Public Service Announcement: Great Cellphone Plan

I read about this almost-too-good-to-believe-it's-true deal with Sprint a month or so ago on a random deal site.  It's actually funny that I found it, because I almost never read deal sites, but this one kind of jumped out at me since I was looking for a new phone plan.  I've held back on writing about it until I knew for sure that it worked.  Well, I started using my new phone today, so I can verify that it's for real.  So, then.  Here's the deal:

$30 a month for, among other things:

500 anytime minutes (w/ free nights & weekends, of course) [a 450 minute plan is $40/mo on Sprint.com]
FREE Sprint Power Vision data plan [EVDO connection for email, web, video and music downloads - $20/mo value on Sprint.com]
Nighttime hours start at 7pm [most plans these days have nighttime hours start at 9pm]
No activation fee
Wide variety of discounted phone choices
Free 2-day shipping on the phone
Additional plans with more minutes are also available on the website.
2-year contract required (the one drawback to this thing, but ... hey, you lock in the price)

Any way you look at it, it's a great deal.  The free data plan is what puts it over the top.  The deal is actually the "Sprint Employee Referral Offer," but people have found that Sprint will give it to anyone who enters an email address in the correct form.  Read this site for more of the details and the link to the Sprint offer site (it's the third or fourth item down).  If you're hardcore, you can also read the marathon FatWallet discussions on this, too.

That is all.  Except for this:

The following is an excerpt from a blog post by Joshua Harris ... yes, that would be the man who kissed dating goodbye.  Don't know if I'd kiss dating goodbye myself (I haven't even really kissed it hello, come to think of it), but I saw this list linked to on another blog, and it really spoke to me, since there are so many times where these things describe me:

I am wise in my own eyes…

1. When I don’t pause to pray for God’s guidance on a decision.

2. When I fail to depend on God’s word and approach it as a daily “lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105).

3. When I assume a decision doesn’t need a second opinion, and I don’t take the time to ask trusted friends for counsel.

4. When I am critical of another person’s practice or perspective without taking the time to understand it and ask questions.

5. When I am lax in fleeing temptation, assuming that I’m adult enough to “handle it.”

6. When I do something right and fail to acknowledge before God that it is only his grace that allowed me to do it right.

7. When I pat myself on the back about knowledge I have that I learned from someone else.

8. When I don’t draw out, or seek to understand, a person who is bringing criticism (whether or not it’s being brought constructively).

9. When I assume that the truth of a sermon is for someone else, not my own life.

10. When I neglect to consistently plead to God for his wisdom.

A quick note for all you GrXers (pronounced "gercks-ers") out there -- if you haven't already, I'd like to really encourage you to listen to Pastor Ray Johnston's message from the Unstoppable Campaign leadership event last weekend.  He really did an awesome job of calling out the amazing things God is doing in and through our church here, in ways it's hard for us to see ourselves sometimes.  It was exciting and inspiring to hear an outsiders' perspective on what God is doing at GrX.  He also painted a really exciting picture of who we are becoming and how God is using this campaign as part of that. 

It's hard to think of a better way you could spend half an hour this week (besides watching me and my weekly popping-and-locking demonstration, that is ... this message would be a close second).  Here be the links:

Download

Stream

Sermon notes (good for following along with the message)

If you're going for the iPod offer, I just saw some important fine print that might affect how you're planning to use the deal:

"If your account has balances with different APRs, payments are applied to the balance with the lowest APR before any payments are applied to balances with higher APRs. This means that balances with higher APRs are not reduced until balances with lower APRs have been paid off."

This is kind of sneaky on their part.  Basically, if you're planning on taking advantage of the 0% APR on balance transfers for the entire year, this means you shouldn't use the card for any other transactions.  Since any new transactions will have a higher APR, you won't begin to pay them down until you pay off the entire 0% APR balance transfer first, and you'll get hit by their APR every month until you work through the balance transfer.  This may be par for the course with 0% APR offers, but I've never used one, so I can't say.

In any case, basically, you should do one of three things: 1) do a full $2000 balance transfer and make that your only transaction until you can pay it off, to keep the 0% APR in effect, 2) do some combination of balance transfers and transactions within the 90 day timeframe, but pay it off immediately, or 3) you could conceivably do a $2000 cash advance (also 0% APR, also subject to the transaction fee) and then turn that back around to pay the credit card bill.  If you were really tricky, you could conceivably take the $2000 cash advance, invest it or park it in an interest-bearing account (eg. a CD, which right now would get you about 5% = $100 on $2000) and then pay it back at the end of the year.

Ok.  Enough of that.