Recently I’ve seen a lot of ads for Simple Mobile. I’m already using tmobile. They piggy back off tmobile. They have a plan that is unlimited phone, text, web for $60. I just got it set up yesterday, but so far so good.

My findings so far:
No quality of sound issues or internet connection issues.
I have a Samsung Vibrant(Galaxy S) phone. It was not intuitive to set up the internet connection when the sim card came, but once I got that taken care of, it was just fine.

If you have a Vibrant and are thinking about Simple Mobile, here’s the info on setting it up. The website says it’s supported, but it isn’t listed when you sign up so you have to find the info on Non-Compatible Phones, which I thought was a little goofy, but manageable.

http://simplemobile.webs.com/index/NonCompatiblePhones.jpg

Let’s see how this goes.

Here is my suggestion for a starting set of accounts that you should have as a foundation and why. You will want to open three separated accounts. Here is my set up.

------------------   ---------------    -----------------
|    Checking    |   |   savings   |    |   emergency   |
------------------   ---------------    -----------------

I changed my checking to something more local because I found that sending checks to deposit got a little annoying.  Also, my wife already was using Bank of America, and then I got a job in the same building as a Bank of America, so it just seemed like it was time to make the move.  Here’s the current setup:

------------------   ---------------    -----------------
|    Checking    |   |   savings   |    |   emergency   |
|    B of A      |   |    Schwab   |    |      ING      |
|    0.00% APY   |   |  1.00% APY  |    |    2.20% APY  |

------------------   ---------------    -----------------

I don’t know what Bank of America has for rates right now, and don’t even care considering how dismal all rates are right about now.  This is very sad actually to see how things have changed.  The rates on everything have gone down A LOT as you can see below:

------------------   ---------------    -----------------
|    Checking    |   |   savings   |    |   emergency   |
|    Schwab      |   |     ING     |    |     E*Trade   |
|    4.00% APY   |   |  4.10% APY  |    |    5.05% APY  |

------------------   ---------------    -----------------

I haven’t followed up on this enough so there may be better accounts, but that’s what I’m using right now.  Feel free to comment and let me know if you have thoughts on this or would like to let me know about other accounts that might be better than my suggestions.

If you haven’t read the previous post then you can check it out here

The great thing is that the cheapest gas place in San Jose is down the street from me. score.

Here is my suggestion for a starting set of accounts that you should have as a foundation and why. You will want to open three separated accounts. Here is my set up.

------------------   ---------------    -----------------
|    Checking    |   |   savings   |    |   emergency   |
------------------   ---------------    -----------------

I place a direct deposit of my money into my checking account. My emergency fund has about 3 months worth of expenses in it. If you haven’t started one, then start small and put a little in per month. The savings account is good practice for yourself in budgeting and also as practice for marriage. This was brought to my attention by Jessica. Having a savings account that you put a little in every paycheck is a great way to avoid a few small fights during marriage over purchases that might seem silly to your spouse. So as a single person get used to splitting your money this way, so that when you get married, you have a shared checking account, but only use your own separate savings accounts as your discretionary money. Any purchase that needs more money than what is in the account would need to be discussed. Everything else is fair game. A question I’ve gotten is, “Why not just have your savings and checking at the same place?”, of which I would say that it is because by putting them in separate institutions will cause you to have a higher probability of spending less because of that extra little barrier of access. Out of sight, out of mind. Here are my suggestions for where you might want to open up the suggested accounts.

------------------   ---------------    -----------------
|    Checking    |   |   savings   |    |   emergency   |
|    Schwab      |   |     ING     |    |     E*Trade   |
|    4.00% APY   |   |  4.10% APY  |    |    5.05% APY  |
------------------   ---------------    -----------------

I liked these accounts because each of them had very high return rates, but also had no minimums and free atm fee reimbursements. Feel free to comment and let me know if you have thoughts on this or would like to let me know about other accounts that might be better than my suggestions.