Frugal Friday

[ecosophia]

Welcome back to Frugal Friday!  This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change as we proceed.

Rule #1:  this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc.  I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #2:  this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.

Rule #3:  please keep it to one tip per person per week. Data dumps are tedious for me to moderate and also for readers to use. If you have lots of tips, great -- post one per week. This is an ongoing project. If you want to comment on someone else's tip, that's welcome, but again, don't use that as an excuse to post a second, unrelated tip of your own.

Rule #4:  please keep your contributions reasonably short -- say, 500 words or less. If you have something longer to say, please post it elsewhere -- a free Dreamwidth account is one option -- and simply put a link here. Teal deer comments won't be put through.

Rule #5:  please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about.  Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.

Rule #6: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.

With that said, have at it!

Comments

Cellphone data plans

[(Anonymous)]

Stop using mobile data and move to a talk/text only plan. These can be had for $10-$20/line - compared to $50-$60 dollars per line for a plan with data.

For those of you who aren't ready to do that, read on...

The big three carriers (TMO, VZW, ATT) charge a lot of money for their products. Many of the smaller companies that resell coverage on the big three networks (MVNOs) like Tello or Mint offer much cheaper plans but they suffer from de-prioritization: their users' data traffic is set to a lower priority than the postpaid subscribers on the parent network so it ends up being slow.
There are currently only two MVNOs that offer full priority data relative to their parent networks: US Mobile Warp 5G, and Google Fi.
Google Fi runs on the T-Mobile network, now that Sprint is a part of T-Mobile and US Cellular has backed out of their agreement with Google Fi.
US Mobile Warp 5G runs on the Verizon network. They also offer another option called 5G GSM that runs on T-Mobile but that one is de-prioritized. They have a tool on their website to see if your phone is compatible with their Warp 5G (Verizon) network.
Both services offer cheaper alternatives to the big three with no tradeoff in data priority. Of course that could always change. Here is a link to a Reddit post that keeps track of what is de-prioritized and what is not: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_prioritization_policies_of_the_carriers_and/