Cell phone costs?

[kandb]

We are a family of 5 and 4 of us have cell phones (8 year old doesn't have one yet). We had Verizon but switched to Sprint to save money. We pay $190 month for the 4 of us with 8gb of data. My son and daughter have insurance on the phones and my dh and I do not. I HATE paying almost $200/month for cell phones and wish I could find a cheaper alternative. Any ideas? Wonder if the charges will come down eventually. We did cancel our almost $200/mo cable bill. We now pay $50/mo for Wi-Fi, $5/mo for OOMA for a landline (learned about that on here-thank you) and $12/mo for Netflix, so we are saving over $100 on cable and really don't miss it at all. Any cell phone suggestions?

 

[Albort]

are you paying for the phone? $190 seems high for sprint.

 

[tvguy]

I have Verizon, $160 for 4 phones. That is with 3gb data per phone. That is the basic Verizon plan. No insurance.

 

[Alexle2007]

We have BoostMobile's unlimited family plan- unlimited gigs, talk and text. We can use the service as a hotspot. We have 3 lines for $100 a month (including taxes and fees). You do have to purchase the phones outright but we are ok with that.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I am on a Sprint family plan that includes my parents, sister, grandfather plus myself and DH. Everyone on the plan owns their phone outright and no one carries insurance. We have 8 GB data shared between the 6 phones. We also were able to add a corporate discount to the account through my employer, which helps brings down the cost of service by 20% (data cost is excluded from the discount). Check to see if you are eligible for any kind of discount like that through your employer.

Total, we each pay $30 for a total of $180 per month.

 

[scard192]

$110 for 4 lines with T Mobile. 2GB/line. me, 2 kids and my Mom. we don't use much data thanks to Comcast hi fi hot spots. I just bought a new Moto E4 (unlocked) from Amazon for $99; does what I need it to do, was not willing to pay the prices of flagship smart phones.

 

[mjkacmom]

I think our bill is around $500 a month, unlimited data, 7 people, paying monthly for 3 phones. Verizon.

 

[Hikergirl]

Right now I pay $60 a month for mine and my ds's phone through Total Wireless. We get unlimited text and talk and share 15GBs of data.
I am planning on adding my dh and my other ds so we will pay $100 a month and all share 25GBs of data.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

We also switched from Verizon to Spring in May. Our Verizon bill was for two phones (IPhone 6), carrying cost of phones, & I really don't remember data, etc. I do know that we were always over by a little. My husband has to call Canada once in a while for work (that gets expensive) though his work contributes to that. Cost with Verizon was almost $190. Switched to Sprint, got 2 IPhone 7's, traded one phone in, gave other to daughter and have a "burner" phone at home. So, 4 phones with unlimited data, text, etc. for $150 and that includes the cost of the 2 IPhone 7's. My sister works for Verizon. She said many of the people she works with doesn't even use Verizon, they get better deals with competitors (even with their Verizon discount).

 

[Gr8t Fan]

We pay $158 a month to T Mobile for 5 lines unlimited talk & text, 4GB of data on each line. We own our phones outright.

 

[melanielll]

$35 a month with Virgin. Unlimited talk and text. 5GB data. I own the phone.

 

[justafigment27]

T-Mobile One is $160/mo for four lines of unlimited text, talk and data (think it's 16GM of 4G data then goes down to LTE) with auto-pay discounts.
Cricket is $100/mo for four 4 lines of unlimited text, talk and 4GB of data per line with multi-line discounts.

May be worth a look depending on coverage in your area.

 

[ICF]

Look at consumer cellular. I think for about $100 you can get 10gb of data to share as well as unlimited minutes and texts.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I pay $204 a month with Verizon. Three phones, two owned outright, pay monthly for DS phone, unlimited text talk and data. I had the 30 gb plan but SO and DS like to listen to music and stream videos even when they aren't connected to wifi. We were still going over the data some months!!!! I was paying $190 so not a big increase for unlimited.

I'm about to set up auto pay to lower my bill by $15.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

I think our bill is around $500 a month, unlimited data, 7 people, paying monthly for 3 phones. Verizon.

Oh geesh. That's crazy.

 

[kristenrice]

$300/mo with Sprint...
...One "stupid" phone (transferred our landline number to save $40/mo on landline service)
...5 iPhones...
(2) iPhone 6's that we bought outright for DH and myself
(1) iPhone 5S that my sister owns (she is on our plan)
(1) iPhone 6 that we bought in June for DD14 (put $100 down and we are paying the rest off in installments for 2 years)
(1) iPhone SE that we just bought last month for DD12 (paying it off over 2 years)
...insurance is carried on all of the phones except DD12's SE and the "stupid" phone. We wouldn't have it on DD14's 6, but we bought that phone from Sprint directly and the rep said that we MUST carry the insurance on it for the first three months when it is a financed phone. We bought DD12's SE from BestBuy and there was no mention at all of requiring insurance for three months so I don't know what that is all about.
...2 Galaxy tablets (owned outright)

We have unlimited text and talk and we share 40 GB of data. Right now, we are enjoying a special offer from Sprint that gives us unlimited data for 6 months. Even though I stream a LOT (I sit in an ambulance for 12 hours a day so Netflix is my friend), the most data we've used in a month was about 30GB, and that was the month we drove to HHI from Michigan and the kids were streaming on their tablets during the drive.

 

[wenrob]

We have AT&T and an old discount from a company that owned DH’s plant 18 years ago. About five years ago AT&T had a double your data promo for new customers. I called, asked for retention and told them as a long standing customer I wanted it too. They gave it to me. So I get 20GB for the price of 10 plus rollover, personal hotspot and unlimited text & talk.

We have 3 iPhone 7s, 2 iPhone 6s, and 2 iPads all paid for. My bill after taxes is $184.00. I have data locked down on the younger two kids phones to only the basics so no streaming for them. There’s free WiFi just about everywhere we go though, even their school. Eventually we’ll have to bump it up but I’m going to hang onto this as long as I can.

 

[Cadiewampus]

AT&T 4 iphones unlimited talk text and data and hotspot $190 month. They also threw in HBO on my uverse for "free"

 

[starry_solo]

I pay $100 month with Verizon for 2 phones (that are paid off) with 10 GB of data to share between the two of us. The phones still work so we haven't gotten new ones yet.

 

[mi*vida*loca]

We have AT&T and an old discount from a company that owned DH’s plant 18 years ago. About five years ago AT&T had a double your data promo for new customers. I called, asked for retention and told them as a long standing customer I wanted it too. They gave it to me. So I get 20GB for the price of 10 plus rollover, personal hotspot and unlimited text & talk.

We have 3 iPhone 7s, 2 iPhone 6s, and 2 iPads all paid for. My bill after taxes is $184.00. I have data locked down on the younger two kids phones to only the basics so no streaming for them. There’s free WiFi just about everywhere we go though, even their school. Eventually we’ll have to bump it up but I’m going to hang onto this as long as I can.

My son says Wifi at school is too slow so he likes to use our data. They use their phone during class to look things up and such.