Outta Control Tuesday

Another day, another dollar. Another dollar owed, that is. It wasn't bad enough that I had to dip into Merlin's college fund to pay Uncle Sam last week. I open my cell phone bill today and nearly had a stroke when I saw it was almost $400! Wow, what happened there?

My basic plan is kinda salty anyway, but nothing close to that much. I did just add my husband to the plan, but he forgets to carry his cell, let alone talk on it (he's the strong, silent type). He also has a wireless data card that's on the account. And my brother is on the same plan, but he pretty much uses night/weekend minutes.

I simply did not have time to scrutinize the bill, so I asked my Number Two, Jill, the cellie authority, to translate it for me. You need a degree in accounting to figure these things out, but Jill quickly got to the root of the problem. There were two primary contributing factors:

1. About 700 of my rollover minutes expired.

2. I used over 1000 minutes myself. Yikes! I didn't realize I was such a jabber-jaws! All this time I thought it was all these people calling me that wouldn't shut up ;>))

Jill also pointed out that the 700 minutes plan I had was NOT enough for three people. We called AT&T to see what we could do. I signed up for an additional 700 minutes monthly, and they graciously made it retroactive, which took $150 off this bill. Yeah!!

The only problem is that I only have 250 minutes left to use until May 11. So if you don't hear from me, just wait till the weekends!