point fu

With "gamification" being a huge buzzword across so many industries these past few years, it seems like nearly every business now offers some kind of rewards program. There's always a "time/effort versus payback" calculation with things so when I looked at American Express' Plenti program a couple of years ago, it definitely fell into the "not worth effort" column. We do spend an ungodly amount of money on our AT&T cell phone bill , so I thought, "well, I'll sign up for Plenti and link the AT&T account and maybe 3 years from now I'll have enough points for a latte"… Fast forward to yesterday. I'm by a Rite Aid and think, "we're almost out of Tide" so I pop in there and the guy says, "would you like to pay with your Plenti points?" and, well: My Tide and my Cascade were free! and I still have $30 left in my account. ( Do note that you have to go to RiteAid.com and sign up for their We...

We're on our big Japan trip right now and got some good news yesterday: AT&T is adding Wi-Fi calling for customers with newer iPhones running the latest version of iOS . While we don't talk on the phone much even when we're in USA, this will definitely help keep the costs down when we do. While there have long been alternatives (Skype, FaceTime), I still have to receive work calls on a normal US mobile number and that means per-minute charges. This new feature will let me do that for free while I'm on Wi-Fi. To enable Wi-Fi calling, go to Settings > Phone > Wi-Fi Calling and turn it on. More information here and here . My personal tips for reducing international roaming charges are here . Your carrier info changes when Wi-Fi calling is enabled Enable Wi-Fi calling in your Preferences