I pay $41.00/month for my iPhone Plan! Ting Review.

I pay $41/month (an average of $32/month!) for my iPhone and use it all the time through Ting! Between me and my husband this saves us over $1,000/year! It's available everywhere that Sprint is and the service is great!

One of the few luxuries we have is our iPhones. It's such a useful tool that's fully integrated in my life. I can blog on my iPhone (Blogger), keep our family calendar up to date (COZI), track my calories (Myfitnesspal), my pregnancy (What to expect), my work outs, my weight, my steps and sleep quality (Fitbit) , handle task lists (Reminders), get directions based on my current location (Maps), do my banking (Mint), upload memories for my son to his life book (Moment Garden), play free music (Amazon Music), find out how close my husband is using his gps coordinates to get dinner ready on time (Find iPhone), and plan my meals for the week then create a shopping list in ten minutes (MealBoard). Needless to say, the iPhone is almost a necessity for me.

The downside to the iPhone is the monthly bills! Two years ago, we were paying $202 for two iPhones through ATT with unlimited everything. Last year, we switched to Sprint and paid $170 for the same. The service is not as great with sprint as ATT, for instance you can't surf the internet or use data while you're talking on the phone but the few minor hiccups were well worth $30/month to me

Then I found out about Ting. 

Benefits of Ting:

1. There's no contract! Try it for a month. If you hate it, just cancel!

2. You can bring any phone with you from Sprint at no cost.

3. You'll use the Sprint Network and won't notice a difference in service if you already use Sprint.

4. It's so cheap! My bill is always under $41, my husbands averages $57.00, both with heavy use.

5. You can check what your bill will be before you sign up! I entered 12 months of text, data and voice usage from past bills for both my husband and I before I made the switch. It generates the average bill amount for me. I already knew what I would be paying before I signed on.(click here for their website to use this feature)

6. Everything on wifi is free, which includes iMessage to other iPhone users (including photo texts!)

7. Ting roams to the Verizon Network at no additional cost to you for voice and text. This ensures that you can get a signal wherever you are!

8. They run bad ass promotions that show they know you won't leave if you sign up (see the last paragraph).

9. It's free to tether! They even encourage it! You can run your laptop or your iPad off of your iPhone's data.

10. Very transparent charges. You don't have to worry about hidden anything. (See the chart at the bottom of this post).

11. You can save $25 on your first bill by signing up using this link!

My Last Bill With Ting. 

When I heard about Ting, I was intrigued but figured the service was horrible, or that there was hidden fees. I waited 6 months until my contract with Sprint was up before I tried Ting! I could have saved $600 if I had just done it then! It was easy to transfer service, I never had to bring my phone anywhere, and my phone was only out of order for about 15 minutes during the change over. I haven't noticed any difference in the service and they have an awesome app that let's you know what you've used and based on that, what your estimated bill would be.

If you don't have sprint and don't have a sprint phone, you'll have to get a Ting capable phone (just like your ATT phone wouldn't work with the Sprint Network). You can go to the Ting website here, and they'll assist you in selling your phone and buying a capable device. It's a bit like eBay, so as long as you're buying and selling a similar device, the costs should be nominal. They also have warranted refurbished phones for purchase although they would be more expensive. 

I haven't found any drawbacks with Ting, as long as you use the estimated savings calculator before you switch. Just to make sure you aren't one of the 2% of users that wouldn't save money by switching. 

If you have questions, I'd love to answer them. There's very few companies that get brand loyalty from me (Wegmans and USAA), but Ting has officially made the list.

Promotions:

Use this link for a $ 25.00 credit when you sign up!
Early Termination Fee: They'll pay 25% of your early termination fee up to $75.00. (Click here)

iPhone and Samsung: They'll pay any difference in price for buying and selling the same model phone if you don't have a sprint compatible device.(Click here)

Small businesses: if you have 6 or more devices for your business, send them your last few bills. If you won't save money switching to Ting, they'll send you a foosball table! (Click here)

The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: (Save Money, Time and Effort: No Skill Needed!)

I'm cheap. There, I've said it. I like to say "frugal" because it puts a positive spin on things, but by your standards, I'm likely just cheap. I'm so cheap, that I've had The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook checked out of the library for the last 19 out of 24 months, until my mother took pity on me and gave me one for Christmas.



I owe The $5 Dinner Mom a debt of gratitude. Besides helping me over my fear of raw meat (chicken juice... enough said), and teaching me that making bread by hand is easier than making it in the bread machine, she taught me meal planning, pantry organization, couponing, and why I should give up my 15 minute meals for whole foods. On a side note, if you're still eating out everyday and aren't regularly cooking, click here for 3 weeks of cheap 15 minute meals that take almost no effort. It's processed food, but it will get you out of the habit of eating out. When you're used to cooking and eating at home, you can graduate to $5 Dinner Mom.

10 Reasons Why The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook is The Holy Grail of Cookbooks

1. The ingredient lists are incredibly basic. You won't need to buy 30 ingredients to make chili.

2. She walks you through everything. This book doesn't assume that you already have basic skills.

3. She teaches you how to make things that you would normally buy (alfredo sauce, pasta sauce, salad dressing, guacamole, salsa, etc).

4. Many of her recipes use the same pantry staples allowing you to stock up at great prices and know they'll get used.

5. She teaches you how to meal plan. Step by step. (See my post on MealBoard to make meal planning automatic by clicking here!)

6. She taught me that home cooked meals don't need elaborate sides, homemade breads and desserts. They can, but our basic dinner is a main dish and a simple steamed or fresh veggie.

7. She taught me how to feed butternut squash to toddlers without them knowing (She's clearly a magician!)

8. She has simple tastes, and delicious meals (I'm more of a chicken tenders girl than a beef wellington and couscous girl).

9. She deals with everything involved with feeding your family (stockpiling, meal planning, couponing, learning the essentials) and teaching you, not just listing recipes.

10. She pairs each main dish with a simple side, and includes it right in the ingredient list.



I wish more than anything that I could give you a few preview recipes, but since it's not my cookbook, I can't do that. However, I can tell you the names of my top 5 favorite recipes...

• Fettuccine Alfredo (with Chicken)
• Macaroni and Cheese
• Tex-Mex Chili
• Oven Fried Chicken
• Cranberry Pork Chops

Click here to order through amazon (prime!) for $11. Or you can just reserve it at your local library (even if its for the next 19 months... I won't judge.)

Click here to check out her website and blog.

The Best Organizer I've Ever Found: And It's Free!

The Best Organizer I’ve Ever Found: And It’s Free!

 

When January rolled around, I realized that my 2013 schedule book would have to be replaced. Everything that I've ever needed or wanted was in that schedule and it was perfect in every way. I thought since I was at home, I would try to find a printable schedule online for free (What in the world did we do before Pinterest?) I found The Confident Mom's Planner here. I'm honestly shocked to say that the entire planner is free (with no hidden catches), and that it's more effective than last years schedule book, which I paid a pretty penny for and then spent hours customizing in ways she's already done.


I'm on my third week with it now and am floored by how much more productive I've become. If you're a fan of flylady (and if you aren't- check her out here), the planner works great with flybabies because it has a separate section along the top for daily chores (aka. Your morning and evening routines). You just fill in the bubble for the day when you've done that chore and move on to the next. She combines the every day chores with special tasks to complete on each day that make this motivating, easy and workable.

Each Page deals with a week (the dates are all pre-printed and holidays are included). There are 16 spots for every day or consistent chores. You can choose the blank version (like I did) and write your own information in or you can choose her pre-filled out version. My daily tasks are :

• Put on make up.
• Take vitamins.
• Switch laundry, fold and put away.
• Lay out clothes for tomorrow.
• Dinner prep.
• Mop the kitchen floor.
• Work out a minimum of 10 minutes (I have a separate gym log, but even in my off days I do at least 10 minutes).
• Load/unload dishwasher.
• Load/ unload dishwasher (2nd time).
• Take out trash.
• Log food.
• 15 minutes of calm.
• 15 minute pick up.
• 2nd load of laundry and put away.

You can list other tasks under each day. I keep a list in my iphone of tasks to be completed (no matter how small- if I cant do it that second it goes on my list). As I run into things that I need to do, I add it. If it's a large project, I break it into smaller components and then add those.  Every night I designate a place for those tasks in my schedule. Then I can put it out of my mind and relax. I give myself a happy face sticker for the days that I completed everything on my list (this works as well for me as it does my 3 year old- maybe even better!). In addition to all of that, you can track water consumption easily and there's a spot to fill in notes (I use this for social events and play dates), as well as a "This Week" section. I'm still experimenting what I'll use this for, right now I'm listing things that I'd like to focus on for the week that I feel like I've neglected lately.


I've been incredibly happy with this and purchased a supplemental pack to go with it ($6.00 for family organizer sheets (such as baby sitter info, apps to look into, gift planner, medical info, quick contact sheet etc.) In actuality, I didn't particularly need any of those things, but she could have sold blank paper for $6.00 and I would have purchased it to support her because she did such an amazing job on the planner.


Go grab your own copy from The Confident Mom here and tell her I sent you!

Meal Planning Made Easy With MealBoard: Meal Plan and Shopping List in 10 Minutes!

Spending Too Much Eating Out?

I just made our meal plan for next week including breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. I created a shopping list. Then I checked our cupboards and checked off anything we already had. I organized the shopping list by aisle. Then I organized the aisles by how I would approach them in my favorite store. I assigned prices to each of the items and totaled the cost of my shopping. Then I changed a few meals to change the total cost to ensure that I stay within my assigned budget. Here's the kicker: I did all of that in less than 10 minutes.

No Time To Plan Ahead?

Welcome to MealBoard! I've used MealBoard since I opened my own daycare. It's genius. It used to take me about three hours to do all of the above every single week. I heard about MealBoard and thought for $2.99 (ios) it was worth a shot. In the first few weeks it still took me 2 hours to make meal plans and enter the meals into MealBoard. After those first few weeks though, all of my "stand by" meals were already in the system. One particularly busy week, I hadn't had time to meal plan at all so I just repeated last weeks menu and it was done in 2 minutes. For the last several weeks, I've been able to do all of the above in less than 10 minutes. Now I'm on easy street! I just need to add any new recipes I want to try out and I'm done!

Do You Keep Buying Things You Already Have?

Mealboard lets you create meals (I.e. Baked Chicken Thighs, Carrots and Salad for dinner), list the ingredients, import the recipe from places like allrecipes and a few other places. You can then assign prices to the ingredients (either by the item, such as .49 for a can of corn or by the unit, such as 1.99 per pound of ground beef) and aisles in the grocery store. Head over to settings and arrange your aisles with a swipe of your finger the way you would approach them in the store so that they list in that order. Do you need to go to different stores? If you always buy flour and chocolate chips at Aldi's but the rest of your groceries at Wegmans, no sweat! You can also assign stores to items so that you can separate the shopping list by store. If you buy extras of items, they add to your "Pantry" and the next time that item is needed it will tell you right in the shopping list how many you have in the pantry. It will give you total prices of everything you need to purchase and even separate it into the cost of whats in your cart and whats left to buy.

Automate! Make It Easy With MealBoard!

What if you use coupons? No sweat! You can add your coupons as well! What about the items that you need that aren't in meals? Easy. You just add the contents of your stockroom (You do have a stock room right? Read more on that here) and it stores them all in the pantry. When you run low in the pantry just add it to your shopping list and you know how much to stock up on. If you aren't the one doing the grocery shopping, no problem! You can email or print your menu plan or ingredient lists.



I've used this since September 2013 and love it. I can't believe how much it can do and how easy it makes life. It's one of the best investments you can make for $2.99!

Frugal Weight Loss: Stay Out Of The Gym And Save That Money!

 

Frugal fitness and weight loss is a hot topic in our household lately. When we moved last month, we lost our free community gym that we used frequently and were seriously considering getting a gym membership. We hated to spend $60/month but were concerned that if we didn't we would lose our motivation and halt the progress we had been making.

After some trial and error, we found a system that works even better than the gym for almost nothing!


Here's what we learned:

1. SparkPeople: This is a free website (and smartphone app) that concentrates on behavior modification. You can track food, workouts, sleep, and "healthy habits". They have a great social community that's really supportive and assign points to track your progress. You can run reports to analyze your data and they give tons of feedback to steer you in the right direction. They also give you points for reading health inspired articles. This is actually one of my favorite aspects of the site. They have hundreds of amazing short articles that cover everything you could ever want to know. To make it easy they recommend 4 articles a day so you never feel overwhelmed.


2. Craiglist: We decided to invest in a small home gym and surfed craigslist frequently until we found a NordicTrack Elliptical for $25. The battery for the display needed to be replaced and the owner hadn't really used it and didn't understand what a simple fix that would be. (These types of deals are common on craigslist just be patient and keep looking). We grabbed a few dumbbell weights from Wal-Mart for $10, and I already had a Pilates Ball, Resistance Bands, and a Yoga Mat. Also consider searching for items that people have posted as free and offering a nominal amount for them to give you a better chance of snagging it.

3. Zombies, Run!: I could talk all day about how amazing and motivational this smartphone app is for people that have never run or people that are trying to get back into running. It's an interactive post-apocalyptic story that you can earn materials and supplies by running. At certain points in the story, the zombies give chase and you either have to speed up to elude them or lose your stuff. You use the stuff you earn to build the survivalist town of Abel. You can find out more about this app by clicking here to read my whole post on it.

4. Yoga: I'm pretty bad at yoga. So bad in fact that the idea of doing it in front of other people makes me cringe. But I love the way it makes me feel and I love the way it relaxes me. If you're just starting out or getting into a routine, no need to spend $100.00 on a class package. Check out a book at the library. I like the Goa Yoga System where she combines Yoga with strength and cardio. Libraries are free and an amazing resource. I read the book Your Best Body Ever (aka The Goa System) cover to cover and then started practicing the movements until they felt more natural. Give it a try! If you love it and your doing it regularly (for at least 3 months), then splurge on a class if you're ready to get some better technique.

Feel like splurging?

 Let me introduce you to the Fitbit! The Fitbit is expensive (at least by my standard). The Fitbit One is about $100, the Fitbit Force is about $129. If you're going to splurge on anything though, I would splurge on this. The Fitbit is an activity tracker that you wear either on your bra, your waist band, or in your pocket (or the wrist if you buy the Force). It measures steps, distance, stairs climbed, active minutes (minutes that your working hard, like in a work out), and sleep quality. You can also track food and water consumption (or link it to sparkpeople or myfitnesspal and the data entered there will automatically transfer). It gives you the amount of calories that you burned that day (even incorporating calories that you burned while sleeping or resting) and you can see charts of calories you've eaten compared to calories you've burned off. I've had mine since the first week of December and love it. There's an unexpected social aspect where you can add friends and cheer or taunt each other as they rank you and your friends by a 7 day daily step average. It helps you quantify the small changes you can make during the day so you can see what a difference the little things can make. For instance I can stay on my feet all day and fit in two 10 minute workouts and get better calorie burn and higher numbers than if I sit in front of the TV or computer most of the day and then go running. The best practice is to stay on your feet and then go running, but this helps you to be conscientious of what your doing, even on off days.
You can learn more about the fitbit by clicking here.

The Easiest Way to Get Back into Running: Zombies, Run!

RUNNING THE EASY WAY

Need motivation? Can't seem to get yourself to work out? You've come to the right place!

Start Running with ZOMBIES!



What if I told you there was a way to start or get back into running and have you love it? Love it so much that instead of going 3x a week like you planned, you almost never miss a day and when you do, you're grouchy about it. I can make that happen.

A friend introduced me to the Zombies, Run! App for smart phones. I didn't have high expectations because I hated running with a passion when I was skinny, I couldn't see suddenly loving it with 50 pounds of extra baby weight hugging my hips. I was wrong.




Zombies, run! has a few layers of greatness that all work together to keep you motivated to run. To start with, you stick in your ear buds and hit the road, trail, elliptical, or treadmill. You can walk fast, or sprint your heart out. You play a mission each run and the app tells you a post apocalyptic interactive story where you star as "Runner 5", a survivalist who uses stamina to collect supplies and head off zombies for the town of Abel. During your missions, you'll encounter packs of Zombies. Speed up to evade the zombies and keep the supplies you've collected. If the zombies catch you, you lose your supplies. The zombie chases are really fun and it's easy to get into the story and run faster to save your life.



One of the best parts of this App, is that you don't have to lose your music! The story alternates with your designated playlist to give you the perfect mix. There have even been a few cliff hangers where I wanted to see what happens in the next mission, so I finished one and started another right away.



The second motivating layer is the building mode. It's kind of like Farm Town but you had to run 9 miles in order to build that hospital. As you run, you collect supplies. You also collect materials for each mission you complete. You can use the supplies and materials to build the post apocalyptic town of Abel. I never got into Farm Town and in general shun Facebook games as being time wasters, but this is a game I want to be obsessed with since it makes me run. It's fun and there's kind of a secondary game involved when you try to upgrade building since everything needs to be upgraded in a certain order.



The third motivating layer is the Social or group aspect. If you choose, your runs can be automatically uploaded to Facebook (or another social media site). Of course then your friends like your status, and comment on it and tell you what a great job you're doing on your runs. Then you have to keep running since everyone sees your workouts! I've been using this App since mid November and have been exceeding my running goals every week since then. If you hate running, or would like to start, I can't recommend it enough for the price of $2.99!

*I received no money, recognition, or gifts from Zombies, Run! They don't even know I'm a fan:)