This post is brought to you by My Data Manager. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always. 

photo credit: artolog via photopin cc

Ok, friends, it’s time for me to make a confession about my cell phone: I’ve been with the same company, on the EXACT same plan, for the past 5 years. When you stop and think about how much smartphones (and how we use them) have changed in the last 5 years, then you’ll realize that this is sort of crazy.

Over 5 years ago, we got signed up with AT&T and got iPhones. Even then I think we were 2 1/2 years behind the times, but we were finally ready to give the smartphone a try. As many of you know from experience, once you go smartphone, it’s pretty much impossible to go back. And let me be clear: I have no desire to stop using a smartphone. I think our cell phones are our portable computers; the calling feature is really just one of many nifty tricks up our phones’ sleeves!

When we signed up, we agreed to the (let’s call it what it is…) staggering sum of $150/month, and the ONLY thing that was unlimited was the data. Everything else has a very small amount attached to it (500 minutes shared between my husband and me, for example).

But let me tell you why we have kept that plan, even as smartphones have continued to evolve and prices have, at least somewhat, seemed to drop, for data plans: THE UNLIMITED DATA. Every time we have started to shop around, we have realized that nobody really and truly offers unlimited data anymore. There’s a cap. The last time we renewed our contract with AT&T, we were told that we could keep our old contract, but if we opted to try anything they currently offered, we’d have to lose the unlimited data.

And my friends, we’ve simply been too scared to give it up. And so we spend $150 every single month out of fear that we use a ton of data and that we’ll get horrific monthly bills if we switch. But the truth is, we don’t really KNOW how much data we use.

And that brings me to the point of this post, friends! We are about to get our knowledge on, and the lesson is TOTALLY FREE. Check out My Data Manager, a free (did you hear me? FREE) app that can tell you exactly how much data you use. It recently launched a new feature that can link up phones sharing a plan. This is CRITICAL if you have someone in your family who tends to use more than anyone else (teenagers, anyone???).

The app will also help you identify which of your apps are the real data hogs, and which ones aren’t so bad. We treat our girls to new apps fairly frequently, and I bet I would be shocked to learn how much data some of them actually use. I don’t want to spend an extra $100 on my phone every month thanks to My Little Pony apps, can I get an amen?

With this new tool, Tim and I can finally figure out exactly how much data we are using, and then go out and get price quotes for plans that are the right fit for us. I have a sneaking suspicion that we are going to be able to reduce our monthly bills. And even if that isn’t the case, then we can feel good about the contract that we still have, because we’ll know that it’s meeting our needs for the best price.  Check out this video to get a sense for how My Data Manager works (under 2 minutes…I know y’all are busy!):

Seriously, though, I’m just so darn excited about taking the mystery out of our data usage. Now we can know once and for all what we need and go get it!

You can download My Data Manager for IOS or for Android. And again, just in case you missed it before, IT’S FREE!!! You can also head to the My Data Manager App website if you want to do a little more research before investing the ZERO DOLLARS for the app. 🙂

How are you keeping your data in check these days, friends?