T-Mobile Pre Paid Plan

Detailed Information on Plans

Lowest Priced Phone: Nokia 2760 at $19.99 (Prepaid Phone)

T-mobile’s plan is a bit pricier than the others, but if you’re looking to go with one of the bigger cell phone companies, in terms of pre paid phones, i’ve had the best experience with T-Mobile. Their plans are cheap and their service is very reliable.

Benefits:

• Like many other pre-paid phones, there is no credit check.
• Good information on pre-paid starter kits.
• Offers a T-Mobile Sidekick Option (more expensive, but better phone)
• Nationwide long distance.
• Nationwide Roaming.
• Free e-mail address.

Tracphone

Detailed Information on Plans

Lowest Priced Phone: Motorola W175 at $9.99

The kings of cheap pre-paid cell phone plans, great support, great service, competitive pricing. Tracphone also offers great family value plans. The first Phone has 50 minutes a month at $9.99. Each additional phone gets 30 minutes a mont for only $5.99.

Benefits:

• Great reputation as being America’s #1 prepaid service provider.
• Lots of experience (not a new upstart company) they have been around since 1996.
• Like many prepaid companies, no bills, no contracts, you have more control.
• Adding minutes is a very painless process with Tracphone.
• A good deal to think about is getting 800 minutes for only $100 a year.
• Good for someone who only needs their cell phones for emergencies.

Kajeet – Cell Phones Made for Kids

Detailed Information On Plans

Lowest Priced Phone: Motorola C290 at $16.99

A brilliant idea, cheap cell phones for kids! Plenty of great features geared just towards your kids. These are definitely the best “kid-oriented” phones i’ve come across.

Benefits:

• Great option for your kids
• Lots of parental controls
• Set limits for texting and call time
• Block certain texts with ContactManager.
• Some phones offer a GPS locator.
• Great way to teach kids responsibility.
• Talk, text and play, the freedom your kids love and want.
• Pay as you go service with no strings attatched.

Net-10

Detailed Information on Plans

Lowest Priced Phone: Motorola C139 for $19.99

Tracphone’s sister company, some great incentives for signing up here. They have a fantastic offer where if you activate a plan, you will receive 300 minutes and 60 days of service.

Benefits:

• Phones Start at $19.99.
• One offer comes with 300 minutes and 60 days of service when activated.
• Displays minutes on the phone so you can keep track of how many minutes you’re talking.
• Very easy process to buy minutes online.

Cheap Phone Cards

A great resource for pre-paid cell phone cards is at http://www.cheapphonecards.com. They offer a 3% discount, as well as no tax. Can be bought at $10, $25, or $50 at a time. You don’t have to worry about a per minute charges. Once your time is up, it’s up, so there is no way of going over.

1. Keep A Clean Environment for Your Computer

• Make sure your computer is not placed directly near a heater or air conditioner. Too much heat can cause your computer’s components to expire at a much quicker rate, whereas placing your computer near an air conditioning unit can cause condensation to build up.
• Always make sure your computer’s fans and air vents are completely dust free. If you let too much dust build up, your computer will overheat very quickly.
• Do not smoke around your computer. Unlike regular dust that can stop up a computer, smoke contains moisture which will damage your computer much more than common dust bunnies.

2. Some Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Never shut down your computer by just holding down the off button. Make sure you properly power down your computer (in windows go to Start -> Turn Off Computer)
• Make sure you hold on to all of the paperwork and manuals that came with your computer. You never know when you’ll need to refer back to the manual (i.e your hard drive is acting up, you have every other manual except for that one, you thought you would never need it, so you threw it away).
• Be extremely careful when moving your computer from one location to another, even the smallest jolt can dislodge chips and expansion boards.
• Do not let dust build up inside your computer. Clean the inside of your computer with a can of compressed air every 2-4 weeks. Clean the fans, motherboard, video card, everything. This will keep your computer’s components running smoothly for many years to come.
• Leave your PC running as often as possible. Powering your computer up is actually one of the most stressful things for it. Leave it on stand-by, this will save you on electricity, and save your computer from wear and tear.
• On the flip side, always turn your monitor off when you’re not using it. This will save your monitor from dying off quicker.

3. Invest in A Power Strip with A Surge Protector

If there is a power outage, not only can you lost what you’ve been working on, but your computer can also be damaged physically. Purchase a specialized power strip to put all of your computer’s power cables into, and next time there is a power outage your computer will remain on for 10-30 minutes afterward. This allows you to save all of your work, and keeps your computer from suddenly frying from a power spike.

4. Update and Patch Regularly

Always make sure you have downloaded the latest operating system service packs and updates into your computer. This is especially important on a windows based PC. Keeping on top of this will help patch any holes in windows, thus keeping viruses and other malicious content off of your system.

5. Back Up Data Often

The best method I have found to backup your system regularly goes something like this:

1. Develop a system of folders for storing all of your information in (i.e a folder for pictures, a folder for music, a folder for documents, etc).
2. Buy an external hard drive. I’ve seen these go for about $60-80 now, they’re very cheap and can save you a lot of headaches.
3. Download a program called SyncToy from Microsoft, this will allow you to sync any of these new folders you have organized in your system with you new external hard drive.
4. Set SyncToy up so that it regularly syncs with these new folders you have organized.

6. Scan Your System Regularly with Anti-Virus Software

There is a lot of anti-virus software out there, some are great, others will make your computer run worse. You should scan your computer of viruses AS REGULARLY AS POSSIBLE. There is so much out there, that you never know when something could damage your computer. It’s better to catch these things early on. Here is some of my favorite free anti-virus software:

1. AVG Free Anti Virus Software – I personally use this one, and it has saved me multiple times, highly recommended, and a great value.
2. Malwarebytes – Great for detecting malicious software, run this alongside SpyBot below and you have a pretty unstoppable team of software.
3. Spybot Search and Destroy – Hunts out spyware and destroys it, very easy to use and install, works great with Malwarebytes.

Once again, these are all free and easy to use. I’ve had a lot of experience cleaning viruses off of people’s computers, and these are by far the best 3 I have found. For further documentation on how to use any of them, please refer to their websites.

7. Defrag Your Hard Drive

Defragmenting your hard drive is a process that will re organize the data on your drive (picture a library with books scattered all over the place, it’s harder to find them if they’re not organized, right? Defraging acts as a Librarian going through and organizing all of these books, so your drive runs more efficiently).

The process sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. Once you Defragment you should notice your computer running faster, do to the efficient organizing it did while defraging your drive. Here is a great article and video that shows you how: How to Defrag your Hard Drive

8. If your Computer Is Still Too Slow, Add More RAM

Having more RAM in your computer is a great, low-cost way to add useful life to your computer. If you have under 1 Gigabyte of RAM, then you should probably look into getting more. At crucial.com you can find any type RAM out there, plus the site helps you pick out which RAM is best for your system.

• 10 Tips on How to Make Printer Ink Last Longer

• Computer World - 15 Free Downloads to pep up your old PC
• Expert Advice Tip Sheet - Computer Maintenance Checklist
• A Beginner's Guide to Computers

1. Print in Draft Quality as much as possible

In your printer options you can choose to print in “draft quality”. Unless you’re printing up that award winning photo, you’ll want to leave your printer on draft quality most of the time.

• How to change printer settings in Windows XP
• HP Guide to Adjusting your Printer Settings.

2. When printing black and white, use the black and white setting!

Similar to the above tip, when printing something that is only black and white (such as text-only) you will want to go into your printer settings and change the quality to “black and white”. This makes sure that your printer is only using the black ink cartridge.

3. Some Fonts that can save you ink

There is a great font called “Ecofont”. This font has small little holes in each character that allows you to save 20% of your ink, without loosing readability. Other fonts that help you save ink are Garamond, Courier and Brush Script, just try not to use bold.

• Download Eco Font!
• Save Money using these Fonts when Printing

4. Only print what you need

We’ve all experienced it, you print something off a web page, and the whole web page prints out! There is a great service called “Print What You Like”, which allows you to print only certain parts of a web page. As an alternative, and maybe for the more tech savvy, you can also highlight the text you want, paste it into a program like Microsoft Word or Notepad, and print from there.

• Save paper and ink – Use “Print What You Like”

5. Cartridges will go bad if left unused

Print at least one item a week. Cartridges will die if not used regularly. Recently I left my printer in storage for awhile and couldn’t figure out why the prints came out the way they did. Turns out, lack of use made the ink go bad.

6. Refill your own Cartridges

You can buy Ink Cartridge refill kits for about half the price of an Ink Cartridge. This tip is really only for the hardcore DIY’er. You need to follow the instructions that come with your kit VERY carefully. Here is a great link to get you started.

• How to refill and Re Use a Printer Cartridge.

7. Buy Re Manufactured Cartridges

A lot of companies will do the work of having to refill your cartridge for you. They will take a name brand cartridge and refill it on a professional level, so if you’re a little hesitant about the DIY aspect, and don’t spending  a little extra money, this is a good alternative to the tip above.

• List of Recommended Re manufactured Ink Cartridge Suppliers

8. Check your Printer’s Drum

When your printer is not producing the results you expect, sometimes you can get away with replacing the drum in your printer. This costs a lot less than having to refill an entire cartridge.

• Dell’s Guide to maintaining a printer (Some good general info)

9. Buy Ink Cartridges online

You can find much better deals online. Just make sure you’re buying the right kind of cartridge for your printer. You can even find some trusth worthy generic cartridges out there, just make sure you read the reviews. Also, if you buy in bulk, you may save money with free shipping.

• Large Selection of Ink Cartridges Online

10. Properly shut down your Printer

You wouldn’t just slam the power button on your computer to shut it off, the same goes for your printer. If you power it down the wrong way, your heads could be in the wrong position, and this can cause the ink to dry out faster.

• Print Misc Guide: How to properly Shut Down your Printer.

With information coming at us at such an overwhelming rate, I thought it would be a good idea to list the 5 people whose tweets I feel do the best at giving advice on pinching those pennies. These are all legitimate tweeters, no spam happy tweets here. So with no further ado, I present my top 5 frugal tweeters.

#1. myfrugaltips – Fantastic resources and usually always posts with a link in their tweet. I read almost every single post from them, and am never disappointed in the quality of their content.

#2. frugal – Not only great tweets, but a wonderful blog as well.  You can visit frugal’s blog at Idea’s for Frugal Living.

#3. mrsmicah – Mrs. Micah is currently paying off $100,00 in student loans, so her tweets are always frugal-minded. Great tips, especially for someone in a similar situation.

#4. home_recipes – Not so much dedicated to being frugal, but amazing recipes you can make at home, and they’re healthy! What better way to save money, then to stay inside and cook at home!

#5. YouCanMakeThis – Why buy it when you can make it? Great articles for the crafty types who want to save money. Not only good links to articles, but also general advice on ideas to save you money.