I’m typing this on my new Android phone. It hurts me to say those words, but I had to do it. As much as I love love LOVE my iPhone, I hated paying AT&T’s prices. Stephen and I want to retire early, so I’m trying to save money wherever I can.

With AT&T, I was paying $39.99 per month for 450 anytime minutes and 5000 night and weekend minutes. In the past year, I’ve never even reached 300 minutes in a month. I currently have 4,146 rollover minutes. I also pay $25 per month for 2GB of data. I haven’t used 2GB of data in the two YEARS I’ve had my iPhone 3Gs. And finally, I pay $5 per month for 200 text messages. This is the one area where I have started to exceed the monthly limit. On my last bill, I went over by 182 messages, which cost me an additional $18.20. I’ve already gone over by 194 so far in June. Moving to the unlimited text plan would be $20. In total, my last AT&T bill was $95.80 with the taxes.

Virgin Mobile LG Optimus V

Earlier this year, Stephen started looking into Virgin Mobile’s prepaid wireless plans. The cheapest plan was $25 for 300 minutes, unlimited data and unlimited texting. Awesome price, but how could I give up my beloved iPhone? Neither of us was ready to make the move. But about a month ago, my iPhone dropped out of my jeans pocket when I was getting out of my car. It landed face down on the blacktop, and I ended up with a long crack in the glass screen. It still worked perfectly, but I hated looking at that big crack. Still, I wasn’t ready to give up my iPhone.

For some reason, in the past week, I started thinking about Virgin Mobile’s great prices again. In addition to the ugly crack, my iPhone doesn’t hold a charge as well as it used to. I could replace my iPhone 3Gs with the same model for only $50, but that wouldn’t do anything to alleviate the pain of spending around $1,140 on service every year. So I started looking at Virgin Mobile’s phones. I knew the only mobile operating system that could even begin to replace iOS was Android. I thought the most promising one was the LG Optimus V, which turned out to be the one Stephen focused on when he was researching phones. I read a lot of reviews, of both the phone and Virgin Mobile, and they were decidedly mixed. But, recognizing that consumer reviews tend to skew negative, I decided that for the price I was willing to take the chance. Saving ~$70 a month was too good to pass up. The savings would pay for the new phone in just over two months.

Making the switch turned out to be surprisingly easy. I ran to Target this morning and picked up the LG Optimus V for $149 (down from $200). I took it home and let it charge while I went to meet a friend. When I got home, it was charged so I was ready to call Virgin Mobile. I wanted to keep the same number I had with AT&T, so I gave them my mobile number and PIN and got my account set up. They said that it could take up to 24 to 48 hours to port the number, but it actually took about two hours. As soon as I saw there was no service on my iPhone, I called back and finished the activation. Normally you don’t have to call back, but with the unfamiliar phone, I decided it would be easier. Even so, it took me a bit to figure out that I still needed to run through an additional activation process on my phone after I hung up. The worst Virgin Mobile reviews were about their customer service, but both people I spoke with were friendly and helpful and got my business taken care of as quickly as possible.

Now to the phone itself. It is worth noting that the iPhone does not come with a manual, and the Optimus V comes with a 136 page book. The iPhone is very intuitive, and I feel like there will be a bigger learning curve on the Optimus. When I got my first iPhone and synced it, it just grabbed all my contacts and my calendar off my iMac. With Android, it seems like everything takes at least one extra step. The Optimus V manual doesn’t even address things like putting music on your phone. It just has a couple pages about connecting your device to your computer with no further detail about what kind of files you can put on your phone and which ones you can’t. Luckily, it is pretty easy to find instructions on how to do almost anything on the internet, but with my iPhone, I rarely needed to look up instructions for anything.

The Optimus is slightly smaller and lighter than the iPhone, but I really miss the solid feeling of the iPhone’s glass screen. The whole phone just feels sturdier than my new phone. I’ve had iPhones since they first came out, and this was the only time I’ve cracked the screen on one. I’ve done far worse damage to plastic phones in the past. Virgin doesn’t yet offer any accessories for the Optimus V on its website, so I ordered a Body Glove case and a car charger through Amazon.

Parts of the interface remind me of the little Nokia phone I used to have. Some of it just looks really outdated next to the iPhone. It seems like this is mostly cosmetic, but sometimes it makes certain functions a little more laborious, like looking for ringtones. Although it isn’t quite as intuitive as the iPhone, it is possible to figure lots of things out without the manual. Yet theres a two page table of status and notification symbols, and the meanings of many of them are not obvious. There are lot of things that I will end up looking in the manual for.

I already had lots of music in iTunes, from both in-app purchases and from ripping my CD collection. Luckily, I had converted my iTunes music library to the non-DRM versions whenever they first offered it. There might be a few that still have DRM protection, but most of my music can be put on my new phone. However, the phone comes with a 2GB micro SD card, so in order to put a decent quantity of music and other data on the phone, I had to run out and buy a bigger micro SD card. Some people complain that the iPhone doesn’t have a card slot, but at least I don’t have to run out and make another purchase in order to put data on my phone. I don’t like having some stuff on the phone and some on the card. To put my music on my phone, I had to create a music folder on my card, then open up my music files on my computer and physically drag and drop any songs I want on the new phone into the music folder on the card. But again, it’s not nearly as convenient as syncing iTunes. I just have a playlist in iTunes called Current Favorites and whatever happened to be in it at that moment was what was synced with my iPhone. I think there are some apps that operate similarly, but I don’t keep all of my music on my phone, so it isn’t too onerous.

I also have an investment in Apps from iTunes, although they are mostly free or really cheap. Of course, I can still use all of them on my iPad. I’m told that the Android App Market has a larger selection of free apps. However, if you download an app on the phone, it doesn’t automatically show up on one of the four pages you have for shortcuts and widgets. You have to go to the menu, click add, then click shortcuts, then click application, and then scroll down until you see the app you want, then click it to add. Once it’s on the screen, you can click and hold it until it vibrates (just like on the iPhone) and move it where you want. I am not crazy about the Marketplace interface on the phone, yet downloading apps from the Marketplace website on my computer, then syncing to the microSD card, then putting the app on my phone seems so much more unwieldy than syncing the iPhone.

Setting up email was a breeze, but I don’t like the interface as much as I like the interface on the iPhone. I had to set it to “never” for how often I want it to check my email, because I was getting notifications all the time. I don’t care for the notifications because often (but not all the time) if I open the program directly for new mail or a message, I still have to go into the notifications list separately to clear them so the icons disappear. I had a notification for a text message and opened it from the notifications screen. I didn’t have time to look at it then, so I closed it. But it doesn’t show in my list of text messages and it is gone from my notifications. I didn’t delete it. Perhaps in was in a different program, but I don’t find it anywhere now.

I was able to convert my Apple Address Book to vCard format, copy all of my contacts to the micro SD card (I used the included SD adaptor and a usb SD card reader), then load them onto the phone from the card. But if I make any contact updates on my phone, they won’t automatically sync back to my computer like with the iPhone. As for my calendar, I expect there will be no compatibility at all, so I will have to re-enter everything in the Optimus V. I pretty much only use the calendar on my phone anyway, so it’s not tragic, but of course I can’t sync appointments between my phone and my iPad now.

The main criteria for both the phone and Virgin Mobile’s service is whether they will meet my needs. It will be an adjustment, but I know they will. It just won’t be as easy or enjoyable to use the LG Optimus V as the iPhone. Would I go back to the iPhone if the service were more reasonably priced? In a second. I already miss it. But I missed that extra $70 a month ($840 a year!) more. And the prepaid plan (which really just means I pay at the beginning of the month instead of the end) means I am no longer locked into a contract. Hopefully, someday the iPhone will be available with reasonably priced service (and without paying $650 for an unlocked phone). Don’t get me wrong, the Optimus V phone and the Android operating system are very good, but so far I find them both inferior to the iPhone and iOS. Everything is just a little more work than it was with the iPhone. If someone has never used an iPhone and especially if they have a PC instead of a Mac, I think most people would be perfectly happy with Android. But in my book, it definitely takes second place to Apple’s iOS. Now that you can buy an iPhone as cheaply as $50, I think the main impediment to even wider adoption is the cost of the service through Verizon or AT&T. I was perfectly happy with AT&T’s service, just not with the cost.

June 28, 2011: Four days in, and I still miss my iPhone terribly. Every task just feels clunky in Android. Don’t get me wrong, I am sticking with this phone & plan as long as I am saving so much money. But the second a reasonably priced service plan is available for the iPhone, I am going back. I can’t see how anyone who has tried both would pick Android over iOS for any reason other than finances. My assumption was that Android would be a very close second to iOS and that it would probably be even better than I expected since I have a pro-Apple bias. But although Android is far from terrible, it is a more distant second to iOS than I thought it would be.

June 29, 2011: I’ve read a lot of complaints about how the battery life on the LG Optimus V is not good. So today, I printed out a list I found of phone settings that will help optimize my battery life. Unfortunately, before I could implement them, the battery died.

July 1, 2011: Today my boss texted me to tell me I could leave work early. Unfortunately, his text arrived while I was talking on the phone, and there was no notification sound. I didn’t notice the text until I was leaving at 5:00 pm – the regular time. I should have checked, but since my iPhone always notified me of a message no matter what I was doing, I figured this phone would too. Nope.

January 24, 2012: Now I can honestly say I despise my phone. Why oh why did I think this was a good idea? Is the torture of using an Android phone worth saving $70 per month? Actually, yes. As much as I dislike this phone, I like saving money more. I’m still wishing and hoping for a more reasonably priced service option for the iPhone.

I suppose you could accuse Stephen and me of being cheap, but with our dream of early retirement, I’m going to just call us forward-thinking. We have been saving diligently, both in our 401K plans and in other non-retirement investments. We try pretty hard to keep our expenses low. We don’t have cable, we’ve cut our dinners out to almost nil, we do our own gardening (which puts us in a minority in our community), I use BookMooch to get used books instead of buying them new, etc. The other benefit of a frugal lifestyle is that it makes us feel more prepared for the unexpected, like a layoff or a medical problem. We don’t want an unforeseen complication to derail our plans – we can delay them, but we don’t want to give up our dreams.

Other than depriving ourselves of any life enjoyment whatsoever, it started to feel like there was no place left to cut expenses. So Stephen has started diligently tracking our expenses, which is of course what every money expert tells you to do anyway. He has just started, so it may be a little soon to see patterns. However just being forced to save every receipt and track every penny has already encouraged us to get more creative and see some new ways to save money.

Just this morning, I cut our garbage bill in half. We kept the same 64-gallon garbage can the previous owners of our house owned. They had two children and produced far more garbage than we do. Some weeks, we don’t even bother putting our cans in the street because there is so little garbage in them. So I called the city and asked to exchange our 64-gallon can for a 32-gallon can. Now we’ll pay $27.50 a month instead of $55 a month. That’s a savings of $330 a year – money that can go toward our retirement instead. And I just don’t feel deprived by having a smaller trash can.

I also just canceled the long distance on our landline. That’s only about $8 saved per month, but it won’t be long before the landline goes altogether. Because we have DSL through our phone company, we just have to talk to them about how we repackage our services without the landline. We could potentially save another $30 a month or so.

I am starting to see more places we can cut as well. I subscribe to five magazines, which just isn’t necessary. Three of them, I could easily browse through in a bookstore. A fourth, which I recently allowed to expire, usually isn’t that interesting. As I write this, I’ve decided I am going to either cancel or allow three more to expire. This will also cut down on paper we need to recycle. The fifth magazine is Consumer Reports, which we refer to frequently. But you can access everything online, so maybe I’ll see about an online only subscription. I do enjoy reading magazines, and I am only slightly embarrassed to admit that I occasionally look in the recycling bin next to the mail bins at work to see if there are any interesting magazines the doctors didn’t want. You can’t really beat free.

I know it’s a good idea to see if there are any benefits your employers offer that can save you some money. My employer gives me a free train pass, so if I take the train to work, there is absolutely no cost to me, other than a little extra time. Well, it’s $30 a month to park at the Caltrain station, but I couldn’t possibly drive for that little. I have been driving to work far too often lately, which started when I hurt my back last summer and didn’t want to chance getting stuck at the office with a limited shuttle schedule to the train station if I really needed to go home. It is ridiculous not to be taking advantage of the free transportation every day, so from now on, I am resolved to take the train unless I have a doctor’s appointment or need to go to our main campus. With my improved back situation, there isn’t any reason not to do this.

Another great benefit my employer offers is up to $800 a year for classes. If I take the classes from Stanford Continuing Studies, they don’t even have to relate to my job. For some time, I have been considering applying to grad school in creative writing at San Jose State, because it offers evening classes and wouldn’t interfere with work. However, Stanford Continuing Studies has an excellent writing program and I don’t need a degree – I just want the training. So I’ve decided to just make sure that I use up my tuition grant every year because if I don’t use it, I lose it. This will only allow for one class a year, but that is certainly better than no classes a year. I am signed up for a novel writing class that starts on Monday.

One really important thing is to be aware of where you really don’t want to cut expenses. The two non-essential areas where we tend to focus our disposable income are technology and travel. We have a Netflix subscription for a little under $20 a month. When they started charging a premium for people that rent Blu-ray movies, I changed our subscription from three discs at a time to two at a time, but we’ll keep the service. We rarely go to a movie in the theater and as I said earlier, we don’t have cable (or any network reception for that matter). When I hurt my back last year, being able to lie in bed and watch Netflix streaming content on my laptop was wonderful. Now we can even stream to our tv through our PS3, so we are hoping that Netflix continues to add to the movies and television available for streaming, even though the quality isn’t as good. We also watch the tv shows Bones and Flash Forward on Hulu, which has been great, and the advertising is extremely minimal.

We also debated a lot about whether to order an iPad, but finally decided to do it (as a birthday present for me). Because we use Macs and iPhones, the iPad is well-integrated with our other technologies. Stephen really wants me to cut down on the huge number of actual books in the house, which means an e-reader will be useful for me. I already have lots of other content for the iPad, in terms of music and video. The iPad is not cheap, but I have to admit that the amount of enjoyment I am going to get out of it probably far outstrips the price. I do know what I like! I am however trying to decide on a reasonable monthly iTunes budget, because my current unlimited budget concept isn’t working! But I do want to be able to download a new album from one of my favorite artists when I feel like it.

Cutting costs also won’t have much of an effect on Stephen’s photography related purchases. He makes enough money from his photography to pay for equipment, so coupled with the huge amount of satisfaction he gets from it, there really isn’t any reason to make cuts here. Again, the amount of enjoyment he gets far exceeds the cost.

The other area of importance to us is travel. We try to take at least one two-week vacation every year. We’ve gone to some pretty amazing places, and we have so many more that we want to see. However, because one of the reasons we want to retire early is so we can travel more, we still try to be as frugal as possible when we travel. We are not the fancy hotel types. Often we go overseas, but this year we will probably take a driving trip somewhere in the U.S. Our driving trip in the American southwest a couple years ago was amazing. We haven’t yet narrowed down our choices for this year, but we know we’ll remain west of the Mississippi.

I am sure that as Stephen continues to track expenses, other areas to cut will become obvious. It’s just important to strike a balance between keeping expenses low to reach our goals and allowing ourselves to indulge in some of the things we enjoy now. I’d love to find out what other people are doing to cut expenses. If you have any creative (or mundane for that matter) ideas, please comment below and share them.

Korean Children key ring from JooSweetie

One of the first Korean themed items I found on Etsy was this key ring from JooSweetie featuring a little girl in a hanbok with a Korean flag tag. On the reverse, there’s a little boy in hanbok. The design is adorable and very rugged – I’ve had mine for nearly two years and it still looks great, even with daily use. She also has some really cute magnets with the children on them.

Yi Sun-Sin pendant cut by Petsalad

Hangeul thank you cards by Puddle Jumpin' Cards

Korean holiday cards by Grace Hester Designs

Korean Alphabet Quilt by EmiShimosato

Pumpkin tea notebook from PretzelsNPumpkin

This is just a small sampling. If I am ever able to grab a treasury on Etsy, I’d love to do one with Korean goodies. It seems as if it is possible to find just about anything you can dream up on Etsy, so if Korean stuff isn’t your thing, a quick search will probably reveal whatever you seek.

Stephen has opened a shop on Etsy for his fine art photography. He already sells photos on his own website, Bay Images, but Etsy will likely expose a different audience to his work. I’m really interested in seeing how the Etsy shop works out. I haven’t used mine for anything other than getting rid of old art magazines and supplies, so I haven’t done any marketing at all. If anyone has some great Etsy marketing ideas, I’d love to hear about them.

Since I am pretty good with keeping secrets, I can’t share all the presents that I have bought on Etsy with you. I don’t want to give away any surprises. But I can share some of my favorite Etsy finds. It is my favorite place to find unique gifts. I love it because the money I spend on Etsy goes directly in the artists’ pockets – I am not giving money to some big conglomerate (although I admit I do a little of that too). When I buy on Etsy, I know I am giving an unusual gift that can’t be found at the mall, and a lot of the pieces are one-of-a-kind. Many of the artists also take custom orders, so if you don’t see exactly what you want, it doesn’t hurt to ask. Here are some of my finds:

Prints & Paintings

Prints from Grace Hester Designs

Megan Noel – I have actually known Megan for quite some time (through the art zine world), then ran across her Etsy shop in 2007. I own a gorgeous purse she made and several of her watercolors and prints. I love her colorful paintings and her lovely pen and ink drawings. Definitely worth a look.

One of Kreativlink's gorgeous handmade books.

Kreativlink – I love handmade books and journals, and Kreativlink makes wonderful fat journals wrapped in a cloth or leather cover. Most of them have hand drawn or painted art. I used one on our trip to Korea last year, and it was great. The pages are very sturdy – we visited museums that had rubber stamps with traditional Korean designs and I was able to stamp them in my journal without worrying about the ink soaking through. It has a wrap-around strap with a snap, I could throw things inside to paste in later, and I wasn’t in danger of losing them. She is located in Austria, so it is a little more for shipping to the U.S., but these books are worth it!

Beautiful leather tree journal made by Crearting

Shirty flirty scarf by Nancy Gamon

Nancygamon – Nancy sells all sorts of accessories, but my favorites are her scarves. My favorite is her “shirty flirty scarf” seen on the left. She uses lots of vintage fabrics and repurposed apparel, so that’s another great reason to buy from her. She is having a great sale right now.

Melbry – I love the mix of fabrics Melbry uses in her scarves. I have been salivating over one one of her scarves for weeks. She is having a sale right now and shipping in the United States is free.

Fuchst's adorable wristlet/shoulder bag

Fuchst Bags – I can’t decide whether I like her interchangeable wristlet/shoulder bags (seen to the right) or the cute heart handle totes better. But either one would make a great gift. Cute cute cute. If you are ordering for Christmas, be sure to select a bag that is marked “Ready to Ship” or it may not arrive in time.

Janine King Designs – I love the purses and bags Janine King Designs sells. The fabric choices are wonderful and the bags are extremely sturdy and attractive. I bought a purse from her and I get compliments on it all the time.

Must Love Books necklace by Rhymes with Magic

Rhymes with Magic – I adore her whimsical bookish jewelry, made with rolled up strips of paper. I have two pairs of her earrings and I just love them. These make especially good gifts for librarians – she has a few items just for them.

Doll Clothes

Sew Grandma Cathy – I bought a whole slew of Barbie clothes from this shop for my niece last year. The clothes were beautiful and unique, not to mention well-made. They were definitely a hit.

If you have favorite Etsy finds, please post them in the comments.