Affording cell phones

[Myra]

My eldest is getting his driver's license this month and my youngest is riding a commuter bus into town for Rowing daily - so I'd like to get a cell phone for my peace of mind. Also - since the oldest is going away to college in a year, we'll probably need a cell phone then with unlimited calling then. But cell phones and plans seem out of our budget. Any ideas......hints for a newbie looking for the first time into this?

 

Myra

[coffeegal]

:bigear:

[dcjlkplus3]

Are you looking for yourself, or your kids?

Maybe check out Cricket or pay as you go phones (Walmart)

[DawnM]

Virgin Mobile is a pay as you go plan that I hear good things about.

 

We have a killer deal with our cell company but it cannot ever be changed or I will pay rack rates again. So, I don't mess with it.

 

But, if I needed to switch, I would be looking at a pay as you go plan. Unlimited talk, text and data is $40 for each phone with Virgin Mobile.

 

Dawn

Edited September 1, 2011 by DawnM

[Hannah C.]

Do you already have a cell phone, or would this be just for them?

 

Unlimited calling probably isn't at all necessary if you get a traditional cell phone plan. DH and I have 550 minutes per month, and right now we are at 4000+ rollover minutes - we are with AT&T, and get free mobile-to-mobile as well as nights and weekends, so we barely use our minutes. We don't call people very often, though.

 

Pay as you go is the easy, cheap way to do it if you won't be using the phone very often. I think that if you use the cell phone a lot, a traditional cell phone plan would make more sense.

[ondreeuh]

We've used T-Mobile pay as you go for the past few years and it's great. It works out to $0.10 a minute if you buy the big $100 refill.

 

Now we're on a family share plan with a low number of shared minutes (I think 650). Calls between our phones don't count against our minutes, nor do nights & weekends. That could be a good way to keep up with your college student. We pay $55 a month through a local provider and our phones were free.

[Myra]

THanks for the info - we currently don't have cell phones & I was looking for one for each boy and one for home (total of 3 phones).

 

I've heard of people replacing their land lines with cell phones completely but...our internet and phone are a bundle through the phone company.

 

Guess I need to bite the bullet and start making phone calls to the phone companies and see what's out there - it sounds worse than buying a car....or even bras! Yikes!

 

Myra

[Margo out of lurking]

Guess I need to bite the bullet and start making phone calls to the phone companies and see what's out there - it sounds worse than buying a car....or even bras! Yikes!

 

There are several reputable websites that will compare cell phone plans. You might look at Clark Howard's site and see his recommendations too.

 

My dd has unlimited text through t-mobile for $15 a month, pay as you go. Since she doesn't talk, this works well. I can "text" her via email from my computer, and she can text any message to my email. If she needs to, she can call me, it costs something like $.10 a minute.

[deannajo]

I've heard good things about WalMart's newer family plan and it seems pretty affordable - I'd probably go with that if my husband's phone wasn't covered by his work, and if mine wasn't on a friends' employee discount plan - for my kids' shared emergency phone I did a prepaid - I went with AT&T go phone, and just bought them a cheap $10 phone with $100 card - with that big of a card, you don't have to worry about losing the minutes if you don't use them for a year (the smaller cards you lose the minutes after a certain period of time...like a month for a $30 card or something - unless you add more to them) - so for a year of service I spent $110 - so just over $9 a month - and they get about 20 mins a week of talk time, on average.....they share the phone and its for emergencies only, so that's absolutely fine for them - I told them that they can use it for other stuff, and pay for extra minutes if they wanted, but they haven't done that yet :-)

[creativish]

Don't forget to think about location as well. Out where we live, we can't get At&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cricket... So we are pretty much limited to Verizon (CDMA, no GSM). If your son goes off to college, make sure you aren't locked into a 2-year commitment that won't work well where he's at (or on the commute home).

 

I use an ancient tracfone that we pretty much just leave in the car and it costs us about $6/mo for piece of mind, we use maybe 30 minutes a month and have enough carryover for emergencies. My husband uses PagePlus (another Verizon-based pay-as-you-go company) and he can use his own phone, (hello craigslist/ebay!) so that is a nice bonus over other companies. We don't use a lot of minutes, so these options work well for us.:)

[JennyD]

I have had a Virgin pay-as-you go phone for a number of years. I believe that it's $10/month, but I don't remember how many minutes/text I get before there are overage charges. I don't use it much. and never for lengthy calls, so it works out pretty well. My phone itself is very low-end and more or less useless for texting -- I don't text, so it's not a problem for me, but for a college student it might be worth checking out other options for the actual phone.

 

As creekland said, though. you should check what gets reception. We've moved a number of times during the time I've had the phone and the quality of Virgin service has varied wildly.

[cjzimmer1]

I'm another one who uses Page Plus. It runs on verizon network and can use any verizon phone that's not under contract. I used my old Verizon phone (that I had gotten free when I did the plan stuff with them), my husabnd just used one of verizons pre-paid phone but then activated it with Page plus. If you wanted a better phone for you could by a an older used verizon phone off e-bay and pay far less money than a new one and activate on the Page Plus Network. I only pay about $6 a month but I don't use mine much.

[ChemMommy]

We use tracfones here. We have the double minutes for life on mine since it is used the most. The rest are just pay-as-you -go and need more minutes. For our 3 tracfones, we are paying maybe $15 per month.

 

Check your reception. When my ds was at Boy Scout camp all summer, we got an AT&T gophone since that was the only reception in that area. In town, verizon has been working great for us. And, like you, those cell phone family plans are out of our reach at this point!

[redsquirrel]

I have a tracphone as well. I hardly ever use it though. I just keep it in my purse, turned off, for it I need it. I think I used it every other month or so.

 

My DH has an Ipod touch that he uses at work. There is wireless all over campus so he can send me emails telling me if he is going to be late etc. He also uses it for scheduling etc. It is considered standard to have some sort of electronic planning device such as a smart phone or whatever. Like, his boss told him he HAD to get something.

 

And from what DH tells me (he works at a university and is the loser without an Iphone) you don't need unlimited calling. No one uses phones to actually talk to a person. What you need to watch is the texting. That is where they get you. When your son goes to college ALL his friends will communicate via texting. Even the university uses texting to stay in contact with students, making announcements etc.

 

As to how to afford it...beats me. My sister told me everyone has 'three big bills' The mortgage, the student loan and the phone.