the time i surprised my best friend by showing up at her wedding shower

My best friend Amanda (who wrote a fantastic guest post awhile ago, meditating on the stresses of adult life) is getting married next month.  I get to officiate!  How fun, and what a perk it is, to get to join so many of my friends in matrimony with one another.  I also got to marry Amanda's brother and his wife almost five years ago - the first wedding I did!

Amanda still lives in New York City, where we met and forged our very strong connection at Columbia.  I love visiting her there, and still manage to make it just about every year.  Vicki Jo hasn't been yet . . . but soon!  We might have to wait until our imaginary RV shows up because I wouldn't subject an airplane to her for the next several years.  Traveling with newborns > traveling with toddlers.

So anyway, back to Amanda.  Her sister-in-law, sister, and other friends invited me to her bridal shower in New York on February 24.  It's no secret that money has been tight for our family, and I reluctantly declined the invitation, knowing that two flights to New York within a month just wasn't in the cards for our budget.  One of my great budgetary sadnesses has been the many weddings and other events that we have had to skip because we just don't have the funds to cover the trips.

But then . . . but then!  An amazing friend who shall remain nameless (okay it's Audrey!) emailed me and offered to buy me a flight up for the shower.  I could surprise Amanda, and make the shower all that much more special!  Audrey and her husband Hal have been such kind and generous friends to me and to Jeff, always offering rides and help when we come to visit in the city.

So we booked the flight, I bought some spatulas off their registry at Williams-Sonoma, and away I flew on Saturday morning.  I'm glad I'm not pregnant enough yet to have this be a big issue.  Flying up for the wedding in three more weeks is going to be another story, I'm afraid . . . but it will still be fun!

Okay, photos.  Here is the grand surprise!  Amanda was having the makeup trial for her wedding at Saks 5th Avenue . . . it was fun for us to guess which counter she might be at.

She was totally shocked.  It was great!  (And I was right:  it was MAC.)

And it was a great little solo vacation for me.  Thanks to my husband, I got a chance to run free and wild (okay hobble around the city like a woman 30 weeks pregnant) for a few days before settling down with a newborn again.  It was really refreshing.

$147.59

Here we continue with our monthly series on personal finance and budgeting, where I lay out real figures and percentages of income in an attempt to clear the collective air around these "highly sensitive" matters.  After all, until we get real about money, how can we ever resolve some of the class conflicts that are so prevalent in American society?

We've talked about insurance and health care.

We've discussed home ownership and the American dream.

Today, the digital revolution:  phones.

Let me preface all of this by saying that we are kind of phone snobs.  This is a luxury that we allow ourselves.  We have no land line, no home internet, and no cable.  But we have top of the line phones.  I have a sleek black iPhone 4, and Jeff has a nice Android.  I don't talk on the phone that much, but I use it for data constantly.  (It especially saved my sanity when I was spending hours and hours a day trapped in bed with a newborn.)  Jeff talks on the phone more than anyone I've ever met in my life.  In the past, when we have had plans with a defined number of minutes, he always uses them all or exceeds the limit.

We were with Verizon for years.  After we married and my contract with AT&T ended, I switched over to his plan.  We were satisfied with the service.  And then we bought our house.

Our modest little home, in the middle of a city block in the middle of a city neighborhood, gets absolutely no service from:  Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, or Net10.  I mean, you can't make a call.  I couldn't have called the police if I needed to.  I couldn't send a single text message.  We spent several months after we moved trying to resolve this with Verizon.  It made no sense.  Our friends who live across the street have flawless Verizon service.  The best I can figure out is that we live on some kind of Indian burial ground or radioactive forcefield.  (Could this be related to the field of glass bottles that we live on?) (Sidenote:  we also have a ridiculously hard time receiving signal for basic television access with the bunny ears.)

After telling us that we lived in a "KTA" (known trouble area), and that the only option for reasonable service was to buy their expensive home internet service and a signal-boosting tower, all on our own dime, Verizon released us from our contract.

We cycled through the gamut of cell carriers, and nobody worked.  Nobody.  It was bizarre.

The one provider that we eventually discovered provided some semblance of coverage at our address was Cricket.  That's right - the ultra-budget pay-as-you-go no-contract service.  And we've never looked back.  The customer service has been great, we get reasonably good speed, and mostly - it works at our house.  The coverage area is drastically limited compared to Verizon, though.  When we go on road trips, we are without service for any length of time that we are in rural areas.  There are also a lot more dropped calls and missed texts.  I guess you get what you pay for.

We pay for Jeff's grandmother to be on our plan.  She has a very simple little phone with the most basic, utilitarian features.  She does so much for us - it's our little way of saying, "Just don't worry about this one thing."

I have an unlimited data and minutes plan.  Jeff also has an unlimited data and minutes plan.  No contract.

For the three of us, each month, we are paying $147.59.  This is a savings of almost $100 over what we paid for the same phones and less usage per month for just the two of us on Verizon.  And like I said, this is still with very nice phones.  We did have to buy the devices out of pocket, since Cricket isn't able to offer the same kinds of deep discounts on phones along with contract purchases.  But, I sold my Verizon iPhone on Craigslist quickly and only had to pay a bit to buy the Cricket version.

This $147.59 represents just 4.7% of our monthly income.  Grouped together with other utilities (water, electric, gas), we fluctuate from 10-12% of income, depending on floating factors like weather and season.

The move from a "name-brand" cell phone service to a budget carrier was a good move for us, and one that we never would have considered if we hadn't been forced into it by our strange signal-receiving situation.

What do you pay for cell phone service?  Do you like to have a flashy phone, or keep it simple?