Hidemi Woods 

As a two-year contract on my smartphone expires soon, I decided to switch to a low-cost plan of a new phone company and to get a new smartphone that can be used both in Japan and US. I had been looking into the market for about six months and learned that choosing a plan and a phone was really cumbersome nowadays. The price is changing almost every week, the new feature is being added all the time, and the new model is coming up one after the other. To keep up with that speed was so hard for me. It would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t been a cheap person. I would have just sat at the counter in a phone shop and gotten whatever a salesperson recommended. Unfortunately I don’t trust a salesperson and I’m not rich. I simply can’t satisfy myself unless I find the best buy on my own and get it during a special promotion. That required an enormous amount of research, patience, and energy, not to mention time. After all, I got a satisfactory model and signed up for a low-cost plan. The phone came with a USB charger, but I needed one more for travel. The phone maker’s website told that its charger is exclusively made and a mass-market charger can’t be used. I bought the relatively-high-in-price charger that I still can’t see the difference from a common charger, which makes me feel that I lost money. I started using my new smartphone full of glee anyway. It’s bigger than my old one and has a better view on the screen while I’m afraid if I don’t get a good grip and drop it. I needed a case but couldn’t find one that perfectly fits because it’s not a major model. Cool cases for iPhone are everywhere and I now realized how popular it is. I settled on a pouch-type iPhone case that had a bargain price, and squeezed my phone into it. I mustered all my ideas and devices to get and use a new phone at the lowest price. Looking back the long, troublesome process, I’m not so sure if I saved money or it was costly in various ways…