As a subscriber to this blog, you probably know that my wife and I retired early and develop mobile apps in our spare time. When retiring early, you will have lots of years to live on your savings so it is fun to find ways to cut costs.
In today’s blog, I have curated a few articles that show you how to save a few dollars with very little sacrifice and spotlights a soon-to-be early retiree.
Saving on your Cellular Bill
Our family has 4 iPhones and the monthly cost of service has been $250 with AT&T. This provided unlimited talk and text and 10 gb of data. We’ve been on a mission to lower our monthly cost and finally found a solution. AT&T has pre-paid plans that are much less expensive. The one we have chosen is the $30 per month plan. It provides unlimited talk and text but does not have a data plan. In other words, you can only use the internet if you are connected to WiFi, but that lower our costs from $250 a month to $120 a month.
If not having a data plan is a deal breaker for you, another option is the $45 per month plan. It provides unlimited talk, text and data, so you can use the internet while connected to cellular or WiFi. It provides fast speeds for up to 1 gb per month then slows the cellular connection speed down to 128 kb once you hit the 1 gb for the month. Checking our usage, I never hit 1 gb a month anyways, so it is a good plan for us. With this plan, we can reduce our costs from $250 per month to $180 per month.
Since we already use AT&T, we can keep our own phones and the pre-paid plan is a month-to-month plan with no long term commitment. Learn more here: https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/prepaidplans.html.
If you have an Android phone, another option would be Republic Wireless. With this plan, it connects to the data plan via roaming WiFi signals and will connect to a cellular tower when a local WiFi signal is not present. The cost varies but they advertise that you can get coverage for about $14.95 per month (see https://republicwireless.com/plans/). Our only issue with this plan was that coverage is not nearly as good as with AT&T, so you may be giving up access to phone service in specific areas. They do have an online coverage map that shows you coverage for the areas you live and will visit.
Related article: 5 Budgeting Tips for September
Online Coupons
We tend to purchase items online and look for promotion code coupons to make purchasing items cheaper. It is sometimes tricky to find a coupon for a specific item, but a browser plug-in called Honey really helps.
Our friends over at Budgets Are Sexy wrote a great article that explains how Honey works, see that article here: http://www.budgetsaresexy.com/2015/07/save-money-using-honey-browser-extension/.
Related article: 5 Budgeting Tips for September
Mr. and Mrs. 1500
It’s always great to meet people with similar interests. We recently met a couple that goes by the name of Mr. and Mrs. 1500. They are inspiring couple that have a goal of retiring at 43 years old. In 2013, they started a blog called 1500 Days to Freedom and publicized that they would retire in 1,500 days from then. Starting with a portfolio of less than $600,000, their goal was to amass 1 million dollars in 1,500 days (ending in 2017).
On their website, they chronicle their journey and transparently post each month how they are progressing towards their goal. As of today (July 25, 2015), they have already reached $1,000,000 and are now working on paying off their house so that when they retire in a couple of years, they will be totally debt free.
My wife and I recently had a beer with Mr. and Mrs. 1500 and got to know them better. They are truly and inspiring couple. Learn More: http://www.1500days.com/
Our Apps
- aMemoryJog Password Manager – Our free password manager allows you to track all your passwords and easy-to-forget information. Download it for free here: http://www.aMemoryJog.com
- Count Us Down – Count down to your next big event, whether it be retiring, a vacation, wedding, baby-on-the-way or other life changing event. Sign up for the early beta of our app here: http://www.CountUsDown.com
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