cell phones for kids - what plan?

[Art 1]

Got them unlimited usage.

 

[luvmy3]

We also added our kids to our plan. they both very rarely talk on the phone, it's more for texting. The pay as you go plans don't really have a cheap unlimited texting plan, whereas we pay $30 a month and we all enjoy unlimited texts.

You pay $30 a month for a family plan?

Not looking forward to this because it will cost us about an extra $150 or whatever. Why? Because to put the kids on our plan, we would have to have a plan ourselves.

My oldest is already bothering us about a cell phone. She is 10 and listing to us all the kids who have cell phones. We certainly could use a cell phone since we work different shifts and hardly ever see each other, plus I don't like Wifey driving home at midnight without a phone, but just can't reason the cost of cell phones. So, daughter isn't getting a phone either because she has no way to pay the monthly fee herself.

We don't have a cell plan, we do pay as you go through Verizon. Dh, dd and I, each all pay $15 a month. Dd and I use $10 of that for unlimited txting to Verizon customers and 250 non Verizon cust. I rarely talk, and everyone I txt has Verizon so my talk minutes add up each month. Dd does chores around the house to pay for hers, so instead of paying her an allowance, we pay for her phone.
Anyway my point was that you don't need to tie yourself to an expensive plan. Dh and I aren't cell phone people, we don't need all the bells and whistles and could live without them, but ever since I broke down on the highway coming home from work at 10PM, 7 months pregnant and having to walk over a mile to the nearest exit, we figured it was good to have in JIC.

 

[aprilgail2]

I am not quite yet ready to give her a smart phone with all access to the internet, but I think it's a good idea in the next few years for her to have a smart phone. Do your kids have smart or "dumb" phones?

My daughter had a cell phone for about a year and a half now (she is 11 now)-it was just a regular cell phone with at qwerty keyboard but she did fine with it, never lost it, never broke it, never went over minutes (we have unlimited texts) so recently I went and bought an iphone for me and an iphone for her- she has a smalled data plan that I do but its been three months now and she hasn't gone over the data usage!