Not really a “hack” but I don’t know why most people get into phone contracts.
Since college, I have always just bought unlocked phones with cash and then used the carrier’s prepaid plans and set it to auto pay.
I pay so much less than most people I know, I get all the same service, and my phone isn’t tied to a contract or carrier, so I can cancel my plan whenever I want and switch to another carrier by just buying their SIM card for ~$20.
My current phone is an unlocked Pixel 6a that I got on sale new for $300. I have unlimited talk, text, and data for $45 a month. And if I get sick of my current carrier or they bump my cost, I can just switch to anybody else for just the cost of a $20 SIM card.
I have so many friends and family members that complain about their phone bills being super high and their service sucking, but they can’t cancel their contracts without paying off their huge balances plus the interest and usually cancelation fees. Plus, because their phone is tied to the contract/carrier, they can’t even keep transfer the phone to the new carrier and have to get sucked into a “phone trade-in” deal and the cycle continues.
And for the folks saying that most people can’t afford to save up and buy a phone outright, there are a lot of places that offer payment plans for the phone, or you can buy it on credit and pay it off that way, which would likely be less interest over time. Or you could buy unlocked used/refurbished phones for 25-50% off their normal price.
Maybe it makes sense if you get a stipend from your company, or you bundle it with a bunch of other packages like cable TV or internet, but for just a cell phone, I just don’t get locking yourself into a crazy contract.
This seems like an American problem. This used to be the case in the Netherlands as well but over the years people have learned that SIM-only subscriptions are so much easier and cheaper that the majority of people now use SIM-only. In fact I know of no one around me that does it differently.
Also $45 per month is still expensive lol. I pay €12 a month. Sure, not unlimited but I never call or SMS so the 100 a month I get for that is way more than enough and I never finish the 10GB of data a month either. I can make either unlimited for really not that much more.
Keep a set of swimwear in your car. If you go to a place and forgot your swimsuit? Got the backup. Go to a hotel and find out they had a pool you didn’t know about? Backup in the car. Accidentally shit yourself? Got at least something on you. Do I shit myself enough to worry about it? Not since I was a baby but now I know I got swim trunks in my car just in case.
Not recommended for lycra or spandex suits, or any suit that has elastic closures, particularly during the summer months. They will rapidly degrade in the heat of the car. My wife left hers in the car after a vacation (never used it). It was tucked in the trunk. Found it a month later and it disintegrated in the wash.
This works for so many occasions too. At a watermelon eating contest? Backup in the car. Going to a funeral? Backup in the car. Need to bury a body? Backup clothing, right there.
Wrestle the pig first, every day. Whatever is your worst, most unpleasant, annoying task for the entire day, do it before you do anything else. It minimizes your stress and worrying and puts it in the rearview mirror.
For a second I thought you were talking about masturbation.
You can just pinch the end of a banana to start peeling it. The effort required is far less than trying to overcome the ripping force of the stem.
How much better life is by simply not drinking alcohol.
Or soda. Or sugary drinks in general.
I hate the talk about soda. It’s a flavored carbonated drink and carbonation isn’t killing people. When schools banned sodas from vending machines, they replaced them with yoohoo and other drinks that had as much or more sugar than the carbonated drinks they removed. -stepping off my soapbox-
T-shirts take up much less space if you roll them. So do most other clothes, but it’s a huge gain with the T-shirts.
Yes! The ranger roll… https://www.artofmanliness.com/skills/how-to/how-to-pack-a-bag-using-the-ranger-roll/
Just how much cheaper and longer lasting keeping thing like rice, dried beans and flour can be. It’s amazing to me that no matter how empty my cupboards/fridge is I can always make fresh tortillas, refried beans, and rice in like an hour.
My wife’s Italian. Replace your items with always having a bottle of sauce and a packet of pasta in the cupboard, and there’s always a meal to be had no matter how empty the fridge is.
My GF is Italian too. One of the most important things I learned from her is literally this. Also, as long as you have any kind of vegetables in your house, you are always one step away from a pasta sauce.
100% For us, a passata, an onion, and some garlic is the minimum needed.
Probably helps that the FIL delivers us boxes of homemade passata all the time - we never have less than a dozen bottles on our storage shelves in the garage. But even if we were to ever run out, a couple of store-bought bottles in the pantry is our fallback option.
One time I was in Mexico with my wife while our daughter was still a baby and the lady at the front desk of the hotel where we were staying offered us a crib we could borrow. It was a kind gesture, but I was a little concerned because the crib seemed wobbly. I realized there were some screws loose but though I had a multitool on me, the holes were stripped.
So later, I was talking with a local and he’s like “I can fix that.” He comes over and pulls a pack of toothpicks out of his pocket. He sticks one into each hole and breaks it off so that it’s not sticking out anymore. Then he drives the screw back in. I shook the crib after that and it was rock solid!
Now I always keep some toothpicks handy. Fast-forward to just this year. My daughter is now an adult living in a condo, and was complaining the screw popped out of a kitchen cabinet door when her roommate yanked on it too hard. “I can fix that.”
Drink water instead of soda, alcohol, other sugary drinks. Eventually you’ll find yourself to be an expert water connoisseur and prefer water over pretty much all beverages.
Put $20-50 behind your phone in the phone case.
If you ever forget / lose your wallet, you’ll have a little cash.
If you have a goal to find something (eg. buy a car), write your goal down, including details like make and model. You’ll start to see adverts, special deals and cars of the model you want parked with for sale signs. There’s nothing mystical about this - you’re surrounded by things like that, but the specific act of writing it seems to tell your unconscious mind to bring it to your attention when you pass them.
To live a hate free life, don’t spend time hating things and people.
Hate is not a feeling it’s an action. Just stop, and then you’re not a source of hate any more.
You can rename files in Windows using the
F2key. This works for a lot of Microsoft products including editing a cell without overwriting it in Excel.If you can’t find something and you’ve looked everywhere, get a flashlight and look again while pointing the flashlight. It has worked for me every time.
Further, if you drop something small, like a screw, set the flashlight on the floor. This will make all the small things cast long shadows and stand out way more.
A magnet also works for some items.
Same, I found my flashlight that way
Buying lots of identical pairs of socks massively reduces the amount of time you need to find matching pairs after drying them.
