browse the web, I won't spend more than $20 every three months on it, or $7/mo. I would primarily browse to get on Google Voice and call my landline when I needed to make a long distance call, because Google Voice long distance is free. That would cost me about 11c in TracFone minutes each time I made a long distance call, so even if I made a long distance call daily (unlikely), it would still only work out to 60 minutes, leaving me 120 minutes of voice per month for emergencies, which is far more than I need. Plus you can buy more TracFone service right from your smartphone without any data charges, so even if I went over, I could just top up and I would know that I was only spending $20, rather than getting some heart-stopping bill a month after the fact. And that way I wouldn't have to mess around with prepaid long distance calling cards, which are kind of expensive anyway.
So I'm pretty sure that's what we're going to do. Right now, we spend $29.50/mo on this stuff- $20/mo for DSL, and a prorated cost of $7 for DH's cell phone and $2.50 for home phone. In the township, we'd be paying $36.60/mo- $15 for a landline, and the prorated costs of $90 per year for dial up and about $160 per year for mobile services for both of us. So while we will be sacrificing speed and quality of internet services, we will have the basics covered, and it will only cost us an extra $7.10 per month over what we are paying now. And the one time extra $50 for a fancya$$ phone. But no contracts! That is key.
I don't think I'm going to go with any sort of satellite TV service. They have cheap prices listed, but they all want a two year contract and they all have hidden fees and taxes and cost at least $10/mo more than what they advertise. We might do a DVD by mail service. If we do move and go without broadband, obviously we will drop Netflix streaming and Hulu+, which cost us $16/mo. For that price, we can do 3 DVDs at a time by mail, which would be adequate.
No contracts, net cost increase of $7.10/mo... I can live with that. And it's only supposed to be a year until DSL is available. I think this is a workable situation.
Not sure what we are going to do there. We also have Dish here. Really no options. Direct TV or Dish. We are addicted to racing, so we splurge on the satellite. $85/mo. OUCH! I have been shopping for a new cell provider for a while now. We are leaning towards BOOST. We burn through minutes, so Tracphone wouldn't be practical in our situation.
