Thoughts, ideas, & feedback welcome! I was looking at Black Friday advertisements from last year & looking at cell phone deals specifically. Sprint is our mobile carrier and it looks like Walmart was offering $400. 00 gift cards when you activated a new phone plus an additional gift card up to $250. 00 when you trade in a phone. Thinking of creating a sinking fund to be able to pay cash for the phones? We typically get new phones every 2 years as ours "coincidentally" end up not working properly or being severely slow despite no damage at all. The deal last year required the phones to be set up on a payment plan so I'll have to look into the specific details and see if there would be a penalty for paying the phones off a month or two after directly with our provider. HOWEVER. that's potentially up to $1, 300 in gift cards IF they do a similar deal this year. Our weekly grocery bill I have regularly gotten down to between 30 to 50 dollars per week. The gift cards would cover a significant portion of our groceries for up to 12 months after that. I shop at Walmart for groceries anyway. We are already having to pay for phones so I don't necessarily see this as an additional expense. It would actually lower the monthly amount to our provider by paying them off almost immediately. Any other similar hacks or tips to plan for or keep my eyes on?
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