Archive for the ‘Spend Less’ Category

The growing use smartphones and now the new iPad are straining the mobile networks that power these devices with e-mail, apps and Internet access.  As a result, companies are looking to reduce how much their customers utilize this limited resource and make more money off the growing demand.

Mobile phone data use is measured in megabytes or gigabytes, and in the era when only the leading-edge consumers used a lot of bandwidth, most cell phone companies offered unlimited megs for a flat monthly fee.  That era looks to be over.

AT&T (the exclusive data network for the popular iPhone) recently announced that starting next week it will stop offering its unlimited data plan to new customers.  Now cellphone and iPad users can choose between a monthly subscription of $15 for 200 megabytes or $25 for two gigabytes.

Many analysts believe that AT&T is only the first mover, and other mobile phone carriers will soon follow suit.

For people looking to save money, it’s now important to know how they can save money with the new data plans coming out or see their bills skyrocket if they’re not careful.

First off, e-mail and text messages use very little data.  What gets folks in trouble is usually web surfing, downloading songs and movies, and streaming video and audio.  So knowing what activities rack up the big megabyte usage is critical.  That then allows you to adjust you behavior to fit with your data budget.

If you can control your YouTube fetish, the new plans can save you money by offering lower priced plans with lower data usage limits.  So simple e-mailing and the occasional Google search won’t break the bank.  But be careful of the potential overage charges which can lead you straight to the poorhouse.

But if you absolutely must stream Pandora, use your phone’s GPS, check in everywhere with FourSquare and refresh ESPN.com every 10 minutes then you should expect to have a very unpleasant surprise at the end of every month.  And that’s not frugal.

Getting out of debt means making sacrifices, and not having the ability to download the entire Internet to your phone is one of them.  Know your cellphone carrier’s data policy and exercise some restraint.  No matter how witty your Facebook status updates are.

When Wall Street executives don’t think twice about the morality of selling their billion-dollar clients securities that are designed to go bust, and even joke about it, there’s little hope for the little guy in our financial system.

Anyone who has held a credit card account in the last few years knows that the banks who issue them are masters of the omission, the bait-and-switch and even the outright damn dirty lie.  Even after the passage of the CARD Act, banks are finding new ways to make reality a lot less attractive than what they pitched you.  The latest trend is pulling the rug out from under cardholders who thought that they had a great rewards program and now find that  it’s increasingly difficult to cash out those benefits.

Even before the days of 10% unemployment it wasn’t hard to find employers offering what seemed like dream jobs, only to deliver fewer hours, more grunt work or deplorable conditions after they got you to accept.  A month in to my first job I learned this firsthand when my business cards arrived with a different title than the one that I was promised.  A mini revolt by my training class corrected things, but taught me a valuable life lesson about how corporations treat people who don’t have leverage.

So in a world where everyone you do business with seems to operate with the shady deal as their default, it makes very little economic sense for you to always play things on the up-and-up.

In our current version of capitalism, winners and losers are often determined by what’s known as asymmetrical information, or both parties not having access to the same data.  While employers and creditors have access to your credit file, education records and other goodies, you can still work the shades of gray to your advantage.

Now I don’t advocate telling whoppers in your dealings with businesses, especially when it can make matters worse than telling the truth.  Don’t lie about where you worked or your dates of employment, because it’s too easy to verify. Don’t lie about your income to get a mortgage you can’t afford because like so many Americans, you’ll end up in foreclosure.

But do hint at other job offers you have if you think it can get you a better salary or benefits and you’re willing to lose the offer at hand.  Do tell the car dealer that you’re interested in another company’s make and model, even if your heart is set on the red Chevy with the headlights that you must have.  You will get negotiating leverage.  Do tell your credit card company that you’re considering moving to a new bank, even if you have no intention of ever doing that.  These are all things that are impossible to verify, and all give you a leg up in negotiations.

There are a million things that we don’t do because our moms told us it was wrong, but it’s time to think about what the other guy may be willing to say or do to get at your hard-earned dollars.  Don’t be a chump.  Leave your ethics at the door of the finance office and work the system.

Like Denzel Washington said in Training Day, “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove.”

I sell computer software for a living and in my job I often encounter clients who rave about open source software (like Linux) because it’s “free.” My first inclination is always to remind them that it’s free in the way that a gift puppy is “free.” Once you get into the care and feeding of a pet you realize just how expensive free can be.

Taking that into consideration, it then becomes self-evident that keeping pets can be a challenge for the chronically debt-addled. I’ve already taken a lot of heat for implying that maybe (just maybe) it’s not such a smart idea to spend so much on pets that one can’t keep up with other obligations and becomes buried in debt.

Thankfully the heavy hitters at Mint.com now ride to my rescue, with new data from over a million Mint users, a representative sampling of US consumers, and data from wiki.answers.com. To make a long story short, it makes it clear just how the little costs of pet ownership add up.

Click on the image below for the full story.

Budget Planner – Mint.com