best prepaid cell phone for a 10 year old

[dsmith72]

My son will be 10 in April and we would like to buy him a prepaid cell phone so that when he is out playing with neighbors he can check in with us and we can call him. What is the best option? We are w/Tmobile. We have an old phone we could pay $20 for a sim card, no activation fee and spend $100 for 1 year 1000 minutes service. But I don't know if we should look at tracfone, straighttalk, etc. What are your opinions?

 

[ceecee]

We have a double minute TracFone. I pay $99 for one year of service and usually get over 1000 minutes. I have never had any trouble with service being out, etc. The phone is a camera phone LG and was free, DD wants the full keyboard for texting but they aren't available with TracFone.

 

[charming23]

My mom uses the t-mobile pay as you go phone and loves it. She only uses it to call home while out or if I need to get in contact with her. She bought a $100 card and has more than enough minutes.

 

[sam_gordon]

We got DD a Tracphone when she was 11. Then we (sort of) put her on a budget of $x each month. When she used up her money, she was "phoneless" . Our agreement with her was if she kept the Tracphone for a year (and it was still working), we'd put her on the family plan. She did and we did.

 

[disneymarie]

safelink.com may be a free option too by tracfone. We are in the process of getting this for dgs with visitation and contacts to relatives. It includes a plan with 250 minutes, another has less minutes a month but unlimited texting.

My dd has a tracfone on a family plane for $9.99 a month she receives 50 double minutes to 100. I paid $19.99 for the samsung slide phone double minutes, with the extras as a case, auto charger, etc. This was over a year ago and going well.

 

[c8k6k]

I like Page Plus Cellular. They offer prepaid plans using the Verizon network.

I bought my DD10 a used LG 8550 (chocolate) phone on eBay for about $25, and activated it with Page Plus. I then got her a $10 prepaid cell phone card (100 minutes). I only need to add minutes once every 4 months. Page Plus also has other phone plans like a $25 card (400 minutes) or a talk n text plan. Unused time carries over when additional minutes are purchased to continue service.

 

[EKW]

My boys have basic tracfones. I think I paid $8 for one phone and $14 for the other. They don't text and know I expect that they will only use the phones for needed calls, so they usually run out of time before they run out of minutes! I would say I pay about $60 a year for time/minutes per phone.

One warning, if you let them run out of time, you loose your minutes. My older son had 70 minutes left, ran out of time, and when I added time, those 70 minutes disappeared!

 

[Leajess99]

My son will be 10 in April and we would like to buy him a prepaid cell phone so that when he is out playing with neighbors he can check in with us and we can call him. What is the best option? We are w/Tmobile. We have an old phone we could pay $20 for a sim card, no activation fee and spend $100 for 1 year 1000 minutes service. But I don't know if we should look at tracfone, straighttalk, etc. What are your opinions?

If you have Tmobile family plan already than it is only like $5 a month to add a line and for another $5 a month you can add family allowances to control his useage. Also, you can do it without a contract. My kids are on our Tmobile plan and it has worked out nicely here.

 

[robinb]

I like Page Plus Cellular. They offer prepaid plans using the Verizon network.

I bought my DD10 a used LG 8550 (chocolate) phone on eBay for about $25, and activated it with Page Plus. I then got her a $10 prepaid cell phone card (100 minutes). I only need to add minutes once every 4 months. Page Plus also has other phone plans like a $25 card (400 minutes) or a talk n text plan. Unused time carries over when additional minutes are purchased to continue service.

I also went with Page Plus Cellular for my (then) 10-year old DD.

looked at all the prepaid plans (including Net10 and TracFone) and the reason why I chose Page Plus was their "Top up" requirement for keeping the account active is longer than their competitors. It is 120 days instead of the traditional 90 days. I didn't expect my DD to use her phone often (and I was right) so I looked at the minimum a phone would cost me to keep activated. I can buy 100 Page Plus minutes for $10 and they last 120 days. So, my yearly cost for the phone is $30. TracFone sells 60 minute cards for $20 but they only last 90 days. So, I would have buy and extra card to cover the year and I would end up spending $80 for about the same number of minutes (assuming they are doubled as many TracFone minutes are).

 

[mrodgers]

safelink.com may be a free option too by tracfone.

This safelink.com thing really ticks me off. No one in my family has a cell phone because we can't afford one, yet my taxes are being spent to give others cell phones. If I wasn't buying other people cell phones for them, perhaps I would have one myself. Frustrating.

 

[bjscheel]

I use Tracfone myself and plan to get DD one soon. DH is on Verizon but it would double our bill to go to family and add her. I am looking at a phone that comes with double minutes, and the 1500 minute annual plan. That would give her 3000 minutes and we wouldn't have to do anything for a year. $200 for the year. I actually get by on less than that myself, but if she doesn't use much, we can buy less minutes the next year. Plus, texts take only .3 minutes.

 

[Mom21]

If you have Tmobile family plan already than it is only like $5 a month to add a line and for another $5 a month you can add family allowances to control his useage. Also, you can do it without a contract. My kids are on our Tmobile plan and it has worked out nicely here.

I was going to suggest adding him also except my dd's phone is $10 per month. I don't limit her usage as she only uses a few minutes a month which is likely what it sounds like this child would do. Now texting I added her to my unlimited plan for $5. At one point she was doing over 10,000 a month. Now she is doing a bit less but I figure for $15 total extra month it is worth it.