About 46% of Americans with mobile phones said their monthly bill was $100 or more. Another 13% said their monthly bill topped over $200 a month.  The average cell phone bill was roughly $71 a month according to Time; and these charges are getting worse and worse as time goes on.

Fortunately, with Ting.com mobile you can carefully craft a plan for just $16 a month plus tax. Better yet, you don’t need to turn in or trade in your current phone in order to get this amazing deal. In fact, you can probably use the phone you are using right now.

These plans are crafted for the needs of low-usage individuals and you can carefully tailor your cell phone plan to your specific needs.

For example, my mother doesn’t use her phone very often. She only uses it for emergency purposes, making roughly 10 phone calls a month. Because she is classified as a low-usage user, she is able to select 100MB of data for $3 and 1 line for $6, which costs a total of only $13 a month plus tax.

Ting.com‘s slogan, “Only Pay for What You Use” fits very well here.

For the next example, we will use an individual who wants to open one line utilizing only 500 MB worth of data. Using the chart below, we realize it will cost roughly $16/month plus tax.

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? How the “Hack” Works

Because Ting.com allows you to customize your cellular plan, we chose to exclude selecting any minutes and text messages, saving the user roughly $6.

By doing so, we will strategically utilize the 500 MB of data to procure phone calls and text messages.

Granted, 500 MB is not a whole lot of data. But it’s more than enough for folks like my mom who don’t use their cellphone on a regular basis and only require one for emergency purposes.

Follow the following steps to “hack” yourself to an affordable plan:

1. Confirm that your phone is compatible with the Ting.com network.
2. Order a SIM card and activate your device over at the Ting.com dashboard.
3. Head over to Google Voice and secure a free number. (It will cost $20 to port your current number over to Google Voice).
4. Download Hangouts on either your Android or iOS device. For Android users, download “Hangouts Dialer” as well.
5. Disable calling and texting in your device’s settings so that you’ll only use Google Voice for calls. Doing so will utilize the data included in your plan rather than traditional “minutes”.

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? Important Notes

Congrats! You are now pretty much set up. Here are a few important notes.

• Ting.com will now start to utilize your Google Hangouts set up along with your data to funnel calls and messages through.
• It takes just under 1 MB worth of data to complete a 1 minute phone call.
• The great benefit of this is that if you are on Wi-Fi, you can make unlimited calls and text messages.
• The only time you have to be weary of your data usage is during times when you are using Ting.com data, rather than Wi-Fi.
• Please keep in mind that all social apps and video conferencing apps will use your Ting.com data if you are not on Wi-Fi.
• Video conferencing using FaceTime and Skype will destroy your data, so make sure you stay on Wi-Fi when you are placing or receiving video calls.

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Source:  Ting.com