Ah, the post that comes after an eternity (or two months) of not writing anything. My silence is hardly noteworthy, but today I actually have something to say.
Once again I am in a stage of transition. I don't recall my feelings toward transition the last time I was in it, but I am actually kind of looking forward to some of the changes that might be taking place.
Some of the changes I don't want to go into detail about because a blog is a very public forum and plans have not been confirmed yet, and I don't want news getting back to people before it's actually news. I know I can set the blog to private, but I want it to stay public right now.
So the closer it gets to January 19, the more excited I become.... reason being that my car will be paid off then and it will become officially my car. No more lease, no more bi-weekly car payments, my car insurance bill can be reduced. It's just an overall good feeling. It's also a good feeling to know that I will have done something good for myself. Let's just hope it doesn't break down right after I finish paying it off. :-)
I'm thrilled about the prospect of having the extra money around just for that. Ofcourse, much of it will be eaten up by paying off my student loans,(I can't keep it on deferment/forbearance forever!) It would be nice to have a degree to show for the student loans I'm paying for... but perhaps my new opportunity that I don't want to share yet could open the doors to finishing my degree.
I still want to finish my degree in Youth Ministry, but I kind of want to add another major or minor... in sociology. I loved my sociology class in college, and I've always thought it would be complementary to a degree in youth ministry, but the more I read up on it, the more I've been seeing that a sociology degree is actually a good degree to have for almost any job you can get.
In other news, though probably not as exciting or interesting, I kind of feel like I scored a gold mine with a deal I just got with T-mobile. I'm adding a line to my account to get the family shared plan and putting my parents on the new line to help both of us reduce what we are spending on our phone plans. I thought I found a good deal online, but I would need to order a phone for them too, so I was looking at the cheapest options I could while still getting them the type of phone they wanted, and I finally settled on a phone that required a down payment, but you could make monthly installments on it. Not what I really wanted to do because adding the phone with monthly installments would be counterproductive to reducing cost.
But then I found one that was a $35 down payment, with a $7.25 monthly installment and I thought, hey, that might work. So I got ready to check out and everything, but decided not to and to go to a tmobile store instead and see if they could help me to find a better deal. Well, I got there, and the guy was very helpful and very friendly for as much as he could do, but altogether, going to the store was not much help at all. The guy was not qualified to set up services. Again, this is not a jab at the guy, because he was very friendly and helped the best he could, but I didn't understand why they had him working at a T-mobile store if he wasn't qualified to help set up service for people. So anyway, he referred me to call t-mobile's support and talk to someone there because they would be able to help me get set up with everything I need.
So after Dad and I got home I called T-mobile support and spoke with a representative with an accent that was difficult to understand, and I'm not sure she understood too much English herself. As I spoke with her I became increasingly frustrated because I felt like she wasn't hearing/understanding/listening to/caring about what I was actually saying. Like, I told her I was interested in upgrading my phone to the Galaxy 3 and I had considered the installment plan, but I couldn't afford the $99 down payment at this time and wanted to know if there were other options. She took that as I couldn't afford a down payment at all. I told her I can afford some down payment but not $99, and she just couldn't seem to grasp that concept.
I asked about options for free phones for starting new lines, she told me T-mobile doesn't do free phones because I'm on a value plan. So I asked about switching back to the classic plan, she said it's not possible because the classic plan would be more expensive than the value plan. I said okay, well, do I qualify for my free upgrade yet (because if i do, i would give my parents my old phone) She told me T-mobile doesn't do free upgrades. Long story shortened, I finally gave up talking to her, told her she wasn't helping me and hung up.
So I went on line to find the deal I had originally found and was just going to purchase a phone for my parents, but at the last minute I decided to call the support line on the website to make sure that the new balance they were giving me for the family plan was actually what total new monthly payments would be (before tax), and not just an added addition to the $65 I already pay each month.
So while I was talking with her and explaining my thoughts, she started telling me about specials that t-mobile had going on and again, long story shortened, I now have on order a free phone for my parents, comparable to the Galaxy S i currently have, for starting a new plan with a waived activation fee and $79 monthly payments for the family plan that includes 1000 shared anytime minutes, unlimited nights, weekends, and tmobile to tmobile minutes, unlimited texting, and unlimited plus data plan. The first woman told me that wasn't possible.
